In this tutorial Shaun Whynacht walks viewers through the complete workflow for recording and editing a podcast using two different software options. He first demonstrates how to download, install, and launch Audacity on macOS, covering permission work‑arounds, selecting input and output devices, monitoring levels, and setting appropriate recording levels (green/yellow, avoiding red). Shaun records a test intro, shows basic waveform navigation, deletes unwanted sections, and explains how to add additional mono or stereo tracks, import music files, adjust track gain, and export the final mix as MP3 or WAV. He then switches to Adobe Audition, highlighting its professional multitrack interface, recording process, waveform alignment, and the ability to fine‑tune individual tracks with fades. Shaun explains the advantage of isolating interviewee audio on separate tracks and using the mixer to boost or lower specific tracks before performing a mix‑down to a single file. Finally, he compares the free Audacity solution with the subscription‑based Adobe Audition, recommending Audition for serious podcasters while noting Audacity’s suitability for beginners, and previews the next lesson on publishing the podcast online.
Chapters
Okay, so here we are over at our production desk where we record our podcast and we edit together podcasts from our clients. So I want to show you two different options for recording and editing your podcast. The first one is a completely free open source software. It's called Audacity or Odyssey or however you want to pronounce it. A-U-D-A-C-I-T-Y. D-A-C-I-T-Y. And if you search for that, you'll come up with this website here. We don't have it installed on the computer, but I'm going to walk you through how to install it, uh, here today. So when you come here, obviously you're going to download and pick the operating system that you have. So we have a Mac, so we're going to click on this, uh, and then you're going to choose one of the files it tells you here. So most likely it's going to be the first one, so I'm going to go ahead and click on this. And then we're going to go here and then choose the one that we want. So you know that if you're on a Windows, you're going to choose the installer zip file. So we're going to use the, the macOS DMG file, and we're just going to install this here. Just bear with us a few seconds. Just wanted to walk you through this. I could have installed this beforehand, but it's key that you know where to go to install. So I'm just going to Drag this to there, and then we'll get a little pop-up. It'll tell us— install. We heard the sound. Boom. Okay, so now what we're going to do is we're going to go to Applications, and we're going to look for Audacity right here, and we're going to open it. Okay, so here's a little trick. If you ever had a Mac and it tells you you're not authorized, you double-click to open it, it won't do that. But if you right-click and you could choose Open, and then you come here. Now it's going to open. Okay, so here's the program. It's fairly light. It does not take a lot of requirements in here. So the first thing you need to do is figure out what you're recording from. So the microphone, we have the Yeti USB microphone, which I referenced before. So you can use your built-in or any other drivers that are installed in your computer will show up here. And then your output, so where are you outputting it to? So So is it going back to the microphone because this microphone has a headphone jack, or is it going to the built-in output of your computer? That's really what you need to know. And then you can say click to start monitoring. So as you can see, my levels here, as they're going up now, when it comes to recording levels, this is what you want. You want it to be in the green, a little bit in the yellow. If it's really loud, so if it's hitting the red, it's too loud. Okay, sorry for shouting, but I wanted to show you that. If it is too loud, then you can drop it back here in the recording level. So you can then bring it back up and then see. So that's too hot and that's too low. So you want to make sure that when you're talking— and one of the little tricks that I tell people to do that's not used to this is they'll come in and they'll sit down, they'll be like, test, test, test, test, and then they start the recording and then they're like really loud because they're excited and they're projecting. So portray your vocal level at the way that you would be recording, okay? So once that's done, let's just do a little test here. So you're gonna hit the red record button, and it's okay if you're pausing. You don't have to start right away because you can clip this and edit it later. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit record, and we're gonna go in and do a little opening. Hi, and welcome to this recorded edition of Podcast 101. This is just a recorded intro demo doing an Audacity recording sample here for the fine folks taking this program. Okay, so now that that's done, now you saw the waveforms that show up here. Now this is obviously the audio, and you can click on this and hit your spacebar, hit the play button. Hi and welcome to this recorded edition of podcast. Right, we don't need to listen to it, you already, already listened to it. So the other thing you can do is you can highlight, uh, the bits at the beginning, you hit delete, and it can get rid of all that extra stuff, the waste that's in here so you have just your audio file. All right, so you can go ahead and you record your whole bit. And what you can also do is you can come through and you can delete little ums and ahs and pieces from it so that you make sure the audio sounds great and consistent. Once you're done that, you're going to then add another track. So we're going to then add in here, let's say a mono or stereo track. So here's a little side bit with this. If you're recording your microphone, most likely it is going to be mono. So you don't have to be stuck on this whole idea of stereo and mono. Now, if you have audio that is music and there is a left side and a right side, then obviously make it stereo. This one here by default recorded in stereo because there's two elements to it. So I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to add a new track. I'm just going to make it a mono track. And this is what we call a multi-track view. So you have different elements that are in here. So now let's just say that we want to, let's just figure this out, import audio. So we have some music that we're going to go find. So we're going to go find a piece of audio. Let me just find my production library here. It's going to be here, resources. Okay, let's just choose this one. Doesn't matter which one. It doesn't recognize the file type. Okay, let's because I picked the wrong file. So we're going to import audio. Let's go down. Let's do an AIF file. Hopefully it recognizes this. So make a copy of the file before editing. Or so that's usually the safer option. So we're going to do that. So we're going to make a copy of this file and then it puts it on its own track. So now what we've got here, if we play this, it's going to be really loud. So let's just listen. It's going to have the my audio and then the music all back to back. Hi, and welcome to this recorded edition of Podcast 101. Okay, so as we can see, that level is way too hot, as we call it, right? It's too high from the music. So with this, what we can do is we can then turn the volume down, or call it gain, on the music track. And then we can try it again. 101. Hold on here, let's come back here. 101. This is just a recorded intro demo doing an Audacity recording sample here for the fine folks taking this program. Okay, so there's just a basic idea of the multitrack. You can get in and learning a bit more about this and adding different effects and things to the audio, but that's the whole idea and the concept. Behind this is being able to layer your audio. So your interviews, so you can have one track with you and one track with your guest, or it can all be in one and then some music in between. Now, there are going to be ways in here that you can add different things and cut this audio so it doesn't continue on and so forth, but we're not going to go through all of that in here. I just wanted to show you this idea of Audacity and what it can do. Once your audio is complete, You would file and you would export to either an MP3 or a WAV file. Most of the podcasts, because they're going out, are exported to an MP3 file. A WAV file is going to be considerably bigger, but an MP3 file will be, you know, many megabytes smaller. And most of the podcasting upload systems that are out there do require it being MP3. So we would export to that, and then it's going to compress that all into one file. Okay, so that is Audacity. Now let's go ahead and look at a professional version called Adobe Audition, which comes with the Adobe Suite. So this is what I use to record my sessions. What I like about it is there's a multitrack view, so I can go ahead here and I'm just going to call it test. We'll make it all mono, and now we've got the multitracks, very similar to what you saw over here, right? Multitrack, different levels. Allows us to have the different elements that are on here. So I can go ahead and I can choose my microphone. I can hit record. So here we go. There's the levels again, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and we can go ahead and hit record. This is just an Adobe Audition sample of Podcasting 101. Right, so now we've got this. This is just an Adobe Audition. Okay, so now we can move that around. We can move the multiple tracks, whatever the case may be. Then you can import different elements of audio. Let's just say I want to pull over an audio track and put it in here. This is what I really like about this program is the fact that I can line up the waveforms easily. Then you got these lines here. Let's just say I want this music to play a little higher and then fade down for me. Now it can sound like this. This is just an Adobe Audition sample of Podcasting 101. Okay? So as you can see, we're starting to build the whole audio track, and you can have multiple layers that are in here. Now, what I tend to do is build it out, and I have my voice up here, and then I have an interview elements on a different track. And the reason for that is, let's say my interviewee is really soft-spoken, and my recorded pieces that I've done here in the studio bit are at the proper level. If I had them on the same track, I would have to keep adjusting this audio line for each one up and down, up and down, up and down. But because I have them on multiple tracks, it allows me to load what is called the mixer. And now I can then adjust the full audio just for that one track. So I could have, you know, if they're soft-spoken and they're on track 3, I can boost it up and now it's going to raise their entire level. So similar to that mixer you saw sitting on the desk in the earlier videos, then that's where this all belongs. Okay, and once we're done, everything is good, we would then go to Mixdown to a new session. It's going to mix it down to one file. Boom! And then Podcasting 101. Okay, so that's, that's that element there. What I'm going to do is below this video where you're consuming this video, whether you're seeing it on our own landing page where the video is, I'm going to actually give you a sample of one of our podcast episodes to show you how we did we did the opening. Actually, what I'll do is I'll change that on the fly here. I'll give you a link to our podcast so that you can go and listen to how we did the openings and the mixing and the audio and bring it all together. So these are the two systems that are out there. The free one obviously doesn't have all the flash and whistles and the flexibility that this one does. But this one here, if you just need an audition, you can get it for, I think it's like $9 US a month on a subscription basis. And if you're really serious about doing podcasting, This is ultimately the way to go. This is what you need to do this professionally, and there's tons of videos to teach you in more in-depth on how to do it. So what we're going to do next in the next video is cover how do you get your podcast online. So we'll see you there.
