Level Up Your Audio with Magic Mastering

We explore how Buzzsprout's Magic Mastering feature helps podcasters achieve professional-quality audio without technical expertise! In this episode, Cara and Kevin go through the details and give examples of Magic Mastering's Filler Killer and Power Clean capabilities! 

If you have questions about using Magic Mastering, email us at support@buzzsprout.com.

Keep podcasting!

Transcript

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Introduction to Magic Mastering

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Podcasting Q&A brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout . I'm your host , cara Passetti , and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence . With me today is Buzzsprout co-founder and tried and true podcaster , kevin Finn . He's a true expert when it comes to audio , so I am very excited to tackle this question together . Thanks , kevin , for being here . So I am very excited to tackle this question together . Thanks , kevin for being here .

Speaker 2 0:27

Hi , I'm excited to be here , tried and true podcaster . Okay , I will do my best to live up to these high expectations . Thank you for the nice welcome .

Speaker 1 0:36

So today we're actually going to be talking about magic mastering . We see questions all the time in the support inbox from podcasters that they're just asking how to make their audio sound better . So whether they're new and they're just getting started and they don't know those techniques , or they are a seasoned podcaster with plenty of episodes under their belt but they just want to take their audio to that next level . So when we see that in the support inbox , our common response is magic mastering . In the support inbox , our common response is Magic Mastering . It's a tool that we offer here at Buzzsprout and it's commonly referred to as the Instagram filter for your audio .

Speaker 1 1:11

As an Instagram user and a filter user , I am very thankful for that . It really cleans up my images and so Magic Mastering can do that for your audio . So I just want to first introduce Magic Mastering for listeners who may have no idea what we're talking about . Magic Mastering is an automated feature that we offer that provides quality automation . So it does this through three parts smart , adaptive leveling , perfect loudness and true peak targeting and audio sweetening . So , kevin , can you dive into those three parts and let us know kind of the technical part behind it and why Magic Mastering makes your podcast production process so much more efficient

Three Parts of Magic Mastering Explained

Speaker 1 1:51

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Speaker 2 1:51

Sure . So let me start out by saying a lot of people have maybe it's a slight misunderstanding that Magic Mastering is a tool for amateur podcasters , and it's really not like I don't think that's the best way to look at it Like . So we do buzzcast weekly . Jordan Alvin and I are on that show every week . All of us have been podcasting for years and years and years . I think we just did an episode a couple weeks ago where we said like the combined podcasting experience between all of us is over 30 years of combined experience of podcasting . So none of us would probably consider ourselves amateur podcasters , but we still use this tool because in one way , it's very much like an insurance policy . So , even though Jordan is an expert podcast producer she's an excellent editor and she knows exactly every step that you should do to get your audio perfect and published there's a possibility that she could make a slight mistake , like we're all humans , right . Well , computer programs , on the other hand , just do the same thing every time , so they very rarely would make a mistake . They're not going to skip a step . They don't know how to skip a step , they only know how to follow instructions . And so we run magic mastering number one as an insurance policy . So , just in case Jordan exported the file and she chose the wrong format or her settings got messed up somehow or something , is an insurance policy on the end to make sure that everything goes out perfectly ? The other reason that we use it is that it's a massive time saver , and correcting audio levels is not something . It's not a good use of somebody's time , and so magic mastering is a huge time saver .

Speaker 2 3:24

Now let me dive into those three things that you asked for . Number one smart adaptive leveling . What is that ? The easiest way to think about that is that when you have multiple people on a recording , or even one person , and you have sound effects or something like that , you want all those sounds to be consistent , right ? So this wouldn't be a very good episode for you to listen to If every time I started talking , I was super loud and boomy and then Kara started talking and she was softer . Like think about if you were trying to listen to that while you're driving down the road , you constantly be adjusting the volume , so be like oh , kara's talking , now I need to turn her up a little bit . I know Kevin's talking now . It's too loud , I got to turn that down . So we want consistency between all the voices and the sounds that you hear in one audio recording , and so it will do that for you without you having to do any work .

Speaker 2 4:06

Number two perfect loudness and true peak targeting . This comes from the Apple podcast recommendations for how loud voices should be in the audio file that you upload to distribute as a podcast . Now , why Apple ? Well , because Apple is kind of the first really big mover in the podcasting space . They brought podcasting to the iPod years and years and years ago and that sort of kicked off the popularity of what podcasts are today . So Apple back then came up with some standards and everyone's just sort of followed them from that point forward . So that is the standard in podcasting .

Speaker 2 4:39

And now I'm going to hit you with some technical stuff . That is not going to make sense to a lot of people , and that's totally fine . But they recommend that the overall loudness remain at negative 16 decibels , with a plus or minus one dB tolerance and a true peak value that doesn't exceed negative one dB . If you don't know what that means , like me , I don't really know what that means , but I don't have to , because Magic Mastering does know what that means and it will match those specs perfectly for the file that you run through it . And the third thing that it does is audio sweetening , and so that's filtering out noises , hiss and hums and stuff like that .

Speaker 2 5:14

And so every now and then you'll get some noise into a recording that you don't want . That's not a part of it . You could have an air conditioner running that your microphone is picking up . You could have a fan in your room . You could have a lawnmower that drives by unexpectedly outside your window while you're recording . You don't want that in the final edit and those things can be hard to get out . Sometimes magic mastering is really good at getting out like consistent noises . This is in the default setting . So if you have that air conditioner and it's humming the entire time that you're recording , it will pull that out , no problem .

Speaker 2 5:44

Every now and then , like I said , you might have something weird like the lawnmower that comes by , or you're recording in a particularly noisy space . You might be outside at a park interviewing somebody and there's a lot of wind noise or background noise . You might be recording at a podcast conference and so there's people all over the place and you're like it's actually too much all over the place and you're like it's actually too much , it's hard to hear the voices . How do I clean that up a little bit ? You might be recording in a room that doesn't have a lot of sound treatment , so there's some reverb in the room which is sort of that weird hollow echoey sound . So there's this other feature that we'll dig into in a little bit , called power clean , and that can reduce and eliminate some of those noises that are really hard to get out of because they're inconsistent . So those are the three things smart adaptive leveling , perfect loudness and true peak targeting and audio sweetening .

Speaker 1 6:28

Awesome , thank you . Those terms sound so simple when we just lay them out on paper . And then you go in the behind the scenes and you're throwing out words like true , peak and negative decibel levels , and it can get a little overwhelming and , as any podcaster knows , it's not typical that you can just record something , throw it out there and it sounds excellent . So this is a helpful tool to ease the efficiency of all the other things that you have to do , so you can focus on content creation . What is it that you're saying ? You know , let us handle this part on having your audio at the levels it needs to be and so that , ultimately , your listener wants to keep coming back and hearing your podcast .

Speaker 2 7:07

Right , and that's really why I love that line that says it's an Instagram filter for your audio , because oftentimes people are pretty good at taking photographs right , especially with the phones and stuff and how good the cameras are on the phones . A lot of people have gotten really good at taking really good photographs , but do they need to know everything , like , do they need to then invest in Photoshop and know how to do color grading and know how to adjust the levels and the brightness and the contrast and saturation and all that kind of stuff ? No , not for the most part . No . To get a good photo that you want to post on your social or share with your family , you don't . You just want to go in and click on a different filter or click on the little magic wand and have it just brighten it up a little bit , and that is the same thing that we're trying to do with . Magic mastering is that you can create great content , but there could be some little audio artifacts in there that just , for whatever reason , doesn't sound exactly right .

Speaker 1 7:56

Since we're not talking about photos and we're talking about podcasting . Most podcasts are typically someone speaking . It is not a theatrical performance with music , and it's mostly spoken word , maybe between one host or multiple hosts . That is the typical podcast that we hear , and so when you're uploading a spoken word podcast at Buzzsprout , we recommend you use a monophile , meaning one channel . And so , kevin , can you tell us the difference between a monophile and a stereophile , and is there a time that it's appropriate to use a stereophile when creating a spoken word podcast ?

Speaker 2 8:35

Yeah , absolutely ,

Mono vs. Stereo Files Explained

Speaker 2 8:36

absolutely . So if you think about , well , I'm going to try to give you visual examples as much as possible . Like you said , a monofile is exactly what it sounds like . It is one audio channel , and if you are a podcast person who's speaking into a microphone , there's one voice going into one microphone and so you only need one channel . Now you would be like but all the music I listen to is stereo and it comes out of my device called a stereo . What is stereo ? Stereo is two or more channels , but typically it's just two , and you usually have a left and a right speaker . Now , once you get to the point where you want something different coming out of each speaker , then at a minimum you need two channels , right . So you need a left channel and a right channel . Again , we're just speaking in general terms here , because maybe you're playing some music and you want more drums out of the left side , and there are some amazing things that music producers can do when they go even beyond two channels to use the subwoofers and all that kind of stuff to make the music really sound like you're in a concert hall .

Speaker 2 9:35

In podcasting we don't do all that . We don't have all those luxuries . Usually it's just one person speaking into one microphone , another person speaking into another microphone . So when would stereo be a benefit for a podcaster ? Well , there's this really cool genre in podcasting called audio drama , and oftentimes you have people who aren't just having a conversation , they're actually trying to act out a scene , but it's just through audio , and so you might want to make it sound like somebody is , you know , coming into the room and entering from the right side and then they're moving to the center of the room and if you do that really well , you can actually hear that in your headphones . Like it would sound like they're more on the right and then they walk over and now they're more on the left , and that's called like audio panning and stuff . And so some of the people who do like audio dramas just one example would take advantage of the stereo capabilities if they had it available to them .

Speaker 2 10:24

But most podcasters , most of the time I don't want to lose this point Most of the podcasters , most of the time you just want to do a monofile . Why ? Why not use stereo anyway ? Well , because it doubles the size of the file and anybody who's listening to your podcast has to download that file , and so downloading takes time . The bigger the file , the longer it's going to take to download . So I don't know if you've ever had this experience , kara , but I do this all the time .

Speaker 2 10:47

My podcasts are not set to auto download to my phone . I just use the default settings on my podcast app , which means when I'm sitting in an airplane getting ready to take off , I am scrambling , trying to queue up episodes so that I don't have to pay the $16 for Wi-Fi on the flight to listen to podcasts . So I'm scrambling and I'm like download , download , download , download , and I'm watching the little progress meters go as we're shooting down the runway at 150 miles an hour getting ready to lift off and I'm like I've got 30 seconds of Wi-Fi left before I've got to pay Delta's 20 bucks . So the smaller the audio file is better , smaller audio file is better and you're not going to lose any audio quality . You're literally just saying just give me one channel instead of two channels . Why double the amount of data if the same thing is still going to come out of both sides of my headphones ?

Speaker 1 11:31

That's such a key point that you make . Yeah , you're not going to lose the audio quality . Save your listeners some time . Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee , that's right . Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee and get your audio to them . Yeah , we do get this question in the support inbox and we don't want to take away from podcasters who are creating audio drama or are creating podcasts where they're incorporating music and taking that time . We want to provide a way for you to add that stereo file to Buzzsprout . So that's another benefit of magic mastering .

Speaker 1 12:00

A lot of podcasters use Magic Mastering to enhance their audio , but if you are recording your podcast and you want to upload a stereo file , you can do that through Magic Mastering . You can switch Magic Mastering from talk to music and then you would be able to upload your stereo files to Buzzsprout and we can get them across to the directory . So that is an option . It's just through Magic Mastering . So thank you for clarifying that , kevin . That helps a lot . Yeah , all right .

Speaker 1 12:29

So Kevin , in the beginning of this episode , kind of gave away our grand finale . Recently , magic Mastering has had a couple of changes , so Magic Mastering has been on the scene since 2021 . It is widely used by many of our podcasters , who host their podcasts here with us , but we gave it a little upgrade this year , and so , kevin , since you are the one who gave one of these features their name , I want you to introduce these last two features , and I know you're excited to talk about them . I'm excited , and so let us know what they are and why we should be so excited to use them .

Power Clean Feature Breakdown

Speaker 2 13:07

Okay , so there are two features , and one is called Power Clean , the other is called Filler Killer .

Speaker 2 13:12

So let's talk about power clean first . One of our base mantras with magic mastering is sort of this do no harm mentality . Whatever you upload , we want to do the best that we can to make it sound better , but never at the cost or risk of making it sound worse . Right , okay , so everything that we do , we take a very gentle approach to it . Specifically when we're talking about like our noise reduction features , they're very gentle and , like I said , if you have like a consistent background noise like an air conditioner is the most common example that we run into it's very good at removing that because it's consistent throughout the entire audio recording , and so the software can easily identify that consistent hum and it can remove it without messing anything up Every now and then . The gentle clean is not the right approach because and so the software can easily identify that consistent hum and it can remove it without messing anything up Every now and then . The gentle clean is not the right approach because you might have an episode that was recorded in a particularly noisy environment . Another common thing that happens all the time is that you might have guests on your podcast and you're looking at them on a screen share video screen and it looks like they have a microphone in front of their face , but they actually have the wrong microphone selected , like in their configuration . So they're actually using their laptop microphone , even though you're looking at a very expensive microphone sitting in front of their face and you're like , why doesn't that sound very good ? Anyway , you don't want to offend your guests , so you just push through and now you have this really rough audio recording and it might have a lot of reverb or something .

Speaker 2 14:29

In cases like that , in special cases , we have rolled out this feature called power clean so you can't turn it on to default run on all your episodes because it's too aggressive , like it does have the potential that it could do some harm , but , like , for example , in buzzcast , we end all of our episodes with this little um hang up sound . It's like a boop and it's like just kind of , because we do post shows sometimes . Well , when we , when we've run power clean on our episodes , it cuts that out . Oh , wow , it completely removes it . And why ? Well , because we have an aggressive algorithm that's saying there's this is a troubled recording and it's got weird noises in it and we need you to take those weird noises out .

Speaker 2 15:06

Okay , so that's what I when I say like , do no harm , it's not going to make your voice sound terrible , but it might cut out some stuff that you didn't want cut out . But we would take that hit if we were recording in a live podcast conference and there was all this background noise and you couldn't hear the episode . Otherwise , it will save that episode , but it will also cut out our ending noise . So it's a good trade-off in extreme examples , and so that is a feature that we're super excited about . We hope it's going to save a lot of recordings where people think there's nothing I can do with this . Hey , run it through PowerClean . There's a good chance that it can fix it up and save your episode .

Speaker 1 15:39

Absolutely , and if a podcaster sees an opportunity to record with a guest , maybe it's a once in a lifetime , maybe it's like you said you're at a podcast conference and you don't want to miss that opportunity just for fear of having bad audio quality . So , like you said , it's worth the risk . Maybe it'll , you know , edit out your ending sound , but it provides the podcaster a way to grab that opportunity and still have amazing audio when they get to their uploading process .

Speaker 2 16:04

And we say podcast conferences all the time , because those are the conferences that we go to . Right , if you're a teacher and you do a teaching podcast , they teaching podcast . You have events where you're with other teachers and what we want you to be able to do is you don't have to carry all your podcasting gear with you , like you have your phone . Your phone has a voice memos app on it . Grab that , ask a question . Oh , here's the new superintendent in our school district and I happen to be at this meeting tonight and now I'm talking with them . Do you mind if I record this , because I have a podcast and I would like to play a segment ? Yeah , sure , great , okay , bring out your voice memo apps , hit record , ask them your questions , get their answers , insert it into the middle of your podcast episode . But then you're like now this sounds terrible compared to everything else . Great , run it through Power Clean it will make it all sound .

Speaker 1 16:49

So that is power clean . Now , what is filler killer ?

Filler Killer and Audio Examples

Speaker 1 16:54

Sounds aggressive , but let us know .

Speaker 2 16:57

Yeah , it's a fun marketing term . I mean , really what it's doing is it's cutting out filler words . It's ums and ahs and uh and those types of words that all of us use as humans when we're thinking about stuff , but especially in podcasting . A lot of people don't podcast enough to have trained themselves enough that instead of using filler words , it's best to just have silence , like it's okay if you're thinking , but just let the room breathe for a second . Try not to use filler words that much , because they can be a little bit annoying as a listener If you're listening to somebody talk for hours and hours and hours , and every 15 to 20 seconds they're saying um or uh or you know . And so filler killer . Well , here's the other thing is that you can clean all those up and post . Like , while you're editing , you can go in and select every single one of those little ums and ahs and delete them . Sure , no problem , but it takes hours . It's so infuriating as a as a podcast editor to cut all of them out , and if you cut too many it starts to sound unnatural . And well , all of that uh magic has been built into this feature that we call filler killer .

Speaker 2 18:06

It is a gentle touch of removing filler words . It doesn't remove every single one . If a filler word bleeds into another word , it will leave it alone so that your podcast still sounds natural , and it saves you all the time of having to do that manually . So that is a beautiful feature for most podcasters I would recommend . Yeah , just turn it on .

Speaker 2 18:24

If you don't use filler words that much , it's not going to do much . But if you happen to have a guest on who does use a lot of filler words , it will save you all that editing time , and so it's wonderful . It doesn't catch every filler word , one of the most common . Now I have teenagers but they say like , like every like 30 seconds when you're talking to them . Like is not a filler word and so it won't . I mean it kind of is now , but it's also not . It's also a word that we use very commonly , like when we're explaining something , for example , and so it won't cut out words like that , but it will cut out all the ums and ahs and moo and weird sounds in between your normal dialogue .

Speaker 1 19:03

That makes sense , that like is not considered a filler word , but man , I would say amongst younger .

Speaker 2 19:09

It might be soon . The amount of times that people drop it nowadays .

Speaker 1 19:13

Absolutely . Yes , I actually had a professor in college that told me silence is okay , don't say um . And every time we would raise our hands for a question we'd say um and he'd go no . And I wish it stuck , but I still use them . So I need filler killer .

Speaker 2 19:28

Yeah , so he was the original filler killer .

Speaker 1 19:30

He was yeah , it's a hard habit to break , so we're going to help you out with that . Well , actually I just want to take a moment , because we just released these new parts of Magic Mastering . I want to include an example so that our listeners tuning in can hear just how powerful these features are .

Speaker 2 19:47

Yeah , it's a great example of recording in a noisy environment and what that sounds like before and after power clean .

Speaker 3 20:02

Can I say two things ? Um , going to bat for other people is the name of the game . So , um , that attracts a certain kind of personality , that attracts a certain kind of person . Can I say two things ? Going to bat for other people is the name of the game .

Speaker 2 20:11

So that attracts a certain kind of personality , that attracts a certain kind of person I love that example because it was very noisy and it shows like how powerful power clean can be , especially when it's used in like really bad audio . Another one that's really interesting is the filler killer example . James Cridland on the pod news daily podcast did an example of him using a lot of filler words and then seeing how Filler Killer cleaned that up . Can you cue that up , Boris ?

Speaker 1 20:38

Absolutely . Let's take a listen to that one .

Speaker 3 20:41

Here's John McDermott telling us about his favorite fast food restaurant McDonald's . They're tasty , they're quick , they aren't a lot to produce . And here it is after filler killer McDonald's they're tasty , they're quick , they aren't a lot to produce .

Speaker 1 21:01

Wow , that , that's impressive .

Speaker 2 21:03

I love that one because that's not us like coming up with a perfect example to tout our own feature . That's just James who happens to use Buzzsprout to host that podcast and he's just trying that out . So I loved it .

Speaker 1 21:15

Amazing that is going to save so much time in editing . I know our podcasters are already loving that feature those who are using it , and yeah . So if you haven't tried that yet and you're hosted here with us on Buzzsprout , go ahead and give that a try on your next episode . Actually , you could try it for free if you're on a paid plan with Buzzsprout . So just go ahead and enable that inside of your Buzzsprout account .

Closing and Podcast Resources

Speaker 1 21:40

And if you ever have questions about your audio maybe the quality or why does my audio sound different and I want it to sound better the Podcaster Success Team is always here to help you with that . So you can reach out to us at any time at support at buzzsproutcom or even using the help form inside of your Buzzsprout account or your Buzzsprout app . We are always here to walk you through those steps of troubleshooting your audio . So while we're tackling common questions we see in the support inbox , I actually also want to hear from you , our listeners . If you have an idea or you have a question that you want us to answer on a future episode . Just click the send us a text link in the show notes and we'll be able to feature your question on a future podcasting Q&A episode . So , kevin , thank you so much for joining me so that we could tackle this question together . You're obviously an expert , and I'm just so appreciative that you shared your knowledge with us today , so thank you so much for being here .

Speaker 2 22:29

Absolutely . I loved it . Thank you , it was fun .

Speaker 1 22:32

Podcasting Q&A is available in all of your favorite podcasting apps , so be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week . Thanks for listening , have a great week and , as always , keep podcasting .