The Create Content template will load up a new session with everything you need to produce a two‑person podcast with music.
Studio One has everything you need to produce professional‑sounding podcasts.
Podcasts like to lean into the idea that they are recorded pretty much live, like radio, with minimal editing or post‑production fixing. That’s seldom the reality, though — and with a little bit of preparation, Studio One can reorient itself into a very efficient podcasting studio. In this workshop we’ll look into how to make best use of everything Studio One has to offer in the production of your next podcast.
Templates
To kick us off, let’s load up the podcasting template, which presents us with a ready‑made recording environment. Click on New / Template and the Create Content option. This template loads up three tracks: one for music, and two for recording voices. The template also loads up the Marker track with a helpful ‘Start’ marker at the beginning, and opens the Video track (many podcasts are filmed at the same time for uploading to video‑based sites such as YouTube).
A couple of notes on video. You can’t record video into Studio One; you can drag video in afterwards, but you’ll need a way to align it with the voice tracks you recorded into Studio One. The simplest way to do this is with a clap. With the camera and audio recording, clap your hands a couple of times. That sharp explosion of audio will be recorded both through your vocal mic and the mic on the camera or phone.
Once imported into Studio One you’ll be able to easily see and align the claps on the recordings. Simply drag your video into the Video track and click the little waveform symbol. This will extract the audio from the video to a separate, but connected, audio track. You should be able to see how the waveform display in the video’s audio track matches up with your directly recorded audio. Finding the sharp peak of the clap will allow you to align your audio to the video more or less perfectly.
If you want to video your podcast for release on platforms such as YouTube, you’ll need to make sure the video and audio are in sync. The easiest way to do this is to film and record a handclap and then, with the audio extracted from the Video track, line it up with your recorded audio in the timeline.
Recording Setup
The first thing to do is to set up the recording space. We’re going to assume you’re using two microphones to record a podcast with two people chatting together. Ideally you’d want to treat this as a vocal recording in a recording studio, but that’s not realistic or necessarily comfortable for this format. You’re more likely to be in a living room, on a sofa or at a kitchen table. However, the same sort of rules apply as to how the space affects the recording. If there are lots of shiny or flat surfaces, you’ll get a lot of echo and reflections in the recording. If you can’t acoustically treat the entire space, at least cover surfaces with rugs or throws to deaden the sound a bit.
Positioning the microphones might take a little bit of experimentation, but for spoken word, as a general rule, you don’t want the mic too close. This is not a vocal performance; it should be a relaxed situation, with the mic placed where it’s not in the way of the conversation. If you are using capacitor microphones then start by placing them 12‑18 inches away and just to the side so that you can see your co‑host (this position should also helpfully avoid any plosives). Dynamic mics might need to be closer, but try not to threaten the podcasters with them.
Monitoring is easy, because you are literally sat across from your co‑host and so you probably won’t need any. If you are using pre‑recorded music, it would be useful to be able to hear that, but personally, I feel that headphones are just going to get in the way and make you feel less connected to the conversation, so use some speakers.
Rename each connection to something useful like the name of the podcaster. These names will then apply themselves to the channel strips, making it super easy to see which channel applies to whom.
In Studio One you can check your connections by going to the Song menu and choosing Song Setup. On the Song Setup window, click on Audio I/O Setup and you’ll see the inputs from your audio interface listed, along with how they are presented in Studio One. All you need is two mono inputs attached to the two inputs on your audio interface that have the mics plugged into them. While you’re in the Audio I/O Setup window, you can rename each connection to something useful like the name of the podcaster. These names will then apply themselves to the channel strips, making it super easy to see which channel applies to whom.
The Audio I/O Setup window is where you assign the physical inputs on your interface to the voice tracks in your Studio One template.
Check the input level by clicking on the Record Enable button and watching the input meter on the left of the channel strips. This will usually also engage the monitoring, which you won’t want if you are using speakers, so click the little speaker icon next to the Record Enable button to turn it off. Assuming you’re recording at 24‑bit, you’re looking for a level somewhere between ‑18 and ‑10 dBFS. Make sure your podcaster is comfortable and adjust the position of the mic and the gain through your audio interface until you hit the right level.
Processing
The Studio One Podcasting template will have set up the Pro EQ, De‑Esser, Fat Channel and Limiter on both voice channels. Let’s see what they’re doing.
The Pro EQ has a deep low‑cut filter of 48dB/oct set to 50Hz, which effectively works to remove any low‑frequency rumble or mic handling noise. At the other end there’s a high‑cut filter dropped in at 20kHz to remove the sort of hiss that no one can hear, but you can always pull that down a bit to be more useful. De‑Esser is doing what it’s designed to do, in softening any sibilance or overbearing esses. The Fat Channel is not doing a whole lot and is mostly there to add a bit of warmth, but it’s ready and available for you to push in a little compression or EQ as you see fit. However, the gate is active at a very low threshold and so shuts down the audio whenever that person isn’t speaking. It’s a great way to minimise background noise and you can experiment with the threshold to make the best use of it. I would use it sparingly, or it can sound a bit choppy to the listener. The Limiter plug‑in at the end of the chain is there to keep a lid on any peaks. While you don’t really need to compress the voices much in a podcast, it’s good to keep the rise and fall of conversation, and the occasional laugh, under control.
The music channel in the podcasting template comes pre‑loaded with a side‑chain compressor. By assigning your vocal tracks to the side‑chain input, you can have the music automatically duck down in level when someone is talking.
On the music channel we have a Fat Channel plug-in with a little bit of compression, EQ and limiting enabled, which are probably unecessary because your music is likely to already be mastered to a suitable level. However, under that is a side‑chain compressor, which might be very useful indeed...
Interacting With Music
Naturally, you are going to want to pepper your podcast with music — that’s what the music track is there for. If we are following our minimal‑editing, live‑like‑radio vibe then we’re going to want our music to be there while we are recording our podcast. The great thing is that we can use that to our advantage by placing the audio on the timeline and use it to guide and constrain our podcast.
You’ll probably need some intro music, outro music and maybe something incidental between sections. The way the structure tends to go is that your podcast will start with you introducing the name and episode number (“Hi, this is the Sound On Sound Studio One Workshop podcast, episode 76”). There’s music in the background that then leaps to the fore as soon as you stop speaking for a few seconds of intro music. This then gradually fades out as you begin the podcast for real. For the outro you usually get a slow fade‑in before the main outro music kicks in to close your podcast. In the middle you’d often get a short fade into a burst of music to introduce another topic or section. All of these things arranged on the project timeline give you visual and aural clues as to what’s about to happen so that you can time your talking to coincide.
Talking can easily get lost in the music, and so you’ll need to ensure that when you’re speaking the music level is reduced. There are two ways of doing this. You can duck it like on the radio, or you can prepare the audio beforehand.
Duck Duck Go
Remember the side‑chain compressor that was dropped onto the music track? Well, that’s designed for this exact purpose. It will use the voice tracks to trigger the compressor on the music track, pulling the volume of the music down whenever you speak. The advantage of this method is that you can just let it work its magic without thinking about it, and talk over as much music as you like.
If you open up the SC‑Comp on the music channel you’ll see that the side‑chain button is lit in blue. Click the arrow to the right of it and it will bring up the source selection for the side‑chain that will trigger the ducking. If you are trying to record your podcast in a single take live then you’ll want to use the input channels. If you are going to do a bit of editing afterwards, which I think is advisable, then you only really need it on playback, so it can be set to the output of the voice channels. You can then adjust the threshold to get the severity of ducking you’re after.
Prep School
Ducking isn’t to everyone’s taste, and it can feel too much like you’re running a pirate radio station. If so, you can do a little bit of audio editing to dictate exactly where you’ll be speaking and where you won’t.
An alternative to automatically ducking the music track is to prepare the podcast’s structure in advance, by raising and lowering the music level at predetermined points in the recording. You can do this by crossfading between high‑gain and low‑gain snippets of the audio file.
Take your intro music, slice it up so you have a short segment at the front for the episode number, a longer section at the back where you start the podcast, and a middle that will play as your intro. Use the gain handles on the front clip and pull it down to a good background level. Select a little range between the reduced music and the main intro and hit X to crossfade between the two. Do the same to crossfade back from the intro music to the background version, and then use the standard gain handles to fade it out. You can see exactly where you have to speak and when you should stop. This is particularly useful for the outro, as you can create a long fade at background levels so you can hear the end of the podcast coming, and know that you have to wrap it up before that crossfade into the outro music. It gives your podcast the same length and rhythm and keeps you focused.
A quick tip is to select the music slices together and hit Ctrl+B (Cmd+B) to generate a mixdown to a single clip so that you don’t inadvertently pull the slices and crossfades apart.
Editing
For a natural ‘live’ feel you won’t want to do much editing, but there may be the odd cough or doorbell ring that it would be good to remove. If it’s something you noticed during the recording then it’s a good idea to drop a handclap in there so you can quickly identify it on the timeline. Also, ensure that Ripple Editing is enabled so that after each cut the rest of the track automatically moves to fill the gap.
Once you have everything as you like it, save the project as a template, ready to record your next episode!