WAV
The master, lossless, at the sample rate and bit depth agreed for the order. This is the file to archive and the file a platform should be given if it will take one.
What we do
Editing, in the order it happens
An episode is worked through in one pass per operation, because each pass changes what the next one is looking at. Cutting before levelling means levelling the joins you just made; levelling before cleaning means lifting the noise along with the voice.
First pass
Taking out what is not the episode
A conversation that was good in the room is longer on the page. People circle a point before making it, start a sentence twice, stop to find a file, and say the same thing in two ways to see which lands. None of that is a mistake; it is how talking works. It is also the reason a recorded hour is rarely a published hour.
What comes out: long pauses, hesitations and filler, sentences that were abandoned and started again, questions asked twice, and the stretches where nothing is happening. What stays: the argument, the timing of an answer, and the pauses that are doing work. An episode cut to remove every silence sounds like an argument rather than a conversation, and we do not cut that way unless you ask for it.
Where a segment should come out altogether, that is your call rather than ours. Tell us in the brief, or mark it by the time it starts, and it goes.
Two tracks of the same minute
One person is close to a good microphone, the other is not. Both are drawn here from the same run of code that draws everything else on this site, and neither came off anybody's episode.
Host
Guest, recorded elsewhere
Two separate files are two separate jobs before they are one episode: each has its own noise, its own level and its own timing, and they have to be brought together before either can be judged.
Second pass
What noise reduction can and cannot undo
Worth reading before an order rather than after one. Some things come out completely, some come out one at a time, and some are recorded into the voice and can only be improved.
| Kind | What that means on a recording | What we can do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Steady and constant | A fan, a fridge, a computer, air conditioning, the hiss of a microphone turned up too far. | Comes down a long way, often far enough that you stop noticing it was there. |
| Occasional and separate | A chair click, a desk knock, a door, a page turning, a cough between sentences. | Removed one by one where it sits between words, and repaired where it sits on top of one. |
| Part of the voice itself | A room with hard walls, a speakerphone, a guest recorded through a video call, a track that was already clipping when it arrived. | Improved, not undone. Reverberation and distortion are recorded into the voice, and pushing a processor at them starts making the speech itself sound artificial. |
If a recording falls into the third row we say so when we quote, rather than after the invoice. It is better to know that a guest's track will be listenable but never clean than to find it out on release day.
Third pass
Bringing the voices level
Two people recorded in two rooms on two devices arrive nothing like each other, and an episode where the listener has to reach for the volume every time the guest speaks is an episode they stop listening to.
Levels are balanced three ways: speaker against speaker, so neither disappears behind the other; across the episode, so the end matches the beginning; and against the ceiling, so the loudest moment still has somewhere to go. Music and stings are set under speech rather than over it.
Where your platform publishes to a particular loudness, tell us which and the master is made to it. Where you do not know, we use a level that suits spoken word and say in the handover what it was.
Fourth pass
Assembling the episode
Your intro, your outro, your bed, your stings, your sponsor read: placed where you want them and balanced against the speech around them. Everything used in an episode is material you supplied and hold the rights to, and we ask you to confirm that before an episode is built.
Where segments were recorded separately, they are joined so the joins are not audible: matched in level and tone, with the room noise carried across rather than cutting to silence and back.
We do not supply music, we do not license it for you, and nothing goes into an episode that did not come from you.
Fifth pass
What comes back
Files, by email or on a download link. Nothing is posted, because there is nothing physical in an order.
MP3
Made from that same master for publishing and for sending round. Bitrate agreed in the order rather than assumed.
Naming and order
Files named to your convention, in the numbering your show already uses, so nothing has to be renamed before it is uploaded.
Chapters and markers
Where your platform supports them and you supply the points, marker positions are handed over with the files.
When the files are due is settled in the written quotation and repeated in the order confirmation, worked out from the material in front of us rather than from a standard figure. How many rounds of changes are included is settled there too. Both are on the Delivery & Refunds page as well.
Scope
What this is, and what it is not
Written down so an order cannot be about something we never offered.
Included
- Editing and assembling audio for podcasts and recorded interviews
- Working from your own recordings, whatever recorded them
- Placing music and stings you supply and hold the rights to
Not included
- Video versions of an episode. This is an audio service
- Writing, presenting, voicing or hosting an episode
- Supplying or licensing music on your behalf
- Publishing to your platform or running your feed
Nothing under Not included will be quoted for as though it were part of an order.