Whether this is your first time doing a podcast or your first time on Cyberdelia, we’ve written this little guide to help you sound like a million bucks on the show.
This isn’t a job interview, and we’re not looking to stress you out. Think of this like an office water cooler chat that just happens to be recorded. We already think you’re rad (it’s why we invited you on the show!), so just be yourself. Don’t feel like you have to drop sound bites or something like that, and don’t be worried if the conversation goes off on a tangent or into the weeds.
Take your time expressing your thoughts, and don’t worry about long pauses - we’d rather have you say what you really think than rush to answer. If you say something and want to correct it, just mention that in the audio and we’ll address it in editing.
We use Skype to handle recording, as it has a good mix of availability/latency/recorded quality - it’s also free and available for most platforms. If you don’t already have an account, make one and send us your account name so we can start up a call. Video is great (body language is helpful in conversation), but if there’s network congestion it can result in dropped audio in the recording, so typically we’ll warm up for a few minutes with the recording running just to gauge where their network is at and if we need to stop the video before continuing
You don’t need a super-duper radio microphone to sound good in the podcast, but the built-in microphone in your laptop may or may not cut it. If it’s your first time recording for a podcast, try recording yourself with a few different microphones. Generally speaking, you’ll want to be about 6-12 inches from the microphone. You’d be surprised how good a $10 Radio Shack microphone can make you sound when it’s placed in the right spot.
It helps to be well-hydrated going in (it keeps your mouth from sounding all clicky). If you need to take a water/human break that’s fine, stop when you’ve finished your sentence and we can cut the conversation back together in the editing stage.
While some guests might enjoy some alcohol to “loosen up,” it can affect the sound quality (or worse, the content), so we do ask that you hold off on imbibing until there’s about half an hour of recorded material first.
After we’ve got the recording in Skype, the audio is placed into Audacity, the free sound editing software. We pull out the “uhms” and “uhhhhhhs,” remove the long pauses, and touch up the audio to get rid of some of the noise and get the sound levels a little more consistent. If there’s any corrections or backtracking, we clean that up, but we always try to stay true to the spirit of what you’re saying. We always make sure the guest has had a chance to listen and give a thumbs up to the release candidate before we publish.
The average time for an episode to go from recording to “published on website” is about a couple of weeks, but might be more depending on the weather in Calgary (seriously!). We’ll let you know the release date as soon as we have a clear idea.