AP 0477: How Do I Improve the Way I Sound on Microphone?

AskPat 477 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 477 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a great question from Casey. Before we get to Casey's question I do want to thank today's sponsor for this episode which is AWeber.

AWeber.com is an email service provider that I've used since the beginning. I still use it on a number of my websites too. It's helped me build an email list over 140,000 people. It's incredible because it's very easy to use. Their customer service is great, plus they have live chat which I've used plenty of times. When I need help with something their live chat feature and customer service is really a standout feature amongst a lot of the other email service providers out there. Plus, they integrate with a lot of other third party tools too, like LeadPages, which I'm an advisor for, and a lot of other helpful tools to help you build your email list faster and have higher conversion rates on your website. If you want to check it out and try it out for 30 days for free, head on over to AWeber.com/AskPat. That's A-W-E-B-E-R.com/AskPat. Here's today's question from Casey.

Casey: Hi, Pat. This is Casey from MinistersToolbox.com. First of all, I wanted to say I really appreciate your show. It's a great encouragement, and keep up the good work. One of the challenges I'm having as a new podcaster is when I do podcast, I'm finding that the sound of the inhales, I'm using this great ATR microphone that you recommend, the sound is so good that it picks up on every inhale and every nuance of my voice. I'm wondering if you found a way to deal with that. One of the things I've done is try to edit those things out after I've done a show, but when you edit it out it really changes the cadence of your speaking. I know this is one of those really nerdy technical type questions, but wondered if you could offer any help. Thanks. Have a great day, and keep up the good work.

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, Casey? How are you? Thank you so much for the question today. I'm happy to help out because I'm a podcaster too, and this is something I struggled with in the beginning. Now at the beginning, my very first podcast episode, this was back in July of 2010, I remember thinking the same thing. I could listen to and hear all my inhales, and of course it gets annoying. Once you tell somebody to listen to them, you hear them all the time. It's one of those things, but it's actually not something I pay close attention to. I ended up saying, “You know what? Screw it.” I'm going to move forward with it, and nobody has ever said anything about, “I could hear you breathing.” Nobody has ever said anything about it at all. However, there are some certain things you can do to decrease that, if it is a problem.

The ATR 2100 microphone is great. My Heil PR40 is fantastic too, and it does pick up those things. However, there's some tools that you can use to reduce that sound or even completely eliminate it without having to edit because you're absolutely right, and I did this. When you edit those things out, it totally doesn't sound natural because when you're having a natural conversation people take a breath every once in a while. That's again, a reason why I think it's okay, but like I said, you can reduce that sound, if it's too much, in a couple of ways. One is to make sure that you have some sort of cover or pop filter for your microphone. That pop filter is going to help you reduce the P sounds and to make sure that you aren't going red line when you do Ps or anything like that. It also helps reduce a lot of those sounds that you don't want in your show, like breathing. The foam ones work really well. I have one that almost looks like a couple great foam screens, if you will, that line up my microphone. Either one works. You could check that out and see if it works for you.

Another thing you can use is something called a pre-amp, which is like an enhancer for your voice. Your microphone feeds into this pre-amp, and the pre-amp runs your voice, and that signal through a number of different filters and what not. Then it spits out, the output becomes whatever it is you set it to be based on the number of different knobs. I'm not going to get into the very specifics of it, but the one that I use is called a DBX 286s microphone pre-amp. I purchased this back in March, and it has made a dramatic change in terms of my sound overall, not just the inhales and things like that but the tone of my voice. It sounds a lot more radio than it did before. It was a little bit muffled for a while there. A lot of you even commented about that. When I switched to the DBX 286s microphone pre-amp processor which runs about $200 on Amazon, you'll need some cords to go along with it too, it has worked out very, very well. You will need to connect your microphone through an XLR cable.

If you're using an ATR 2100 via USB, you might want to convert that to XLR which there's a connection for that on the bottom of the microphone too. You plug that into your DBX. You set the knobs. There's a video on YouTube that you can check out by the guys over at Music Radio Creative. Mike over there created a video that shows you the optimal settings for all those things. Essentially, what it does is it allows you to only share your voice, and that's it. It takes away the background noise. It takes away a lot of those things. Once your voice gets to a certain level it begins to actually process that, and everything else gets not … It doesn't go through. That's the totally lame, nontechnical way of sharing it, but that's how I know. I'm not a super technical geek in that way. I'm not like Cliff Ravenscraft or some of these other guys who use all these amazing tools to help enhance your voice. This is a tool that I've picked up earlier this year that's been working out really well in terms of enhancing the overall sound that comes out and gets put into the podcast. Again, one more time, that is by the company called D as in dog, D-B-X 286s microphone pre-amp processor. You can check that out, and I look forward to hearing your sound afterward.

I hope this helps you out, Casey, because I know sound is very important, obviously, for a podcast. It sounds like you're going to be doing this in a serious manner because you are caring about the quality of your sound which is great. It also saves a lot of time because you don't have to edit, and you don't break up the cadence of your voice. Thank you so much for the question, Casey. I really appreciate it. Best of luck to you and your podcast. I'm going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you once again. My assistant Jessica will contact you in the next couple weeks to get you access to a form to fill out, so we can send that to you no matter where you're at. Thanks for that.

Thank you to everybody else who's been asking questions on AskPat.com. If you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank today's sponsor which is AWeber.com, a company that's been treating me very well since the beginning in terms of helping me build my email list, making it very easy to do so. There's obviously a lot of other things that go along with it. There's one thing to put an opt-in form on your website. The other thing is to actually help incentivize people to do that. AWeber is definitely one of the top, most used email service providers out there. I'm very, very happy to recommend them to you. I've, again, used them on a number of different websites that I have right now.

Go ahead and check it out for free for 30 days by going to AWeber.com/askpat. Again, that's AWeber.com/AskPat. Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Here's a quote from another shark. I had a shark on yesterday, Kevin O'Leary, but this shark is Mark Cuban, referencing the show Shark Tank which one of my favorite shows on TV. Mark Cuban said, “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do, or don't do it.” I love what I do, and I love you guys too. Thanks so much. Take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.