01
$50 vs $500 Setup
Audio comparisons that answer the real question: can your listeners actually tell the difference? The answer may recalibrate everything you think you know about gear.
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Technical guides for podcast production
Stop Waiting. Start Recording. Sound Professional.
Equipment paralysis ends here. Practical technical knowledge, no gear worship, no production services sold. Just what works and what doesn't.
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// CORE TOPICS
What this site covers
02
Remote Recording
Remote interviews don't have to sound like conference calls. The software configurations and recording habits that produce clean, usable audio from anywhere.
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30-Minute Edit
A structured editing workflow using free software that gets a 45-minute episode production-ready without spending a day on it. Repeatable. Practical.
Read breakdown04
Apple + Spotify Listing
The submission process for both major directories, explained without assuming prior knowledge. What each platform requires and where first-timers typically get stuck.
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Hosting Costs Decoded
Which hosting platforms are genuinely free, what the limits are, and when paying actually makes sense. No affiliate links. No sponsored recommendations.
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// APPROACH
No gear worship. No upsells.
// WHAT THIS IS
Technical clarity for people who have better things to do than read gear forums
Most podcast production content exists to sell you something. Gear reviews with affiliate links. Courses bundled with coaching. Hosting comparisons that happen to favor whoever paid for placement.
This site has none of that. The guides here are written for professionals in other fields who understand that audio quality matters but don't want to become audio engineers. Attorneys, consultants, researchers, educators. People who need working knowledge, not hobbyist depth.
About the author
// POPULAR GUIDES
Where most people start
Equipment
The $50 Microphone That Surprises Everyone
A specific USB microphone under $50 produces audio that passes casual listening tests against setups costing ten times more. Here's what it is, what its limits are, and when those limits actually matter.
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Remote Recording
Recording Remote Guests Without the Echo
The two-room problem. When your guest records in a kitchen with hard surfaces, no amount of post-processing fully saves it. Prevention is the only reliable solution. This guide covers what to tell guests before they hit record.
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Editing
Audacity in 30 Minutes: The Repeatable Workflow
Free, cross-platform, and genuinely capable. The issue isn't the software — it's the lack of a repeatable process. This workflow covers noise reduction, level balancing, and export settings in sequence.
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Distribution
Apple Podcasts Submission: What Actually Happens
The review process isn't instant and it isn't always clear. What the approval timeline looks like, what causes rejection, and how to structure your RSS feed so it validates the first time.
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// FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES
Chicago-area professionals have specific needs
Local businesses thinking about podcasting as a marketing channel face different questions than solo creators. Audience size expectations, episode frequency, equipment sharing across a team. The guides in this section address those particular concerns.
Local business guides
// TECHNICAL DEPTH
Numbers that matter
Not every technical specification deserves attention. These four do.
Sample Rate
44.1kHz is the standard for podcast audio. Recording at 48kHz and exporting at 44.1kHz is fine. Recording at 96kHz for a spoken-word podcast creates large files with no audible benefit.
Bit Rate
128kbps mono MP3 is the working standard. Stereo at 128kbps doesn't improve a solo voice podcast. The file size doubles. Listeners don't notice a difference.
Loudness Normalization
Spotify and Apple apply their own normalization. Targeting -16 LUFS integrated loudness before upload is the accepted practice. Going louder doesn't survive the platform's processing.
File Format
MP3 works universally. AAC is smaller at equivalent quality but creates minor compatibility edge cases with some older RSS readers. MP3 removes the variable entirely.
// CONTACT
Reach out with questions
Technical questions about podcast production are welcome. No sales calls, no pitches, no production services offered.
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