Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 22. Taking Your Audio File into the Home Stretch

In This Practice

• Listening to your file (yes, again)

• Adding some final effects

• Adjusting the volume of your file

• Listening for the last time

At this point, your podcast has been mixed, exported, and maybe even cut and rearranged. Considering the care you've put into it up until now, it also probably sounds pretty good. However, you may want to go back and look at a few things. Think of this as the few subtle brushstrokes and blends you perform before hanging your Mona Lisa in the Louvre of the Internet. (And yes, that may be the first time the Internet has been compared to an art museum. Okay, maybe not. But what the heck, aim high.)

Listening with a New Ear

You've spent a lot of time with the file, and you're hyperaware of everything you've had to do to make your podcast sound good. It's started to sound so familiar that you can practically recite everything word for word from memory. Still, it's important to put all this aside and listen to the podcast again — as if you've never heard it before.

Of course, barring access to a personal time machine, you can't really do that. It does help, however, to put some distance between yourself and the episode to gain some perspective. Before you shotput your laptop, we're talking about mental distance — spending some time away from the podcast. Go and take care of the other things in your life, and come back to it in a few hours, or even the next day if you have the time (this is one reason ...