Podcasting at Home: The Humming Microphone and That Damn Leaf-Blower Guy Next Door

Do you have a multi-trillion-dollar studio in which to record your podcast tracks?

Yeah, me neither.

I’ve got an ordinary home with typical walls and floors, a noisy neighbour and a naughty microphone that makes its own weird sounds. Both are becoming part of my podcast episodes and driving me crazy.

I already have enough noise around my home without those others.

There is birdsong, cat meows, the dishwasher, our ice maker, rain, wind and every car or bus that passes by our home. Sometimes, I can delete offending noises during the edit afterwards, as birds and buses are brief, but those two others can’t be removed completely. They go too long (one I won’t know about until the recording is done).

It grinds my gears.

My microphone then develops a strange hum for no apparent reason. Sometimes I have to re-record long passages of content to clean up the track. Other times, I just let it go and apologise to the listener if it happens. I think I have some electrical interference near me.

The birds aren’t so bad. They add a nice ambience to the tracks. In the background, there’s the random loud hum and that sudden, protracted wail of my neighbour’s leaf blower (and every other small-engine device he owns in his garage). He runs it for hours at a time and ruins everything.

That’s why I find it best to record mid-week; otherwise, I capture weekend mowing crews and DIY handypersons with their power tools in my recordings!

I live in suburbia.

The podcasts are done from inside a standard suburban home. I don’t have a special soundproof room. Recordings are done wherever I can find the space, whenever it’s quiet enough to do them. I set up the microphone stand on a table, turn it on and hope for the best. If a noise happens (like the ice maker) during the recording, I’ll stop talking and let it go through its cycle before continuing. Later, I’ll delete the noise by using a snippet tool in my sound editing software.

“I choose to use a stereo microphone for a lifelike sound.”

Post-production fixes many stray sounds. It even lets me run a noise filter on the finished track. It’s not perfect at getting rid of everything, but it’s better than nothing. Unfortunately, it’ll never eliminate my neighbour’s screaming blower or those surprise buses that pass by.

That hum used to confound me. It came and went at random times. At first, I thought it was a fault in the microphone, but it happened to every microphone I tried. When it happened to my second one, I believed it was a nearby power supply causing the problem.

No.

And then it struck me: the solar panels above me (on my roof) lead to all kinds of interference. (I wrote about how solar inverters broadcast massive amounts of pervasive interference in a previous post) Sure enough, the night test recordings were clear. Yes, I identified the issue, but it didn’t help knowing what caused the problem. My home (internally) is noisier at night.

So, it’s back to regular day recordings and dodging foreign noises as I go.

If you’re a frequent listener to my podcast and you hear a low-frequency tone suddenly dropping in from out of nowhere, you’ll know why and where it’s coming from. That’s how you know my podcast is homemade.

If you’re not aware that I have a podcast, you’ll want to listen to it, won’t you? You’ll want to find out which species of bird frequent my property by guessing the sound of its chirp, tweet or caw.

What’s the podcast all about?

Marriage, intimacy, sexless bedrooms and secret affairs. No, it’s not a Disney-themed podcast. It’s about the serious business of losing a physical connection with a spouse. I offer help by sharing personal experiences.

Have a listen.

There you go. See? The tracks are free (mostly) from foreign noises. It’s not too bad.

That’s some of the challenges faced when recording content in a noisy place and not a purpose-built, multi-trillion-dollar studio.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)