My podcast guest is quieter than me. How do I even out the voices?
It's the most common podcast problem: the host is close to a good mic, the guest is on a laptop or further away, and listeners keep reaching for the volume. Here's how to fix it, depending on how you recorded.
Why it happens
Every mic, distance and room is different. A few centimetres closer to the mic is several decibels louder, and a guest who leans back between sentences drifts quieter still. Listeners notice a difference of 3 dB; 10 dB between two voices is common on remote recordings.
If you have a track for each person
Zoom (local recording, with "Record a separate audio file for each participant" ticked), Riverside, SquadCast (now part of Descript) and Zencastr all give you one file per speaker. That's the best case: each voice can be set on its own.
- Match the voices, not the files. A file's average loudness includes all the time that person was listening. Measure each person only while they speak, then set each track so those match.
- Deal with bleed. If you were in the same room, each mic also picked up the other person. Turn each track down while its person is quiet, smoothly and only a moderate amount, so you don't hear a gate opening and closing. Keep both up when you talk over each other.
- Then level the mix phrase by phrase, and set the loudness for the platform (−16 LUFS for Apple Podcasts).
In a DAW you can do this with clip gain and automation. In Gain Curve, open all the speaker files at once (File › Open Speaker Tracks): it measures each voice where it speaks, matches them, holds down the bleed, and gives you one mix to finish.
If everything is in one file
You can't separate the voices, but you can still ride the level: raise the guest's sentences and lower the host's. Do it phrase by phrase, by hand with volume automation, or with a leveller that follows the speech. A compressor helps a little, but used hard it pumps the room noise up in every pause.
Next time
- Ask guests to wear headphones (no echo of your voice in their mic) and sit a hand's width from the mic.
- Record a track per person whenever the tool offers it.
- Leave the recording a little quiet rather than clipped: levelling can raise a quiet voice, but not un-distort a loud one.
Paul Voia-Tipei, PVT Studio