Can I record my podcast on Zoom?
Welcome to the softer cast, a podcast for small business owners and creatives who want tender podcast advice without any tech bro bullshit. I'm Amelia Hruby and I'm the founder of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for women and non binary entrepreneurs. On this show, I answer your questions about podcasting. Things like, should I put my show on YouTube? Can I just record it on Zoom?
Amelia Hruby:How much do editors really cost and how many downloads should my podcast be getting? Yeah, I'll even answer that question. Every episode of the Softercast is really practical, a little magical, and less than 10 minutes long. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show and share it with your podcast bestie. Then head to the show notes to check out our free resources.
Amelia Hruby:No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Join us on the softer side of podcasting. Hello, and welcome to the softer cast. I'm your host, Emilia Froomey. I am the founder and executive producer of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives.
Amelia Hruby:And here on this show, I share tender and technical support that small business owners need to start their own shows. And I do it without any of the tech bro numbers are the only thing that matters. Gotta monetize, monetize, monetize advice. But you might encounter other places you try and learn how to podcast on the Internet. There's nothing wrong with that if that's your vibe.
Amelia Hruby:There's lots of resources for that. But if you, like me, want to create heart centered, mission driven shows with a different or non traditional value system, you have found the right podcast podcast for you. I started using the phrase podcast podcast to refer to podcasts about podcasting. So here we are on the PodPod. Welcome.
Amelia Hruby:We are currently between seasons of the Softer Cast, but I wanted to pop in to answer a question that I have gotten no fewer than 3 times in the past week. And since it kept coming in, I felt like we needed to talk about it here on the pod. So in this episode, I'm going to ask the question of all questions. Can I record my podcast on Zoom? I actually think this is one of the questions I put in the intro of the show that I have yet to answer.
Amelia Hruby:So we're back, baby, to talk about whether or not you can record your podcast on Zoom. Now the first thing I wanna say is you absolutely can record your podcast on Zoom. It is possible. So I think the question is more about, should I record my podcast on Zoom? And the answer, as always in these episodes, is, well, yes and no.
Amelia Hruby:I think there are pros to recording on Zoom and cons to recording on Zoom, and I'll tell you in advance that at this point, I have advised most of our softer sounds clients to move their recordings off of Zoom. That is because they are investing in editing for their show, and Zoom is just not gonna give you the best audio to match that investment you're making in your editing. But let me back up and let's walk through this step by step. So let's start by talking about some great things about recording in Zoom. One is that it's easy to use.
Amelia Hruby:At this point, in 2023, coming through the pandemic, most people have been on Zoom at some point. I'm pretty sure even my, like, 85 year old grandmother has been on Zoom at least once. We've figured it out. So I think that a real pro of Zoom is that it's easy to use and that most people have used it. And that means you're not going to need to provide a lot of tech support to guests if you have guests on the show, or for yourself if you're trying to figure out how to record solo.
Amelia Hruby:I also think another benefit of Zoom is that you don't need the strongest internet connection to connect over Zoom. So you can use it even if you kind of have so so Internet, you can probably get a Zoom call to work, which is not going to be true for some of the alternates that I recommend. So, pros of Zoom, it's easy to use, it's pretty common at this point, and you don't have to have the best Internet in the world to make it work. What are some cons of using Zoom to record your podcast? Well, one con is definitely just that Zoom compresses the audio as it records.
Amelia Hruby:And so often with a Zoom recording, you can get a sort of underwater sound or hollow sound or echoey sound to the voice. Zoom is not gonna give you the highest quality vocal recording in almost any setting. And so that is definitely a con of using Zoom to record your podcast where we really want your voice to shine. Like, it's just gonna make it sound a little off. Zoom also only records what I would call, like, mediocre video.
Amelia Hruby:Like, the videos on Zoom tend to be pretty flat. They don't have a nice range of color. They're not the highest pixels or whatever it is that's in video. Things you record on Zoom are just gonna have so so audio and so so video. So if you want things to look and sound great, I don't know that Zoom is the right platform for you.
Amelia Hruby:And finally, another issue with Zoom is that it's set up to record single track audio, which means that it's going to record the voices on the same track. And when you're recording over Zoom, where you're doing a remote recording and you're in different places, it actually can be challenging. So if one of you has really bad background noise and you're on the same track, then it's gonna put that background noise through everything that's said by both people. Whereas, what we want from an audio standpoint, if we're doing a remote recording with multiple voices, we want there to be multiple tracks. We want each a voice on its own track.
Amelia Hruby:And so with Zoom, the standard default setting is single track. But you can actually turn on multiple audio files. I will link in the show notes how to do that so that you get multiple tracks for each speaker. And as an editor, that is what I want. Because if I'm interviewing Lady Jane and she has an air conditioning running through the whole time, What I want to be able to do is do some noise reduction to remove the air conditioning.
Amelia Hruby:I want to be able to silence her track while I'm talking so that my voice can still sound as resonant as I like it to, and I have a lot more flexibility if I have 2 tracks. If I've only got a single track, there's not a whole lot I can do. So that's a con of Zoom. But, again, you can set up multiple tracks. You just have to know to do it.
Amelia Hruby:That's why I'm telling you here. If you wanna record in Zoom, please go set up multiple recording files. I will link in the show notes how to do that. Now circling back to the pros of Zoom, I think that if you are a DIY podcaster making your own show, trying to keep things easy for yourself, Zoom can just be a really fantastic tool. I mean, even if you use the single track recording method, you're gonna get one audio file that is your episode, you know, keep things easy for yourself.
Amelia Hruby:We believe in keeping it easy at softer sounds. But we also believe in making it sound great. So we've got some competing priorities here. If you would like to upgrade your recording platform, there are some great alternatives to Zoom out there that have really expanded and grown so much in the past year or 2. So at Softr Sounds, we use Riverside to record all of our interviews and all of the video for our shows.
Amelia Hruby:So it's a fantastic audio and video recording platform. It records the audio and video locally on the computers of the people who are in the virtual recording studio. What that means is that it's not just transmitting the audio or video file to your computer, the recorder's computer, and having it, you know, processed through the Internet before it gets there. Instead, you're getting that high quality file as recorded by each computer, and then it's uploading the file from there as you record. So instead of just recording in one location, we're recording in 2 locations, which is gonna give us a higher quality audio file and video file if you want video for your podcast.
Amelia Hruby:Other great options are Zencastr and SquadCast. They have pretty comparable tools. Riverside is the one that we've picked, but I highly encourage you to check them all out and see what is the most intuitive and supportive for you if you're recording remote interviews. Now if you're recording an audio only podcast with solo episodes, I would highly recommend you something like Audacity. That is going to give you the highest quality audio file because think about it.
Amelia Hruby:If you're recording by yourself, there is no need for you to be uploading your audio to the Internet on something like Riverside and then downloading it back to your computer. We don't need to do that. We can connect your mic to your computer, open up Audacity, hit record, and then we're just recording straight from your mic to your computer. No internet glitchiness or data loss involved. If you wanna record video, obviously, Audacity doesn't do that, but there are plenty of folks out there I know who recording solo podcasts, and Audacity is a great tool.
Amelia Hruby:And you have it in there, and you can export it as your m p 3 or whatever you need. Right? Edit it if you're going to edit it right in Audacity. So to reiterate, if you'd like to upgrade your recording platform, you're thinking Zoom is not giving you the quality that you want lately and you're ready for something new, I highly recommend Riverside. It's the tool that we use.
Amelia Hruby:I've got a link to it, an affiliate link, in fact, in the show notes so that if you create a paid account, we get a little support for making that recommendation. There are also great tools like Zencastr and SquadCast. If you're a person who edits in Descript, Descript actually just acquired SquadCast, so that'll all be integrated soon, which you might be really thrilled to hear. And then if you're recording solo episodes, we recommend Audacity. Record it straight to your computer.
Amelia Hruby:If you have a Mac, you can also use GarageBand, but that's gonna get you the highest quality audio, not recording to some online app that's gonna upload it and then you redownload it again. So thanks to everybody who wrote in asking, can I record my podcast on Zoom? You're obviously listening to the intro, reminding me I haven't shared the answer to that question yet. Of course, the answer is yes. You can record your podcast on Zoom, but I highly recommend, if you choose to do that, I do recommend turning the multiple audio tracks option on.
Amelia Hruby:I also recommend wearing headphones while you record so that Zoom doesn't do poor echo cancellation on your track. So, yes, you can with those adjustments for a slightly better audio quality. And if you want to really upgrade the quality of your audio in your recording platform, then I recommend moving to a tool like Riverside, Zencastr, or SquadCast, or taking it offline and just onto your computer with a recording platform like Audacity or GarageBand. There we go. I actually managed to answer a question in only about 10 minutes.
Amelia Hruby:Thanks so much for once again tuning in to the Softercast. I'm so grateful that you're interested in podcast support from Softer Sounds. Got some exciting things coming your way this fall, including our very first podcast launch course. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we can't wait to hear your podcast. Thanks so much for listening to the softer cast.
Amelia Hruby:If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your podcast bestie. And after you do that, go ahead and drop us 5 stars in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you'd like to submit a question, head to speakpipe.com/softercast to record a message, or email us at hi @ softersounds.studio. And last but not least, we made some awesome free things for you. Head to the show notes to download our free podcast launch toolkit or our 3 step podcast audit.
Amelia Hruby:No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Thanks again for tuning in and joining us on the softer side of podcasting.