5 Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters Make (and How to Fix Them)

Most podcast audio problems aren't caused by bad equipment. They're caused by fixable habits. After processing hundreds of podcast episodes through Podli, these are the mistakes that come up again and again.

1. Recording at too low a level

The most common mistake. Podcasters who are worried about clipping (audio distorting when it's too loud) often swing too far the other way and record so quietly that the audio has to be boosted significantly in post — bringing up the noise floor along with the speech.

The fix: Aim for peaks around -6dB in your recording software, with your average speaking level sitting around -18 to -12dB. If your loudest moments aren't getting near -6dB, you're recording too quietly. Podli's loudness normalisation step will correct the overall level automatically, but a badly under-recorded track will have more audible noise when boosted.

2. Not treating your recording space

A decent microphone in a bad acoustic space sounds worse than a mediocre microphone in a good one. The main culprits are hard parallel walls (which cause flutter echo) and large empty rooms (which produce long reverb tails). While Podli's noise removal handles consistent background noise well, room reverb is much harder for any AI tool to remove after the fact without affecting voice quality.

The fix: You don't need acoustic foam panels. Soft furnishings absorb reflections — a bookshelf full of books, heavy curtains, a carpeted floor. Recording in a wardrobe full of clothes is a cliché because it genuinely works.

3. Inconsistent levels between guests

Multi-guest recordings almost always have level imbalances. One person speaks quietly, another booms. When left uncorrected, listeners have to adjust their volume constantly — and many won't bother.

The fix: Record each guest on a separate track if at all possible. This is the foundation of how Podli works — it processes each speaker track independently, applying normalisation and gating to each voice individually before mixing them together. A combined stereo mix can't be treated this way; the tracks are permanently merged.

4. Skipping noise removal

Background noise — air conditioning, traffic, keyboard clicks, room tone — is usually inaudible to you while recording because your brain filters it out. Your listeners don't have that filter.

The fix: Even mild noise removal makes a significant difference to perceived quality. You don't need to go aggressive — a light pass that takes the noise floor down 6-10dB while leaving speech untouched is usually enough. Podli applies AI noise removal as the first step in every processing job, before normalisation or gating, so it's working on the cleanest possible signal.

5. Publishing without checking on headphones

Speakers on a laptop or desktop monitor are terrible references for podcast audio. They're tuned to flatter music with bass emphasis that hides problems in the mid-range where speech lives.

The fix: Listen to your final episode on a pair of headphones before you publish — ideally budget earbuds similar to what your audience might use. Podli outputs at -16 LUFS integrated loudness (the podcast platform standard) encoded as AAC 256kbps, which is what you'd hear on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, so what you hear in the download is what your listeners will hear.

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None of these fixes require expensive gear. They require attention and a bit of workflow discipline. The technical side of good podcast audio is genuinely not complicated — most problems trace back to one of the five issues above.