Audio tips for interview

Let’s make our interview sound as good as possible.

The most important thing for this is to prevent feedback so your microphone doesn’t pick up my voice from the speaker that you hear me on. So use earphones or headphones to give better audio quality.

On a computer or laptop, the best audio is with Skype; you can download it free here. If you’d prefer not to have Skype installed, we can use Cleanfeed – I’ll email you a link; you just need to open it on your smartphone or computer and it will connect you to my studio. No software is installed. We could talk over almost any internet voice client, such as:

• Whatsapp
• Telegram
• Signal

Just send me your best contact name or number. If you use earphones with an in-line microphone, that’s fine, they give surprisingly good quality; the same earphones, including their microphone, usually work on laptops as well, particularly the ones that don’t have a separate socket for a microphone.

If all else fails, we can use a landline telephone connection (but not a mobile, the audio codecs aren’t compatible with my recording software).

And make sure to use the receiver, not a speakerphone to prevent audio feedback.

Remember:

• Don’t touch the microphone during the recording, this can create loud interference, particularly if the microphone is on your earphone cable, remember not to fiddle with it.
• Don’t hold a pen in your hand during the interview – you might click it unconsciously, this comes over very loud on the audio. Use a pencil if you feel like taking notes.
• Remember that people will listen to the podcast over quite a long period, so we try to avoid references to exact dates (this happened yesterday) or times (good afternoon).
• I’ll try to allow you to speak as freely as possible, but of course put the questions that I think the listeners would ask.
• If you use a reference or abbreviation that the listeners might not understand, I might interrupt briefly to explain it, or ask you to explain it, but I’ll try not to interrupt your flow.
• If you have some points that you particularly want to make, tell me before the interview starts and I’ll try to make sure that they are included.