1. Dirty Secrets of Clean Sound with Metacast Hosts Ilya Bezdelev and Arnab Deka

In this inaugural episode, Arnab interviews his Metacast co-host Ilya on his experience starting a podcast. We talk about inspiring stuff like how to get used to the sound of your voice, the boring stuff like gear, tools and software, and random stuff like how Ilya lost all of his gear when his car was broken into on a road trip in California. Chapters 00:00 - Cold Open 00:29 - Welcome and Introductions 03:52 - Ilya's Russian Podcast 09:05 - Non-English Podcasting Challenges 12:47 - Getting Used to Your Voice 18:45 - First Steps into Podcasting 23:33 - Sourcing Guests 28:48 - Music and Licensing 30:47 - Time Investment per Episode 36:56 - Vocal Confidence 39:55 - Recording Tools and DAWs 44:28 - Gear and the Car Break-In 50:13 - Post-Production Editing 53:48 - iZotope RX Deep Dive 58:36 - Background Noise Removal 1:00:38 - Guest Recording Quality 1:04:06 - EQ and Frequency Editing 1:06:01 - Sound Compression 1:09:14 - Advice for New Podcasters 1:14:24 - Content Over Production Value Show notes Software Descript -- a tool that can help you edit audio similar to editing text in a word processor. iZotope RX -- a software suite for fixing issues and improving audio quality. Anchor.fm -- a podcast hosting service from Spotify. AudioJungle -- a service that lets you license music for a podcast. Reaper -- an inexpensive but very powerful digital audio workstation (DAW), which is as powerful as ProTools or Logic but doesn’t cost an arm and a leg (it really costs like half a nail or $60). SquadCast -- a powerful tool for recording interviews. It saves high quality audio locally and uploads files to the cloud, so you can download and process them later. Riverside -- another tool, very similar to SquadCast. We had some issues with it in the past, so we prefer SquadCast. Voice Recorder Pro -- an iPhone app for lossless audio recording. Gear Shure MV7 -- a condenser mic with a direct USB interface. It is a smaller sibling of Shure SM7b. Shure SM7b -- a kick ass condenser mic for podcasters and radio hosts. It’s pretty much the golden standard in the industry. Shure SM58 -- an indestructible and fairly cheap cardioid vocal mic that is widely used for live concerts. Blue Yeti -- an inexpensive USB mic that has multiple recording modes. Scarlett 2i2 -- a nice-looking and powerful yet inexpensive audio interface for plugging in your XLR mic. Audio Technica ATH-M50x -- studio headphones for great sound quality. Podcasts IT Samurai (Айти Самурай) -- Ilya’s other podcast about technology. The Tim Ferriss Show -- my all-time favorite interview podcast. Postlight (formerly known as Track Changes) -- two guys talking about technology, business and the world. Books NPR’s Podcast Startup Guide -- a great book about starting a podcast from the best in the industry. Random Stuff Hog Island Oyster Co. -- a restaurant in San Francisco serving the best clam chowder you’ll ever try. Full show notes with links to gear and tools is here: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/p/001-dirty-secrets-of-clean-sound (sorry folks, there’s so much stuff it doesn’t fit into the allotted space!) Download the Metacast podcast app for free iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/metacast/id6462012536 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.metacast.podcast.player Get in touch Contact us: [email protected] Ilya's LinkedIn Arnab's LinkedIn