The Jag Show

Audio Guru Tom Kelly of Clean Cut Audio

Episode Notes

Tom Kelly owns Clean Cut Audio, where he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help podcasters and bands alike create the best sound possible.

In today's episode we covered a wide range of topics and listener questions about all things audio.

We started by talking about the podcasting mecca that Denver has become, then we got into some basic production knowledge that podcasters should be aware of, including "addition by subtraction" when it comes to equalizing your track.

We also hit on why Zoom is a great collaboration tool, but terrible for podcasts.  This led into a very basic discussion on the different frequencies in the human voice, and why each is important. 

Tom answers some questions about LUFS, condenser vs dynamic microphones, and third party AI tools, including Levelator, Auphonic, and Izotope's suite of products.

Finally, Tom talks about why he's all about giving out free advice to podcasters, and why it's so important to him.

Resources:

Clean Cut Audio Website: https://www.cleancutaudio.com/

Clean Cut Audio Podcast: https://www.cleancutaudio.com/podcast

Clean Cut Audio YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/cleancutaudio

Tom on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cleancutaudio

Email Tom: hello@cleancutaudio.com

JAG in Detroit Website: http://www.jagindetroit.com/

Episode Transcription

Jon: [00:00:23] Welcome in. I am Jon Gay, AKA JAG. I've had some great clients tell me that I hear things they'd never noticed in their podcasts. Well, today I'm talking to somebody that hears things I could only hope to hear someday. He is an audio engineer podcast or podcast producer, or quite frankly, a rising star in the podcast production community.

I've been binging, his podcast, clean cut audio for the last couple of weeks today, we hit out to Denver and mr. Tom Kelly. Welcome. 

Tom: [00:00:48] Hey, how are you? Thanks for that intro man made me feel good. Thank you. 

Jon: [00:00:53] I actually had Steve Stewart on the show last week and unsolicited, he brought your name up and I said, dude, I'm talking to Tom next week.

That's awesome that you brought him up. 

Tom: [00:01:01] Nice man. Yeah. I credit him and his group to really getting my start in the podcasting space. He's a really good guy. Loves it. 

Jon: [00:01:08] Ditto. I have to admit I'm a little nervous about the production of this episode because when I publish it, you're going to hear a million things at different frequencies that I don't, and I'm sure you're probably won't say anything, but in your head, you're gonna be like, Oh dude, there was too much at this frequency.

Oh, he should have pulled that down or he should have done that. So I'm a little nervous about the post production of this conversation. I gotta admit. 

Tom: [00:01:26] Oh, no way, man. I mean, if it makes you feel any better, I feel that way every week about all of my own shows, it's it can always get better. I'm trying to wrap my mind around the fact that it doesn't need to be perfect every week.

It just needs to be. Hopefully a tiny bit better than last week. So, you know, I'm trying to not lower the standards, but lower. Um, my obsessive need for perfection. So 

Jon: [00:01:51] there you go. There you go. You know, with that in mind, we had a bit of an email exchange for a week logged on here, and I got a lot of questions from listeners, as well as me personally, to get to in just 30 minutes.

But you said over email, you wanted to keep this at a level. That's not going to alien anyone. Cause it kind of keeps the system some. Pretty understandable conversation here. 

Tom: [00:02:08] Definitely. I mean, I think that's the most important thing, especially in podcasting where audio production is in everyone's goal.

It's not what they want to learn. They want to make great content. So I really like to keep it as simple as possible, but also explain at a deeper level than maybe some or most people will do so that people have a better understanding of the basics of the fundamentals. So they can then take these concepts and apply them to their own shows.

Make them sound better. Get them done faster. A little more efficiently. We've got to start simple. Yeah. 

Jon: [00:02:40] Before we start, I got to ask you we're in Denver. There's like this podcasting Renaissance in Denver life, all these big names and podcasting you're out there, Chris. Karen's out there. Is 

Tom: [00:02:50] it Brittney?

Felix? It's out there too. Is it? Yeah. A little bit South. Yeah. 

Jon: [00:02:55] Is it like the air is thinner? So stuff sounds better. Like what's the deal in Denver? 

Tom: [00:02:59] Um, I don't know, man. I mean, I did a video on my YouTube channel about like the power of community and I feel so lucky that I'm pretty introverted and I'll stay in my basement all day, every day, but there is a great hub in Denver for podcasters, a community called house of pod.

They're like a studio. They have a ton of events and people come from all around Colorado to be a part of it. I don't know what it is about Denver though. It's just. Really awesome to have that here. I'm so lucky. So, so, so lucky to have that community is super important for growth and just having fun for the most part.

Jon: [00:03:33] Very cool. Let's dive in. So I think back to my college radio days in, I had friends that would listen to the processing of a radio station and be like, all there's too much high end here. There's too much low end here. They need to add some of this and take some them. And I could never, ever keep up with those conversations.

I could never hear like. Okay, well, this needs to be turned down and this needs to be turned up. So as someone who doesn't have a good feel for that, or maybe it's getting into podcasting, we'll put you on the spot a little bit here. Give me like two or three things that you would tell sort of a newbie podcaster about audio production that you wish people knew when they started out.

Tom: [00:04:11] I think two or three things is. It's a lot easier than you think, but it can be more difficult than it looks. Okay. You know, there's like talk about the 80 20 rule or whatever. Do the 20% of the work, that accounts for 80% of the result. I think with audio, if you do like 2% of the work, it accounts for like 95% of the results.

So what I try to teach on my channel is like specifically that 2%. The gear doesn't really matter. What really matters is your recording environment and your microphone technique. You can get a really bad sound on a $20,000 microphone. You can get a really good sound on a $50 microphone. It comes down to education and the desire to sound good is really it.

And of course, someone that can kind of hold your hand and guide you through the process. A lot of people are so afraid of audio production because these people that don't really know it, say that it's so hard. It's so, so hard just don't even really try. It's going to be okay. And you mentioned Chris Curran, you know, some folks like us are trying to be like, no, it can be a lot easier than you think.

Watch a couple videos, get the fundamentals down. Um, it's easy and it doesn't have to be expensive, I think is what I want everyone to know. 

Jon: [00:05:23] I want to come to one of your favorite topics before I forget, because I feel like in your podcast, you tiptoe around this and you start to go, then you catch yourself before you go down the rabbit hole, explain to our audience.

Why zoom sucks for podcasting. 

Tom: [00:05:38] All right. I've been changing my language around this. I've just said zoom sucks. But zoom is actually an incredible communications platform. Sure. I had a friend who he's learning pro tools, which is the doll that I use. Yeah. And he couldn't figure out some setting. I was able to, he shared his screen and I could control his computer from two time zones away.

It's really good at what he does, but the problem is, you know, if we want to relate this to video, I'm recording an eight K signal right now. I've invested in my room. I've invested tens of thousands into my equipment. And the second it touches zoom. Zoom is like, here's that three 60 P video you ordered and said, no, that's not what I'm recording though.

And they just, they, you know, what's going through all of their, whatever cloud servers. I don't really know how the network stuff works, but they are processing your audio and they're, downsampling it to oblivion. It's making this great file, very small in order to have an easier time passing it through the internet and all this stuff, and it just destroys it.

So I'm a huge advocate for a local signal. I'm recording a local signal myself right now. Even though squad cast does a, the best job out of any, uh, internet based call recorder. So, you know, you can be in a $5 million studio with a Grammy winning audio engineer producer. Capturing your sound, but if zoom touches it it's destroyed.

So that's kind of the issue, 

Jon: [00:07:00] these, so to keep the file in a way that can be transferred over the internet, they're taking information out of that file relating to the sound and that's, that's like the high end and the low end they're taking out. Is that basically what they do 

Tom: [00:07:11] typically. Yeah. So a lot of the presence of the intelligibility in your voice is in what's called the mid range and the low range and the high range it's equally as important.

It's more of like a professional sound of what you would imagine. A proper studio recording, but it's quote, unquote, irrelevant, like think of a phone call. It doesn't sound good, but you can still understand that person. So I see if you get rid of two thirds of the information, it's a smaller file. So now they can.

Not have to worry about signal dropouts. Although there are many through zoom and it's just an easier signal to pass. So they just destroy your file for their own convenience, which is understandable. But for podcasting it's, it's not good 

Jon: [00:07:50] when you're focused on the audio. So yes. Let me ducktail off of what you said there.

And the low end and the high end, you explained this in your podcast. I wonder if you'd give me a quick run through on this, the different areas of frequency in the human voice from, from low to high, what each of those areas are. And without audio demonstration, it's a little bit harder to explain. I know, but like, didn't, you just sort of give me a basic understanding of each of those pieces of the frequency spectrum.

Tom: [00:08:15] Yeah, I did a. Podcast episode on this with like a tons of listening exercises to help people really understand the frequency bands. And what that is is your ear can hear between 20 Hertz and 20 kilohertz. 20 Hertz is very low. 20 killer Hertz is very high. Most people can't actually hear it. So to really simplify it, think of when you're in your car and you press that little tone or the audio button, and you can adjust the base, the mid and the travel.

Those are just three frequency bands basis. Low, mid is the middle and trouble as high. We can make a lot more base, a lot more low end come out of our speakers or a lot more high end. So, and you can split that into very, very small. Bands even down to individual frequencies and. In the voice there's yeah, this is an hour long lecture I could dive into here, but there's a lot of like power in the low end that creates warmth and in depth and intimacy, it sounds like you're right there with someone.

And the mid range is like intelligibility. It's where our ears are finely tuned to. So that's gotta be like a really tight really honed in. And the high end is just like some brilliant, some shimmer that's. Like pleasing it's 

Jon: [00:09:33] adds little character. 

Tom: [00:09:34] Yeah. It's and clarity again, presence. It allows there to be a sense of distance when we have less high end sounds more distant and a little more high end.

Sounds a bit closer again, intimate kind of writing your ear. Like someone's just whispering gently into your ear. So nothing's yeah. Yeah. We can play with all those frequencies to create very different characteristics of our voice sense of depth, uh, intimacy intelligibility. It's a, it's a huge topic. I did like four episodes in a row, just on frequency.

Jon: [00:10:03] I listened to them and you're going to kill me because you said in your podcast, make sure you're listening in a good room and good headphones to hear those things. And I was bending them cause I wanted to make sure I covered all the topics before we sat down today and you're going to kill me because I listened to an AirPods while I was running.

And so I did not get the full benefit, but I am gonna go back and he's holding up his, his air pods right now. Okay. 

Tom: [00:10:23] I love, I got the AirPods pro after. Many failed attempts at finding something that was, I don't want to call them neutral, but they're way more neutral than other headphones I've had in the past.

I try to add this like fantastic, very boomy, low end, very crisp high end. 

Jon: [00:10:42] I can't tell you how many clients have been like, Oh, I'm going to get beats headphones. And I'm like, no, no, please cut. 

Tom: [00:10:48] Right? Yeah. Consumer grade headphones. They add a lot of. Stuff that isn't actually there for the sake of something that is a little more fantastic and which is fine.

I mean, consumer grade stuff is okay, but if we're working in this professional realm, we want something that's accurate. So we know what we're actually listening to and nothing is added. Nothing is taken away. And it's not like, you know, I'm in an environment that is tuned calibrated for a recording space.

So it's actually terrible as a listening space. Okay. So it's yeah, so it's, it's all. Okay. You know, I'm working through my anger issues of bad audio or whatever. No judgment here, man. 

Jon: [00:11:30] I see behind 

Tom: [00:11:30] you or no. Okay. No judgment at all. 

Jon: [00:11:33] None. None, none whatsoever. It's something that you've mentioned too. And again, I don't get too technical here, but.

As you balance things out and you learn your way around EPQ and adding low end and adding high end and specific frequencies, something that you mentioned, your podcast that I think is worth dipping into really quickly here is the answer to tweaking. Some of the audio is not necessarily adding more of a frequency, subtracting frequency.

It's like addition by subtraction, right? 

Tom: [00:11:58] Yeah. So that was actually. I went to a four year program for audio production, got the degree of an audio for 10 years. And I feel like it wasn't until last year that I took subtractive VQ. Very seriously. Some people will be like, Oh, I need more low end in my voice.

I'm just going to boost it in equal in equalization. So you can take those frequency ranges for those who don't know, and you can change, you can make them louder or softer and. For the human voice. We just want it to sound natural. We don't want it to sound affected. And sometimes if we're missing a little bit of clarity, rather than adding a bunch of high end, there's probably a lot of low end information.

That's overwhelming the signal. So if you want more high end, take a look at removing some low end and you'll get some of that clarity back. And it's a more natural way of processing your signal of mixing it of equalizing. I only with very, very few exceptions. I'm only subtractive equalizing now. And it was probably the biggest change in my workflow that got me much closer to a sound that I really wanted to hear because you 

Jon: [00:13:06] do a lot of work for production, for bands and from music to, so in some ways, just doing a podcast and a voice, it's a lot simpler than worrying about a band with a bunch of instruments and, and worrying about all kinds of different inputs.

Right. 

Tom: [00:13:18] It's a lot simpler, but it's also so much more transparent. Like if you've listened to a full band recording with 150, 250 tracks in it, if you've somehow got a hold of just like the stems, the individual files you'll hear, and it's in the guitars and the vocals breaths cut halfway through, but it's masked by 250 other tracks.

Right? So with your voice while it is easier, it's only one thing. It is on its own. And if something is wrong, there is nothing else to hide it. Like it is exposed. So while it's easier, you also have to put a lot more intention and care in the voice because you can't hide behind anything. It's like, you know, I remember I used to sing in a band.

I was the front man and. It was like a loud pop punk band before other members. And if I wasn't perfect, that's fine. Cause the guitar to look cool, know whatever. But if I tried to do an acoustic set at an open mic, I was terrified. Cause there was no hiding behind noisy guitars or whatever. So it's kind of a similar vibe to that.

Jon: [00:14:22] I like that analogy. Um, I'm looking at your setup. I see you've got the Shure SM seven D Mike you're using right now. As am I. So my setup here is I've got the Shure SM seven B I've got it running through a cloud lifter that I just got into a road castor pro. Okay. And I've got all the processing turned on in the raw road, caster pro because it's, I feel like it's idiot proof and I don't know all the intricacies of everything yet.

So if I hit my button here, I've got a, every compressor, DS or high pass filter noise gate oral exciter big bottom and processing all turned on. So I'm wondering, um, and it's kind of hard to see. I know we're talking over a squad cast right now. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions or, uh, guardrails I should be thinking about with this kind of setup.

Tom: [00:15:06] I'm not super familiar with the road caster pro and how it actually works. Do you know if it's recording the signal with all of those? Features all of those processing on. 

Jon: [00:15:16] Um, I think so, because you said you set it up on each microphone going into, 

Tom: [00:15:20] so, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I'm always a fan of capturing a pretty clean signal, so I can then affect it in, in post production and pro tools.

But I mean, most of the stuff I do in pro tools, it's compression, it's equalizing, it's depressing. It's, you know, a little bit of D noise, so I'm doing it all. Anyway. If I had it perfectly dialed in at the source. Maybe I would, you know, it sounds good though. It sounds super crisp and clear. I mean, it sounds very 

Jon: [00:15:46] that.

So if I, so if I let's see if this, uh, I'll, I'll borrow a page out of your book and give you little AB here. So if I turn the processing off, I don't know if you can tell the difference there. I saw a lot, a lot thinner and a lot. Uh, so then I turned this back on and it's like, when I was a radio DJ and I have all that equipment in the studio to help me sell it a lot.

Bigger than I 

Tom: [00:16:05] actually, right? No. And that's, I mean, it's, it's an exciting sound for sure. I can't hear myself, you know how you're hearing it, but I'm sure my sound in comparison would be a little dull, a little thin, maybe not as exciting, which is. You know, just how it how's recording. It can be changed.

You know, I can make anything sound, whoever I want for the most part. 

Jon: [00:16:28] No. And that's another good point you've been in your podcast is if you have a conversation between two people, you want to make sure that they sound fairly close in terms of how powerful those voices are. Cause you don't want to have that dissonance between one voice in another voice where it's one is blaring out of the speakers.

And one is, you're kind of straight into here. So I think that's worth mentioning too. 

Tom: [00:16:46] Yeah, that's actually like. For me, the number one way to lose a listener is having, I like that word dissonance between speakers and I hang out on like subreddits and I've been on Facebook for a month, which has actually been great, but like a lot of hotel tolerance.

Yeah. Ooh refreshing. I'm there, man. But like a lot of complaints that people have is like, I love this podcast, but every time it switched speakers, there'd be this huge difference in, in a lot of people couldn't really explain like maybe what it was sometimes as loudness for sure. But I did. In episode on, even if the loudness, even if each speaker is perfectly negative 16 loves it doesn't mean that they're equal.

And there's a lot of confusion around what does negative 16 loves mean? It, it means something, but kind of also means nothing. So if your voice is very crisp, very bright in minds, not even if they're equally loud, there's going to be this like discrepancy between tone and quality in what you're hearing.

So. You would want to bring them closer to each other so that the two voices in relation to each other are more equal, because the thing about listening to one source for a long period of time is your ear kind of like tunes into a sound after like. Five or 10 seconds. Yeah. So like, if at first it's like, Oh, Tom's lacking a little bit of clarity and you notice that for 10 seconds, by the end of 30 minutes, you were tuned to that.

So 

Jon: [00:18:15] yeah. Your ears kind of adjust, 

Tom: [00:18:17] calibrate, 

Jon: [00:18:18] calibrate so forth. So I was working on a podcast for client this morning that the recording quality was not good. And I did everything I could with it to salvage it. And then I was like, Ooh, I don't know about this. And then by about 30 seconds into the interview, I was like, Okay.

Yeah, this sounds all right. So it's interesting how our ears do that. 

Tom: [00:18:35] Right? So it's, it's super important to like take breaks, refresh your ears, get a pallet cleanser, so to speak and really focus on, especially if it's like a guest and. Host situation that there's some kind of similarities between the voice.

I know sometimes when you have like a guest through zoom and the host has a good recording, there's only so much you can do, but especially that mid range frequency that has the presence, most devices can accurately. Replicate mid range frequencies while it can be all over the place on the low and high end.

So if the mid range frequencies are really tight, very in tune with each other, it'll be a much more pleasant experience for listeners. And of course I have videos and multiple podcasts episodes on that as well. Like specifically tuning mid range. 

Jon: [00:19:23] We'll hit all those links in the show notes. And again, at the end of our episode, but this kind of gets into some listener questions I had for you.

Todd, we're talking about loudness and negative 16 lofts as the gold standard, and we all know that for podcasting. I know for me, I use Adobe audition as my doll, my digital audio workstation, and depending on the amount of compression or heart limiting or whatever I use on a file. If I run that match loudness and Adobe audition and say, Hey, make this.

Negative 16 lefts depending on the voice and what I've done to it beforehand, that negative 16 loves when I look at my wave form that might be at minus six or minus three in terms of the amplitude, because I think because of how much I've compressed the audio. It's not consistent with negative 16 lofts equals this amount of amplitude.

Tom: [00:20:09] Yeah. It's like a Lux is a very longterm average and loudness over 40 minutes doesn't mean anything. I could be screaming for the first half of the episode and whispering for the second and it can still be negative 16 loves and again, so many videos, so many videos on compression that I've done. Because it's, it's often misunderstood.

Adobe's match. Loudness is, is great. It's very simple. It requires a lot less work than I have to do in pro tools. The thing that's most important is loudness range. So it could be negative 16 lofts, but you don't want it to skew too far from that at any point in the recording. Right? So negative 16 loves with the loudness range of 50 loves is the difference between screaming and whispering.

You don't want that. So you want a pretty consistent tone. Throughout a Linus range of like four or five lumps or something. And it's, it's so awesome that Adobe audition offers that I've tried it in the past. Cause I pay for creative cloud. Yeah. But I, I like what I do in pro tools with, you know, my stylized compressors and equalizers.

So. I stick with that. 

Jon: [00:21:14] Are you familiar with the CN level later tool and maybe had an experience with that? 

Tom: [00:21:18] That's like the automated kind of like phonic never used it? Um, I feel like it's probably similar to match loudness in terms of it's like not peak normalization, but it's other processes that it does never used it.

But I have an upcoming episode where I'm going to shoot out my mixing versus a Sophonic versus level later versus natural loudness and see, see who wins blind test. 

Jon: [00:21:41] Yeah. That'll be sitting in my office with the professional headphones on to take a good, a good listen to that. 

Tom: [00:21:47] I'm excited, but also nervous.

I don't want to lose to AI. 

Jon: [00:21:53] I think there's always a human touch at someone who knows what they're doing is always going to be better. And some of that AI stuff can work for those who, who may not have that same breadth of knowledge and no degree and experience in studios that you do. Um, to question here.

Condenser mic versus dynamic microphones. I feel like, uh, this list, this question said, you know, I, I spent all this money on a really nice condenser microphone, but I don't have the perfect room. So when I record there's all this hiss. Am I better off to go back to a dynamic microphone? Or what can I do to avoid picking up all that ambient room noise in a condenser microphone?

Tom: [00:22:29] Yeah, it depends on what the hiss. Is, um, I'm a huge fan of saying treat the source. The problem isn't the microphone. The problem is your environment. Now treating your environment can be expensive and it can be daunting. I think condenser microphones are objectively better microphones just in terms of the quality that it captures.

And I think I'm trying to sneak out an episode of the podcast this week on like how a dynamic microphone is made, how it differs from. A condenser microphone, but if I'm recommending a microphone to a podcast, or I'm typically saying dynamic because you can get right. I mean, my lips are touching the foam pop filter of my

Yep. I've got a Mac book pro fan that's screaming off to my right. Cause I have Chrome open and yup. It's just, I don't know, in a perfect world, I would be using a condenser or a ribbon microphone for my podcast, but we don't live in a perfect world and we're not spending tens of thousands of dollars to soundproof our environments.

I've heard. I mean, it doesn't microphones are really, really good. It depends on again, your environment. Uh, in which your recording is the biggest factor of your recording quality, we can try to figure it out together. If you really want to use that microphone, put my email in the show notes or something.

I have people reach out to me all the time asking for, for help. I'd be happy to try to work through some things there, but I say, don't give up yet, but if there's just noise, you absolutely cannot control. If you live by a busy street. I hate to say it, cause it goes against everything I believe in, but maybe then maybe take a look at a dynamic, but condensers for life.

Totally. 

Jon: [00:24:11] Any, uh, any experience with, um, isotopes ozone, a nectar plugins, any 

Tom: [00:24:16] never, I've just never, I have like 150 plugins that I fought in the past few years and there's still some, I have an open, so I'm like. I'm putting myself in timeout for buying new tools, but nectar does look really interesting and ozone does a lot of things that I already have the ability to do so it would be superfluous, but I know there are a lot of people using those tools in their incredible isotope makes great stuff.

I use RX unfortunately every day, but it does its job super well. 

Jon: [00:24:47] When you don't have a client that can fix the stuff in pre, and I know you've said in your podcast, you hate the phrase, fix it in post, but sometimes it's your only option. Right? 

Tom: [00:24:54] I feel like that's mostly what I do for a living is just fixed everything.

It's not even like making it sound good. It's bringing it back alive. If at all possible that's kind of. Somehow become my specialty with, uh, with some folks that I work with, 

Jon: [00:25:08] understanding where one of them give you a lot of credit. Tom is you've spent, you know, a ton of money on this audio degree and four year degree and all that.

And you're always to the point that you just made talking about, Hey, if you have a question, if you want help with your audio, send me a note, send me an email. You've invested all this money into it. Why are you giving away the milk for free? 

Tom: [00:25:27] If you asked me a year ago, I would say that I strongly regret getting a degree in audio production.

It doesn't help the fact that I went to a for profit organization that was sued $3 trillion for predatory lending and. Shaping all their place, not statistics, but part of me, like I'm doing this for my 18 year old self, like, Hey dude, home, go to college for this. Just like, learn these few things. And you don't have to spend after interest $350,000 on your education.

And I don't know, I just, I put out one video on vocal rider because someone had a question about it. And like a lot of people responded. They're just like, Hm. I've tried this before. It never made sense. The second you started teaching it, it all just clicked. And I thought like, maybe there's something there and I never considered teaching, but people liked it.

I'm a big fan of just kind of going through whatever door seems to be opening. And there's a lot of people responding very, very positively to the YouTube channel and my podcast. So I'm going to keep teaching everything I can. And also like, I'm kind of trying to, for every hour that I teach, I want to be learning for four.

Okay. So it's helping me a lot too. Like I'm, it's not a selfless act. I'm getting so much out of this. And I mean, clients and money, like it's all been very fruitful for. Hopefully everyone. I think everyone, but especially in podcasting, you don't need a degree for any of this, but that fundamental knowledge is it's imperative to learn that because you can't, I don't want to speak ill of anyone, but there's, you know, some people in podcasts and who don't necessarily know audio, and they'll just be like, for your compressor, do this ratio, put your microphone here, do that.

And a lot of people are left asking. Why, what does any of that mean? I don't understand. And when something doesn't go perfectly, right? You don't have the knowledge to make those changes for yourself. You're stuck in these like Google rabbit holes of, you know, some forum from 2004 about how to change something.

And I've been there. I've done that. So I just want to, you know, I'm not perfect. And audio quality is largely subjective. So I know that, you know, I really want more people to be. In the space as well, to give as many perspectives as possible. Because this whole audio, especially for podcasting thing, isn't really that difficult.

And I care more about audio than like anything in the world. I just want it to sound good. And I care about audio more than money. So like, if you want your podcast to sound good, here's my email. I've given people, my phone number, like call me, we'll have a conversation, you know, let's just, let's do it. The fundamentals are important.

And I didn't see a ton of people teaching them. So. Just trying to fill a void, be useful where I can be, have been searching for a purpose my whole life. And, um, yeah, I want to make audio sound good. 

Jon: [00:28:21] It sounds like you have found that purpose and it's a credit to you that you want to pay it forward and help so many people.

I know I've learned a lot just by listening to your podcast. So. You want to hit up your social media, the podcast and tell already where to find you? 

Tom: [00:28:32] Yeah, I'm terrible at social media, but, um, try to engage with people on Twitter. Mostly at clean cut audio. My podcast is@cleancutaudio.com slash podcast.

And my YouTube channel is YouTube dot clean. Cut, audio.com. New videos, new podcast every week that explores some area of audio, specifically for podcasting, with very new people in mind. And I try to push the barrier a little bit and go beyond what people are normally teaching. Go a little bit more advanced, but always starts.

Very basic. And then we try to expand on that. I mean, if you want your show to sound good, I don't know why you'd want it to sound bad, but if you, uh, you know, if you're trying to get a little better, I try to keep it super simple, really accessible. Inclusive and strive, strata, teach everything. I know 

Jon: [00:29:23] Tom Kelly, thank you for the time today.

And thank you for all the knowledge you are dropping. Check out his podcast and his YouTube channel. If you want your show to sound better guarantee, you will learn a lot. Really appreciate it today, sir. Thank you. 

Tom: [00:29:33] Yeah. Thank you, man.