So I gave this a listen, and it's a little rough. I found it distracting enough that listening to the content was really difficult. Some suggestions:
- Don't record one side of a Skypecast if you can help it. Skype is really lossy and causes robot voices when in failure mode; yeah, the end result of a podcast is 64kbit mono, but the better your inputs, the better your output will be. You can do what's called a double-ender and record locally (have one person record the Skype cast as a backup), then edit both tracks together. (Also, if you
have to record a Skype cast, do it on a wired network. It's a minor improvement, but it helps. And if you guys need to do a multiple-endpoint Skype cast...we can talk about that, as I have a multi-point setup that can handle 5-6 callers with minimal latency and about the highest quality you can reasonably expect, but Skype casts in general are starting with your foot in a bucket and they get worse with the more people you plug into it.)
- Audio outputs matter. These files should be between a quarter and a half of the size of the files you're putting up there. You should be using 64kbit monaural constant bit rate (CBR) MP3s, not 128kbit stereo VBRs. (CBR is
important; don't neglect it.) Also, using LAME to encode is probably suboptimal, but that's the least of your worries.
- Levels. Damian is really low and Justin is ear-poppingly high. Get a DAW--Audacity is minimalist if fine, I use Logic--and try to pin all voices between -14dB and -10dB as a starting point. This will mean bringing some people up and some people down (though you should try to record with the microphone gain as high as you can without clipping when you laugh/get loud and without electrical hiss). You can do more stuff after that to make it sound better, but that's a start. (Some people will say "use Levelator"; Levelator is good but it's not magic and getting your audio to a consistent level is important on its own.) If both people are already being leveled similarly, more fiddling may be necessary because Justin is totally filling the audio space and the contrast with Damian's audio is just too much.
- Mic quality. Damian's audio is hissy and low, but Justin's is overmodulated and the microphone is no bueno at all. It sounds like a bad headset microphone. Decent microphones are cheap; I recommend the Samson Q2u for a podcast as it's a decent-quality USB-driven dynamic microphone and it's like sixty bucks. (I'd get a euro-style stand rather than a desk arm to get the microphone off the table, too, they're like twenty bucks.) You can do zero-latency monitoring by plugging your headphones straight into the mic, which will help you with...
- ...Mic technique. It's the roughest thing after the audio quality -- there's a lot of popping on both sides and there's some fading, as if people are moving around their microphones while they're talking. In particular (and not to pick on him), Justin shreds my ears every time he laughs; if he does the same thing I do, he does a bit of a sibilant start to a laugh so it causes a rattle before there's a heavy pop. That's death for a listening experience. Dan Benjamin has some good videos on microphone technique that are worth checking out.
- Room noise. I'm not sure if this is just microphone artifacts or it really is room noise, but room noise is going to be more of a problem anyway once you get better microphones (which you should do ASAP). Find somewhere quiet with soft objects in the room and minimal hard walls (hanging a blanket to talk towards is fine).