Wanting to share the skills behind his success, Jo recently started the podcast A Voiceover’s Audio Adventure to shares insights to the industry. We asked him more about this work and the show…

Who are you and what was your path into voiceover work?

My name is Jo Troy and I am an award-winning voiceover from London. I got into voiceover in 2020 after putting it off for years. I finally had the time and the motivation to be like “let’s go”. It was something I was always told I’d be good at but didn’t have the slightest idea what a voiceover actually did apart from acting in animated films. Little did I know it was one click away and once I got my first job on a freelance site, the rest is history and I entered Narnia aka the world of VO.

What do you love most about being a voiceover artist?

I enjoy the freedom. I can do my work from anywhere and make my own hours. I love bringing scripts and characters to life, telling stories and hearing my voice in the real world.

Tell us about your podcast! What’s the elevator pitch?

It’s a biweekly show teaching listeners about the voiceover and audio industry, hearing amazing stories and learning tips & tricks along the way. Season 1 focuses on building basic skills and nohow on how to start, maintain and develop your career.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

I have always been a creative person coming from music and when you receive other people’s scripts every day sometimes you can feel like you want to do more. I have always found podcasting interesting and was a medium I had never worked on in terms of creating. I always wanted to create tools and resources for other voiceovers to use and have already written an e-book so creating a podcast was a no-brainer. It allowed me to create, learn and educate all at the same time.

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?

I can’t remember the first podcast I listened to but I can remember a handful. The thing with me is I consume my podcast visually on YouTube so that already narrows it down. Some of the first few pods were HC Pod Original, The Joe Budden Podcast and of course the OG – the Joe Rogan Experience.

What’s your number one tip for budding voiceover artists?

Buy my book and it will make life easier ha. But to be honest, apart from that I would say invest in yourself get a coaching session or two, create a demo and then go. Don’t wait just get stuck in. The more you do the better you will get. The more you do the more you’ll understand.

Lastly, where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

You can find everything about me, my ebook about VO and my podcast at www.jotroy.com.

Listen to A Voiceover’s Audio Adventure on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps >>

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This article was produced as part of a paid advertising package. To enquire about advertising with Pod Bible email info@podbiblemag.com.

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My tips below are born out of the research that makes Audio Audit’s quality checking tool. Of course, if you want the quickest way to find out what’s relevant to your show, head over to audioaudit.io and upload your latest episode. Your report gives you a score and offers guidance on how to use various tools to make the recommended enhancements. Hopefully, you’ll find something that you hadn’t thought about to help you delight your listeners.

1. Improve your metadata

You’ll be used to setting your episode title and show notes for each episode — this goes in the feed — but there’s metadata that can be included in the audio file itself. Why should you care about this? Well sometimes your audio file will be played by someone that’s not using a podcast listening app. People may share the individual MP3 file with a friend or they may download it on their PC. There are also things you can include that are not part of the RSS podcasting standards.

A cover image is essential branding for podcasts so why not embed this so it can be displayed outside of podcast apps? You can even create episode-specific artwork so it’s slightly different each time – for example with photos of your guests. VLC, FFmpeg and others can handle this for you.

Chapters help listeners find a particular part of your show. Maybe you cover several different stories or topics per episode. Breaking your episodes down into sections can make it more digestible and less daunting for longer shows. Some good tools for this are Forecast, Chapter and Verse – find out more here.

Finally, there are a bunch of other text fields — things like copyright info, artist names, show name, and web address, that you probably always want to be attached to every audio file. Most DAWs, VLC, Picard and many other tools will easily let you set text metadata.

2. Check your loudness and peak volume

One thing that can be really annoying is when one podcast finishes and another one starts with much louder or quieter volume. There is a standard way of measuring loudness called LUFS, which outputs a number. Platforms have agreed upon what range this should be but surprisingly few people know how to set it correctly.

Peak volume is another type of measurement, which has an agreed standard and can help ensure levels aren’t clipping. Most DAWs have an option for setting loudness, for example in Audacity it’s under “Effects” > “Loudness Normalization”. -16 LUFS should be the perceived loudness target you’re aiming for. You’ll want to run this normalisation as the final step before exporting.

3. Check your sampling and export settings

Often people will go with whatever defaults their DAW suggests or will set things up once and not re-asses. Audio software can be used for many different types of content and there is a trade-off to be had of quality vs. download time, device storage, and hosting costs. This also skews slightly over time as the average internet speed increases. Most podcasts will sound great if they’re within the most common ranges shown below. If your show is specifically about high-res audio or you have a listener base that is on slow internet then obviously adjust accordingly.

• Sample rate: 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz.
• Sample Width / Bit Depth / Sample Size: 16 bit for export but it’s better to use a higher bit during editing.
• Bit Rate: 128 kbps – 256 kbps MP3.

4. Provide transcripts

More and more podcasts are producing transcripts as part of their show notes. These can be quickly generated via AI speech-to-text tools or human freelancers you can hire online. There are several benefits to producing transcripts:

1. SEO (search engine optimisation) — Search engines are primarily building their indexes based on text. Converting the content you’ve already made into a different form opens you up to different audiences. People might not be looking for podcasts specifically but find you because they match with the topics you discuss.

2. Hearing restricted — Some people have impairments, others find it easier to understand content when it is written down. A transcription opens your show up to people that wouldn’t engage with it otherwise.

3. Navigating within an episode — More advanced transcripts are time-stamped allowing listeners to find a keyword and decide where to start listening. This can also be a life-saver if you are adding chapters to your episodes.

5. Consider silences

Sometimes one show can run into another and the listener might hear an abrupt transition. Silences at the beginning and end give your content space to breathe. Slowing down and leaving your listener time to absorb what you have said might work well especially if your content has a narrative. This is a technique used in highly produced, highly scripted podcasts like 99 Percent Invisible. Standards from the audiobook industry recommend 0.5–1 second at the start of a track and 1–5 seconds at the end.

What else?

If you’ve already nailed everything above then here are a few bonus jumping-off points that might peak your interest.

• Compressor — Filter that automatically adjusts volume within a short time window which is great if you
have multiple presenters.
• Band filtering — Cut out high or low frequency noise that isn’t speech.
• Equalisation (EQ) — Boost/reduce certain frequencies of your voice to improve the tone.
• Panning — Spread out each person within stereo space to make it easier for the listener to tell who’s
speaking.
• Noise reduction — Remove artefacts from inferior recording equipment and the environment.
• Sibilance and De-essing — Filters can reduce sounds like “sss” or “shh” which are not pleasant.

Damian Moore is the Founder and CEO of Audio Audit, an automatic benchmarking and proofing tool which checks the quality of your podcast MP3 files, giving you peace of mind before you publish. Find out more at audioaudit.io.

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This article was produced as part of a paid advertising package. To enquire about advertising with Pod Bible email info@podbiblemag.com.

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Aclass: Kickstart Your Podcast will feature expertise from Acast’s dedicated podcaster team, alongside commercial and podcast producer Emily Owens Burke — whose credits include Mario Rosenstock’s Gift Grub — speaking about what goes into producing a podcast, and Caroline Foran — from Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast — who’ll share her journey to podcasting success.

Central to Acast’s mission is teaching aspiring and established podcasters everywhere how to create, launch, grow and make money from their podcasts. Since launching in 2019, Aclass sessions have been attended by more than one thousand aspiring podcasters around the world.

Susie Warhurst, SVP of Content at Acast said:

“We believe podcasters of all sizes should be able to find their voice and their audience, and to make money from their craft in the ways that suit them best. Acast’s position at the heart of the open creator economy in podcasting means we can help and support creators on every step of their podcasting journey — whether they’re just getting started, or want to take their podcast to its full potential.”

Acast’s hosting platform has everything a podcaster needs to host and grow their show, across every podcast app out there — and to make money from it, too. Visit acast.com/hosting to get started for free.

You can register to attend Aclass: Kickstart Your Podcast here. It’s taking place on Zoom on Thursday, April 29, at 6pm GMT.

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