Understand the basics

- [Instructor] When people ask…why sound quality is so important for a podcast,…to me it's like asking why it's important…for a restaurant to serve good edible food.…So let's talk about the basics you should know…before recording your first episode…so that we start on this path…of getting great sound quality.…The first thing you need to understand is signal flow.…Now if I go back to my days in college…taking my first audio devices class,…we spent the first week of the class on signal flow.…

Signal flow is the path of the audio…from your mouth to the recorder and after.…The first path you need to consider…is from the mic to the computer,…or from the mic to an audio interface or recorder.…Basically, the sound goes into the microphone,…down the cable, whether it's XLR or USB,…through an A-to-D converter which is an analog…to digital converter basically converting…the analog signal from the microphone…into a digital signal that the computer…or interface or recorder can understand.…

You then have the path from the computer to your headphones.…