TLDR; Wear Headphones.

9 Reasons Headphones are the Key to a Professional Podcast Recording Session.

1. You’ll know if there’s a catastrophic noise being baked into the recording (electrical hum, static noise, buzzing sounds).

2. You won’t be off-mic half of the time. (You can hear when you’re in the sweet spot of your microphone, and when you’re not).

3. Increased awareness of Plosives (hard P’S and B’s), Mouth-noises (YUCK!), and Proximity Effect (overemphasised and potentially muddy bass in the voice).

4. Awareness of rubbing, zipping and scratching of clothing, jewellery, furniture, mic stand, and the microphone itself.

5. You can get more consistent levels between speakers on the recording, which can reduce post-production time and lessen the need for automated and potentially expensive levelling tools.

6. You can make choices about what environmental noises are actually making it into the recording. (You won’t waste time continually referencing things that are barely audible on the actual recording).

7. You’ll know if you’re baking-in destructive or bad sounding audio effects into the recording (overly aggressive noise-gates, reverb effects, or too much compression and/or bass and treble boost).

8. You’ll be able to hear everyone in the room that’s on a mic, not just the person closest to you by proximity (or simply the loudest person(s) in the room). This allows for quieter speakers to get heard, and get their turn … particularly when lots of cross-talk is occurring in the conversation, or speakers aren’t facing each other directly. Headphones create a level playing field for "being heard".

9. Producers can talk to you IRT yet discretely via your headphones without baking that conversation into the recording - if they have a talk-back function on their mixing or recording console.

If you need to talk Headphones, or Podcasting in general, feel free to send me an email (josh@jcaldigital.org) or DM me on X @joshuacliston or Instagram @joshuacliston

Have a great week, and happy Podcasting.