Tulip Podcast Manager 🎙️ Bojana Lalic

And it’s not your microphone.

I open a lot of raw audio files.

And the most common thing I hear, regardless of whether someone spent €80 or €800 on their microphone, is the same five problems, showing up again and again.

The good news is that none of them is caused by your mic. They’re all fixable. Most of them are preventable.

Here’s what I actually hear when I press play on a new recording.

1. Room echo

This is the single most common audio problem I encounter, and it has nothing to do with equipment. Echo occurs when sound bounces off hard surfaces such as bare walls, wooden floors, glass windows, and high ceilings.

A €50 microphone in a soft, carpeted room with bookshelves and curtains will sound significantly better than a €500 microphone in a bare office.

The fix is simple: record somewhere soft. A closet full of clothes is genuinely one of the best recording spaces you’ll ever use. If you can’t move, put cushions behind you, close the curtains, and sit as close to your microphone as you comfortably can.

2. Inconsistent volume between speakers

Your voice is at one level. Your guest’s voice is at a completely different level, either much quieter, much louder, or fluctuating between both. This happens because everyone records in a different environment with different equipment.

In editing, this can be leveled out. But if the gap is too wide, there’s only so much that can be done without the audio sounding processed and unnatural.

The preventative step: ask your guests to do a short mic test before you start recording. Thirty seconds of them speaking normally, so you can check their levels before the real conversation begins.

3. Mouth sounds

Clicks. Pops. The wet sound of lips opening. These are incredibly common, especially in longer recordings where the guest or host gets thirsty, nervous, or simply talks for a long time.

Keep water nearby. Drink before you record, not during, if you can help it. And know that a good editor will catch most of these, but the fewer there are, the better the final edit will sound.

4. Background noise that the host stopped noticing

The hum of a refrigerator. A fan is running in the next room. Traffic outside. Air conditioning.

These sounds disappear from your awareness completely when you live with them every day. But a listener hearing your podcast for the first time hears them clearly.

Record your environment for thirty seconds before your guest joins. Just sit quietly and listen back. You’ll hear things you didn’t notice at all while you were sitting there.

5. Peaks and distortion from mic placement

When someone speaks too close to a microphone (especially directly in front of it), you get peaks. The audio spikes, distorts, and no amount of editing can fully recover it.

The ideal microphone position for most podcast setups is slightly off-axis, angled slightly to the side, not pointing directly at your lips, and positioned about a hand-width away from your mouth.

This one piece of advice will prevent more audio problems than almost anything else.

Great podcast audio isn’t about expensive equipment. It’s about knowing what causes problems before you press record.

What this means for you

If you’re editing your own audio and you’re spending hours on it, or if you’re listening back and something still feels slightly ‘off’ even after editing, it’s almost certainly one of these five things.

The fix starts before recording, not after. A few small habits before you hit record will save you hours in post-production and make your show sound significantly more polished.

If audio editing is the part of podcasting you most want to hand off, it’s one of the core things I handle for my clients.

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Which of these five surprised you?

I’d genuinely love to know, room echo is usually the one that catches people off guard.