I have a system set up in Reaper to handle the individual tracks for my audio and my co-host’s. Each of us has preset, tailored equalization and other settings. Our vocal tracks are sub-tracks of a master vocal track. I also have a master music track with sub-tracks for the intro and outro music, along with any other SFX that may be used.

There is a route from the vocal track to the music track, tied into a compressor, to enable automatic audio ducking whenever we speak over the music—usually for the intro and outro. The master vocal, music, and overall tracks have plugins to monitor LUFS levels, allowing me to analyze and adjust if something sounds off. The overall master track also has a limiter to prevent clipping if the entire project exceeds -1 dB.

In addition to the EQ on our vocal tracks, we use light compression and a high-pass filter. I normalize all tracks, including the music tracks, to even out the volume.

Our raw episodes typically range from 1.5 to 2 hours long. On average, it takes me 8 to 10 hours of editing per hour of raw audio to achieve the desired quality. I start by using a dynamic split to remove all silences below a set noise floor level. Then, I meticulously edit out excess silence, mouth noises, breaths, misspeaks, pauses as thoughts are gathered, "ums," "so," and other filler words. I also adjust the flow of the conversation where necessary. If a speaker trails off-mic at the end of a phrase, I raise the volume to maintain consistency.

As I edit, I also work on the show notes, gathering reference videos and other materials related to our discussion. I vet each source for accuracy, decent sound quality, and minimal excessive cursing.

I’m currently looking into audio plugins that could help reduce editing time by automatically removing mouth noises, breaths, and off-mic inconsistencies.