Producing a professional podcast is a daunting prospect for some people. Podcastle aims to demystify ... [+]
Podcasts are all the rage right now and they’re a great way of communicating with stakeholders, whether they be customers, co-workers, suppliers or an industry in general. Over the past year or two, several podcast startups have raised considerable funding for businesses that claim to make podcasting easier and faster. Last year I reported on Riverside.fm, a great new platform for making podcasts with the best possible audio quality. Now I’ve come across another that I thought you might like to know about.
Podcastle is the brainchild of Artavazd Yeritsyan and it now has more than 200K users and has raised ... [+]
Podcastle is the new kid on the podcast software block and it’s a great name for a production tool. There is a well-loved and long-established fantasy podcast called PodCastle, but no one has yet used the name for a production tool.
The brain behind the startup is Artavazd Yeritsyan, who has developed the online audio creation tool using AI-powered features to make it easier to create professional-sounding podcasts and other audio projects.
In less than a year, Podcastle says it has managed to attract around 200K users and raise two rounds of funding amounting to an overall investment of $9m. Podcastle’s main mission is to democratize access to broadcast storytelling through easy-to-use tools that are professional quality and yet fun to use. This is podcasting for non-experts but with quality that can compete with glossy and expensive productions.
The interface of Podcastle is easy to use even for people not trained in media production.
One of Podcastle’s headline features is its background noise removal tool. Not everyone has access to a soundproof recording booth or the very best of microphones. Annoying sounds like plosives and background noises can spoil a podcast but how can an amateur podcaster remove something like the sound of a barking dog. How can they make a narrator sound softer and smoother by rounding out their plosives?
Podcastle claims to have created a unique feature that isolates speech and removes all the unwanted background noise from a recording with a click of a mouse. It calls this function Magic Dust and it can also sweeten voices using adaptive AI technology. The process is designed to make any voice sound as if it’s been adjusted professionally in post-production. Magic Dust also claims to remove any annoying background noises, tame plosives and sibilants as well as equalize the overall sound making it ready for podcasting.
The Magic Dust feature in Podcastle can make all background noises disappear while sweetening and ... [+]
Something most podcasts contain is interviews with remote guests or contributors. If these interviews are recorded live from Skype or Zoom, the audio quality can be a bit patchy at best, plus you’ve got the presenter and guest on one audio track, and that makes it harder to edit your podcast. Podcastle aims to change the way remote interviews are recorded.
Podcastle records high-quality remote interviews from anywhere and then automatically saves the recording in the Podcastle cloud. Interviews are recorded on separate audio tracks to make editing is easier. Better still, the audio can be stored locally in uncompressed 48 kHz audio files, one for each guest. This means the audio for the host and the remote interviewee should be as good as each other and that makes a podcast sound far more professional.
Editing is one thing that makes podcasting a bit of a challenge. Cutting those waveforms in an audio editor is so labor-intensive. Podcastle thought that it would be better if you could, for example, delete just a couple of words from a piece of audio to make it perfect. It could be an irrelevant remark or a joke that fell flat. Whatever it is, Podcastle lets the podcast producer edit an audio track as if it were a text document, avoiding having to deal with all the cutting and transitions when editing conventionally.
Audio can be edited using a test transcription. No more editing wave forms. Podcastle enables audio ... [+]
Podcastle has a text editor tool that enables unwanted parts from a piece of audio to be edited easily. It involves two easy steps. Firstly, you transcribe the audio using Podcastle and then edit the transcription just like a document. You can delete anything you don't like from the text. The tool can even be used in reverse by converting text to speech and getting it voiced by ultra-realistic stock voices, all powered by AI.
Podcastle can run on most computers can sweeten voices using adaptive AI technology. Recordings can be made anywhere, with unwanted sounds being airbrushed out by using Magic Dust. Recordings are stored as uncompressed high-quality audio and words can be edited in a text document instead of having to cut and paste waveforms. Whether it’s used for podcasts, voiceovers or interviews, Podcastle claims its tools can create a professional sounding production wherever you happen to be.
More info: You can try Podcastle for free at podcastle.ai.
Updated: 14 December 2021 to add details about the Podcastle podcast.
