| My notes (tl;dr) from the article below. For anyone even vaguely familiar with audio engineering and recording, these tactics are not profound. Not a bad thing because in the end, less is more. Worth mentioning that a good mic is arguably the 20% input that contributes to 80%+ of the output/audio quality, as supported by the article. #6 is really the only non-obvious point. Apparently this is a major subject of debate. 1.) If you can afford it, use the Neumann U87 mic (~$3.5k) 2.) High pass filter (~250hz) on the vocal chain 3.) To avoid plosives, don't speak head-on into the mic. Speak off the side, on a diagonal. Use a pop filter. 4.) Design your studio to minimize reverberation. Make sure the recording space is isolated and there "aren't a lot of solid walls." Absorb sound with baffles, sound panels, etc. Counterintuitively, a larger room with more diffusion is better than the opposite. 5.) Minimize ambient sound. Your mic will pick up everything from fans to CPUs to electronic interference off computer screens. This noise will muddy up the recording. 6.) Minimize processing or compression of the signal before streaming, or in the case of radio, sending to the satellite. Edit: for clarity |
BBC Radio 3 uses no dynamic range compression, so might be most comparable to NPR (although it's likely that each local station applies a ton of compression before the signal hits the air).
Most (other) radio stations apply copious amounts of multiband dynamic range compression on their output - with the nickname of "sausage-making", since the process turns waveforms that look like music into waveforms that look like sausages. In the FM days, louder sounding stations were associated with better signals, so got bigger market share...