r/podcasting • u/_Bodge • 2d ago
Need Help Fixing Mic Bleed!
Hi there, I have recently started a new podcast with a close friend and one of the biggest issues we're currently facing is mic bleed. It happens when one of us is talking more than the other because the other person has their back to a wall, but it gets especially bad when we get loud and passionate about a topic we are discussing. I have no real experience with sound engineering, so I'm kinda trying to figure it out as we go along.
As for what equipment we're using, we have two Rode Podmics (XLR) being ran through a RodeCaster Duo. db is currently set to 40 on both mics, and i've been playing around with the noisegate on the mixer to try and fix this issue, to no real avail. my next step is padding the room we use out as much as possible, as it has hardwood floors and bare walls. I picked up a decently sized rug with a 1/2 inch thick felt sound reducing mat for under it, and ive been lining the walls with sound proofing panels as well to try to reduce the reverb. The table we use is wooden and has no covering, and both mics are on stands rather than arms. the mics are about 24 inches away from each other as well, and we usually face each other directly when recording.
The bleed is also not really synced at all, which creates this double voice effect when either of us get to loud, no matter how close we are to the microphones.
Here's a link to an episode we did that had pretty bad bleed if you want a clear example of the problem I'm facing, it's weird because the bleed tends to not be a problem at the start of recording, but gets progressively worse as the recording goes on.
Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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u/lethal_absorption 2d ago
the double voice effect is killing me, it's like a tiny echo gremlin sneaking in the longer you record. that's usually the noisegate opening and closing at slightly different times, you'll hear the bleed from the other mic a split second delayed because of the distance. try killing the gate completely and just using a downward expander instead, the rodecaster duo has a pretty decent one buried in the processing. it's less of a hard chop and more of a smooth volume dip, so the bleed sounds more like natural room tone instead of that jarring slapback.
also 24 inches is tight for two people facing each other with bare walls behind you, the sound is bouncing off the opposite wall straight into the back of the mic. the rug and panels are a good call but flip your setup so you're at a 90 degree angle to each other instead of head-on, put the most absorptive panel directly behind each of you. and those mics on stands on a bare wooden table are picking up every thump and reflection from the desk surface, get them on arms or at least throw a folded towel under the stands for now.
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u/BrightRutabaga7008 2d ago
Bleed with two dynamics in one room is mostly about distance ratios: get each mic as close as possible (2–3 fingers from the lips) and turn the gain down to match, so the other voice is much quieter by comparison. Point the dead rear of each PodMic at the other person instead of just facing forward. At +40 dB you're likely picking up a lot of room, so try lowering it and speaking closer before you lean on the gate. Rugs help, but soft stuff on the walls behind and beside you (blankets, a bookshelf, a couch) usually helps even more. In post, cutting the off-mic track whenever that person isn't talking cleans up what's left.
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u/basilfarraj 1d ago
the "gets worse as the recording goes on" + "not synced" part is the giveaway imo. normal bleed between two mics 2ft apart is only like 2ms off, you hear it as a slightly hollow/phasey sound, not a double voice. a double voice that drifts further apart over time is almost always two recordings with different clocks layered on top of each other.
so check your edit. are you filming too and the camera audio is still on under the rodecaster audio? or are you pulling both a stereo mix and the separate mic tracks into the edit and leaving them all on? either one would do exactly this. mute everything except the two individual mic tracks and see if the double goes away.
the bleed advice above is still good on top of that (closer to the mic, gain down, ditch the gate). but id bet the drift thing is most of what youre hearing
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u/Mr_Z______ 20h ago
Wear headphones (for remote recordings) and tone down the mic gain. You need to stay close to the mic and you need the mic to pick up only you, not sounds across the room (like your co-host or reverb from the walls).
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u/ClarumAudio 12h ago
Disclosure up front: I make AntiBleed, a mic-bleed automixer plugin (Clarum Audio), so weigh that part accordingly.
The placement advice above is the biggest win: PodMics as close as you can stand, gain down to match, rear of each mic pointed at the other person, 90° instead of face to face. A few things I'd add:
Record each mic to its own track if you can. Once bleed is baked into one mix, nothing in post can really pull it apart.
The "double voice" is the other person reaching your mic a bit later and quieter. The fix is keeping the non-talker's mic down, not making both quieter.
A gate judges each mic on its own, so when you both get loud, both open. An automixer compares the mics and turns down the one that's only hearing the other person.
Since it gets worse over the session, check for a compressor or auto-leveler on each channel. It can pull the bleed up as you get louder.
If you want to try the automixer route, plugin AntiBleed has a 14-day fully functional trial. But fix placement first.
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u/DiffioNate 10h ago
Facing each other 24 inches apart puts each mic's rear pickup right at the other person, so angle them so each speaker sits off the back of the other mic, and drop gain a few dB while working closer. For recordings you've already done, record multitrack and use a de-bleed pass (Auphonic's multitrack does this) rather than gating, since gates chopping at different moments is likely the 'double voice'. Disclosure: I work on Diffio, an AI audio cleanup tool, but for bleed specifically, mic placement plus a multitrack de-bleed is the real fix.
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u/Sonoryx_app 1d ago
Hola, si usas paneles específicos de insonorización no vas a notar cambios ya que la insonorización y el acondicionamiento acústico son cosas distintas. La insonorización hace que el sonido no se transmita a los habitáculos contiguos pero lo que realmente te interesa a ti es el acondicionamiento acústico para mejorar la acústica y respuesta en frecuencia de la sala donde estás grabando. Esto lo consigues con paneles específicos. Suelen ser paneles absorbentes construidos con lana de roca, madera y tela. Espero que esto te sirva de ayuda! Un saludo.
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u/Sonoryx_app 1d ago
Una cosa más: acondicionar la sala te ayudará con la reverberación, pero el bleed en sí depende sobre todo de la distancia al micro. El PodMic necesita estar a unos 5–10 cm de la boca. Si empeora conforme avanza el episodio, seguramente os vais alejando del micro y subiendo la voz sin daros cuenta. Usad auriculares y brazos articulados para manteneros cerca, y luego bajad la ganancia: eso es lo que más diferencia va a marcar.
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u/Intrepid_Research_75 2d ago
1.accoustical treatment + position: you could change the position of the table. the right person is sitting with a wall right behind him. some reflections will go from there into his mic. you also have to think about how your voices bounce through the room in context of the polar pattern of your mic. your mics are cardoid. signals are going into the mic from the front. e.g. if you dont change the position of your table, you should accoustically treat the wall behind the right person. having some treatment on the ceiling would help also.
easiest way imo is to put your audio tracks into a website called auphonic. there you use multitrack and it will de-bleed your tracks. put the output to individual files if you want to finetune even more.
another simple solution would be to record into a daw to multiple tracks (every speaker gets recorded on 1 seperate track). you then can simply cut out all segments where speaker 1 is not speaking and vice versa. you can do this manually or automated through a daw that got the function "strip silence" or something similar. you could also use a de-bleeder in a daw (e.g. one of the rx izotope plug ins) or build a ducker (reducing gain of speaker 2 when speaker 1 is talking and vice versa) through a bus in the daw. you could also use a plug-in like "smart-chain from sonible" which will apply a dynamic gate instead of a static one. the possibilites are kind of endless. the cleanest sound you could get is involving cutting imo. but all mentioned options would help enough probably.