In this episode of Podcasting Insights, I unpack what happens when technology starts erasing the difference between effort and outcome — and ask what podcasting quietly loses when “good sound” becomes a default instead of a craft.
This isn’t an anti-AI rant.
And it’s not about gatekeeping beginners.
It’s about incentives.
Standards.
And what we’re rewarding at scale.
You’ll learn:
• Why AI audio tools raise standards and lower effort at the same time
• How one-click fixes create a podcasting “house sound”
• The difference between accessibility and erasing craft
• Why effort still matters, even when listeners can’t hear it
• The question creators should be asking before relying on AI cleanup
Podknows helps brands and creators to build their podcasts into virtual sales and marketing teams which get them results even when they're sleeping. Find out more at https://podknows.co.uk/
Transcripts
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let me ask you something.
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If someone records a podcast episode on their phone and then someone else spends
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years technique, out acoustic control,
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sound
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design.
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General production and publication, should they sound the same?
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Do they have a right to, is
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that fair?
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Because
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that's the direction we're heading in.
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Let me take a moment to let you know about this voice region.
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you heard the clip That was the demo video from this new tool from Waves Audio.
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Now, waves have got a lot of respect for Waves.
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They've been in the audio software game for many years and I know about
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them because they do a plugin for Adobe Audition, which I've used for many years,
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along with Isotope RX tools as well.
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They're kind of competitors in the space.
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And the idea behind these tools is that you put terrible audio into them
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and then they clean it up, and some do it better than others, but generally
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speaking, waves is one of the good ones.
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So the idea is record your content, click one button, upload your audio.
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Echo gone.
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Background noise.
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Gone.
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Studio quality sound comes in.
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The idea being that if you are either strapped for cash or you don't
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want to invest in decent equipment, you can record stuff on your phone
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or on your laptop, Mike, and it sounds like you're in the studio,
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I've got mixed feelings about this.
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On one hand for the listener experience, it's great.
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It's raising standards even when people don't really wanna put any
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effort in to raising standards.
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On the other
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hand,
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that it's raising standards, even when people don't wanna put the effort in
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to raise standards, and it's lowering the cost of entry to sound incompetent.
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So
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it seems to me like we're not rewarding the craft anymore.
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We're not rewarding the effort.
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We're not rewarding the learning, the development, the mastery.
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We're rewarding someone having access to a credit
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card.
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Now,
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look, don't get me
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wrong, there is something quite heartwarming and noble about
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lowering barriers to entry.
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I'm
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a gatekeeper.
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I don't wanna be
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a gatekeeper.
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The only thing I gatekeeper around is people that come in from a
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completely unrelated space, like
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hr.
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or accounting.
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And business dries up and they think, oh, I've listened to a podcast words,
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I'm gonna become a podcast consultant.
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And that happens far more often than you might think.
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That's where I do tend to be a gatekeeper, because it's people's
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money and livelihoods at risk.
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I'm
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not a gatekeeper
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against one person being allowed to enter the podcasting space over another.
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That's not fair.
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Everyone's entitled to try something.
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So there is something really good about lowering those barriers.
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But there's something dangerous about pretending the effort
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doesn't
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matter.
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And that's essentially what we're saying here.
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you got the
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serious Who
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spent
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three to 500 quid
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on a mic.
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They've invested in treating their room acoustic treatments so it sounds decent,
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and they've spent time learning sound, how to edit what sounds good in the mix.
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you've got the lazy influencer their iPhone stands in the kitchen.
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kitchen.
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Does zero prep.
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Doesn't need to learn editing,
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doesn't
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need to bother learning sound design, and yet their content pops.
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So the question I would ask is this,
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If
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both outputs are valid and.
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seemingly functionally identical,
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What behavior are we incentivizing here?
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Because
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the markets tend to
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reward
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what's cheapest at scale.
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the thing
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that I think a lot of people are gonna be overlooking with
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this
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story.
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many other stories like it.
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when a new exciting tool goes to market and allows everyone to sound
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like they've recorded in the studio, even if they actually recorded with
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a sock wrapped around their iPhone.
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Tools like this are not simply cleaning up
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audio.
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That's the surface
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level thing they do.
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What tools like this are doing is they're creating a house sound.
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What I mean by that is you go to a supermarket and you get
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the house
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wine, as
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in.
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the wine that you will see in wine racks up and down the country
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versus.
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The wine.
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Wine that someone is proud to display might have cost them a lot more.
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Maybe they've had to research it.
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They've got knowledge of wine, so their
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bottle
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out in the rack of house wines, and that's what's happening with podcasting
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At the moment, really
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good.
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Podcasts do stand out still.
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what they sound like, they stand out.
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You can tell the difference in recording quality editing, quality
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production, quality, just the general production standards that the
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publishers have had behind the project.
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But we're creeping away from that, and once platforms start to expect that sound.
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That becomes the standard and the norm.
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anything
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outside of that is going to feel wrong, the wall.
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So other content won't be
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banned.
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It'll just be discouraged, ignored, mocked.
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And that's how a medium stops evolving, not through rules, but through defaults.
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judge in the independent podcast awards, and every year I attend that event
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and we reward independent creators
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who may not have the best
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sounding podcasts.
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but the
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creativity and their vision carries them towards an award.
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But what's gonna happen if people who are spending their time
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out
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the creativity and the content side of things, but aren't
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necessarily that invested in.
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Dampening their audio with a one click fix is all
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tool.
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Are we now going to
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punish them because their podcast
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sounds a little bit different?
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It sounds a little bit more, I don't know, rustic than the studio quality
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podcasts that are flooding the platforms.
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Now look, let me be completely transparent.
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As someone
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that
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invests time and money into creating high quality sounding studio level podcasts.
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Yeah, there's an element of, oh,
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I'm
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not
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sure I want Pretenders
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to the throne coming in
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and doing what I do in a fraction of the time at a commoditized cost.
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Of course, there's an element of that, but there's also an element of the art.
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getting
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lost.
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For example,
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in podcast episodes, I don't just one click fix all the audio.
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Some of the audio I leave to breathe let it sound as it was
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recorded, and that makes it stand
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out.
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But where
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we those moments won't stand out anymore.
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So here's the question that I can't shake.
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If technology is allowed to erase
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the difference between
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effort and laziness, what exactly are we telling creators now and
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how long until our listeners can't tell the difference either?
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either?
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I've been the lio, the podcast master,
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and I'd like to thank you for taking the time to listen to my
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thoughts on this particular topic on the show, podcasting Insights.
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if you think somebody else might find this episode useful or interesting,
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please do share it with them.
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And if you haven't yet, please do follow the podcast in your favorite podcast app.
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in the meantime, good luck with your ongoing journey towards
