The most expensive microphone in an untreated room sounds worse than a cheap microphone in an acoustically treated room. Not just a little worse. Noticeably worse. That is the starting point for everything that follows.
Don’t start with the microphone. Start with the why.
The most common mistake: investing in equipment before you know what you want to say, to whom, and why. A professional recording of the wrong podcast won’t solve anything.
Ask yourself three questions before you plug in a single cable. What is the purpose of this podcast: to educate, to build trust, or something else specific? Who is the audience? And what constitutes success after one season?
Those questions determine everything: format, filming, production. Without that clarity, you’re spending money on an unclear goal.
The room always echoes
Echoes, reverberation, the hum of a refrigerator three meters away: that kind of noise can’t be completely filtered out afterward. You can make it less noticeable, but you can’t eliminate it entirely.
Acoustic treatment sounds technical. In practice, it means one thing: your voice sounds just like you, without the room adding or taking anything away.
The shipyard cellars in Utrecht are something special. Thick brick walls, vaulted ceilings. Guests sometimes mention them without us even bringing them up. That says it all.
Listening live is not the same as listening to a recording
Someone is always there during every recording, listening live. Not to press buttons, but to hear what’s happening as it happens.
A chair that squeaks at the three-minute mark. A guest who keeps moving back away from the microphone. A phone on silent that still vibrates on the table. If you catch that during the live broadcast, you fix it. If you only notice it during editing, you hope it’s not too bad.
Conversations should feel authentic. But you want to prevent technical issues from overshadowing the content—not fix them after the fact.
The difference between a podcast and a listening experience
There are now more than five million podcasts. Most of them are interviews: two people, a microphone, questions and answers. That format works, but it doesn’t set them apart.
What the podcasts that stick with people have in common is that they contain an element you can’t find anywhere else. Something in the format, in the tone, in the way guests are challenged. Not necessarily spectacular, but relatable and unique.
“The Journey” for KLM sounds like a mini-documentary. “In the Rijksmuseum” has already released 134 episodes at its own unique pace. “The Man with the Rattles” for the Jewish Museum was nominated for a Buma Award for podcast design. Not because they got lucky, but because they put thought into the experience, not just the conversation.
Video is now just part of the package
Five years ago, a video podcast was something you had to organize separately. Now it’s a standard part of professional podcast production.
In just one day of recording, you can produce audio for Spotify and Apple Podcasts, video for YouTube, and shorter clips for LinkedIn and Instagram. Four formats, one session. For organizations that take content seriously, this is now the standard—not a bonus.
Lighting, camera angles, background: none of that matters for audio recordings. But it does for video. Both studios—in Utrecht and Amsterdam—are equipped for that purpose.
Where do you start?
Testing a format? Start at home. That’s smart, but not cheap. But if you want a podcast that reflects your organization’s values, quality starts with the space where you record.
Curious to hear how that sounds? Stop by one of our studios or email us at studio@big-orange.nl. We’d be happy to help you figure it out.
Jos Jansen is the founder and Creative Audio Director of Big Orange. He studied music technology, plays guitar on Spanish beaches during his vacations, and organizes annual sing-alongs for a few hundred people at a time. He writes about podcasts, audio, and the effects of sound on people.