22 – Editing your podcast the complete guide to tools and workflows

Hello there and welcome to PodcasterPlus, the podcast offering tips and tricks to simplify and automate your podcast. I’m your host, Nathan Wrigley. Find all the episodes at podcasterplus.com/show.

Now, if you’ve been running a podcast for more than five minutes, you already know the ugly truth. Editing is the single biggest time sink in the entire industry. I’ve recorded literally thousands of episodes across my other shows, and if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s that for every hour of audio you record, you are looking at three, possibly four hours sitting in the editing chair. It’s pretty exhausting, and fairly uninteresting at times. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be a slog.

So today I want to share the workflow, which I’ve refined over the past decade or so. We’re going to talk about the tools that actually matter, and the step-by-step process to get you from a raw, messy, recording to something polished and professional. A master, without losing your mind. As always, we’re going to chunk up the episode into different sections, and let’s start with the tools.

People often want to know what’s the best software for editing, and my answer is pretty much the same today as it always has been. It’s the one that you’ll actually use. So if you’re just starting with your budget, and it’s exactly zero, Audacity is a good old, faithful piece of software. It’s open source, it works on everything, and while it looks like it was designed in 1998, which it may well have been, it’s incredibly powerful. If you’re on a Mac, there’s Garage Band. That’s already there sitting on your hard drive, and it’s surprisingly capable for spoken word audio.

But if you’re ready to level up, I’ve got two personal favourites. There’s Reaper now that’s incredibly affordable, and probably the most customizable piece of software you can use. There’s also Hindenberg. It was built specifically for journalists and storytellers, meaning it handles things like magic levelling automatically.

I also have to mention Descript. It’s a bit of a game changer because it lets you edit audio by editing the text transcript. Think of editing a Word document and simultaneously editing the audio. It’s fairly amazing. If you’re a solopreneur wearing every hat, that kind of speed and workflow can be a bit of a lifesaver.

So you’ve got the software now how do you actually edit? Most people dive in and start cutting from the beginning. This is a mistake. You need a bit of a system.

The workflow that I have followed in the past, and it’s a very specific four step framework, goes like this, repair, cut, polish, and then master.

So step one is the repair pass. Before you touch a single, um, or ah, you need to clean the canvas. Use a noise filter reduction tool to remove that background hum, or the his from your air conditioner. If you’ve got clicks and pops, go fix them. Now. There’s nothing worse than a perfectly paced episode that sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel.

So the next one, the rough cut. This is where you remove the big stuff. The tangents that didn’t go anywhere, the false starts, or the time the dog began barking because the postman arrived. Don’t be a perfectionist here, just get the structure more or less right.

And then you can add step three, the polish. So now we’re going to zoom in. This is where you tighten up the pacing. If there’s a three second gap between a question and an answer, it’s time to trim that down to one second. It makes you sound more confident, and keeps the listener engaged. This is also where you may add in your intro, your outro, and those lovely musical transitions that you’ve been thinking long and hard about.

Okay, step four, mastering. Finally, let’s talk about loudness. This is a little bit technical, but it’s pretty crucial. You want your episode to be the same volume as every other show in all of the podcast apps. The industry standard is using a unit called LUFS. Yes, LUFS. LUFS Now for stereo minus 16 LUFS is what’s preferred, and if you’re going for mono minus 19 LUFS. Most modern DAWs, or digital audio workstations, have a loudness normalizer built in. Why not just use it? Your listeners will thank you later because you will preserve their ears.

Okay, moving on. I know what you’re thinking, Nathan, this sounds like a lot of work. And you’re right, it is. That’s why efficiency elsewhere is so important. At PodcasterPlus, we don’t build editing software, but we do build the tools that give you the time to edit. If you aren’t wrestling with guest booking emails, or manual WordPress updates, you can spend that time and energy on making your audio shine.

If you want to dive deeper into these tools, I’ve put together a guide on the PodcasterPlus blog with further suggestions. You can find it by going to PodcasterPlus.com. That post is called Editing Your Podcast, the Complete Guide to Tools and Workflows, and just so that you can find it more easily, it was published on March the 13th, 2026.

If you’re struggling with consistency because editing takes too long, you might want to check out episode 20 of this podcast, in which we talk about the ways that you can use your time more effectively. It’s a bit of a lifesaver for staying ahead of schedule.

So there you go. That’s what I’ve got for you this time around. Thank you very much for tuning into the PodcasterPlus podcast. You can find it at PodcasterPlus.com/show. And we will see you next time for some more tips and tricks to simplify and automate your podcast.