Shut Off Your Air Conditioner for Recording

For a few weeks it was really warm and I was a bit lax with shutting off my air conditioner. Because of this there was some pretty nasty artifacting in my podcast recordings.

For every episode of The Bandrew Says Podcast, I include a noise gate on my signal chain. I don’t make it too aggressive, I only attenuate by 6-10dB when the gate closes. When I have my fans and air conditioner shut off, this is very hard to notice, it just improves the underlying noise floor. HOWEVER, when the air conditioner is on, you can hear that dreaded artifact of gates where you have this constant fluctuating noise floor. When the gate opens you hear the air con 10dB louder than you do when it closes. For some people listening in their cars or in noisy environments this will not be noticeable. But if you’re listening in a quiet environment it is absolutely maddening.

I have gone back to my old habits of shutting of my A/C and fans prior to hitting record and the podcast episodes are back to sounding pretty darn good in my opinion. So my advice to you is SHUT OFF YOUR A/C AND FANS BEFORE RECORDING!

Clip from BSP-400: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N37hzt_2ys
Originally aired: 8 SEP 2024