Today while editing a podcast I stopped to record a bit of the on-screen action. I’ve written before about the audio editing techniques used by the NPR pros make conversations sound clear and intelligible. I use the same methods on my podcasts, and I’ve been meaning to show it. Today’s two-and-a-half-minute screencast gives you a good idea how it works.

In this short example, I’m talking to Partha Sundaram about something called SQM (pronounced ’squim’). In the original version we both talk over each other a bit, and I repeat myself. In the final version each voice stands alone and the needless repetition is gone.

You don’t need fancy editing software to do this. Although I’m using Audition in this demo, I’ve done the same kind of thing quite often in Audacity.

You do, however, need to put the voices onto separate channels. When it comes to telephone recording, I am a disciple of Doug Kaye and I use the gadget he recommends, the Telos One, to split the caller and callee onto left and right stereo channels. At $600 the Telos box clearly isn’t for everyone, though, so I’d be interested to hear about a more accessible way to achieve channel separation.

As I mention in the screencast, it’s tedious to do this kind of editing. But it can go pretty fast once you get the hang of it. Since I review my podcasts anyway before publishing them, I’ve decided it’s worth the trouble to make them as clean and intelligible as I can quickly manage. Just like the pros do.

Or do they? I was driving home with my son last night, listening to Fresh Air — a great episode in which Terry Gross interviews Ira Glass about the new TV version of This American Life — and we were both struck by the absence of internal editing. When my son heard this bit — an extreme but not atypical example of the kind of verbal redundancy we heard throughout the show — he burst out laughing. I just found it puzzling. Is internal editing done only for certain shows and not for others? What rules govern when it is or isn’t done?