How Loud Should You Be Recording Your Podcast? (2025)

There are a lot of technical questions when starting your podcast that seem easy at first glance, but once you start digging into the problem, you realize there might be more nuance than you first thought. Today, we’ll go over why you shouldn’t try recording your audio at the same level you’re going to put it out at, and why it’s so important to have good technique when recording; you need at least a base level of understanding for the hardware that you’re using. We’ll go over all of that in this article, and by the end, you’ll have all the confidence in the world for how to record the perfect audio!

What is Headroom? And Why Do You Need it?

When you are listening to a podcast, or music, or a lot of published audio, it’s loud. It sounds nothing like when you are monitoring your voice through your headphones, or right after you record your podcast. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of which we will go over today, but know that that’s ok; in fact, that’s exactly what you want!

When you record audio, you want it to be a little quieter than you need. You want to give yourself some grace, so if someone yells, or laughs loudly, or there is any loud noise that you need to keep, it won’t go above 0dBFS, or “digitally clip”. That is basically when your input audio gets so loud that your microphone/audio interface can’t keep up with it! That audio will be gone forever! 

Now, when I say you want to give a little grace, I mean you want to set the recording levels, so at the loudest point of your speaking, the levels should be peaking around -12dBFS to -6dBFS. That is a rule of thumb; it’s the rule that I follow when recording almost any piece of audio, so I know it won’t ever clip. That 6 - 12 dB of grace is called headroom, and you should have at least some amount in every recording.

Keep in mind that it’s always better to record too quietly than to record too loudly. You can always bring audio back up, you can’t bring audio back that’s clipped and gone forever.

Noise Floor, and How it Relates to Input Gain

You might be wondering, why don’t I just record SUPER quietly and save myself all the effort of trying to get the exact right levels? That’s where the noise floor comes into play.

All microphones need some kind of preamp to get their levels from mic level to line level. Mic level will be too quiet for any recording, and is just from the acoustic vibrations of the capsule. That signal is sent from the capsule to a preamp, and then converted into a digital signal. If you have an audio interface, that’s one of its jobs, if you have a usb microphone, it has that preamp built right into it. Pretty cool, right?

Well, that preamp introduces some extra noise because it needs to raise the levels by so much. So when you set the input gain to the appropriate levels, the preamp won’t be heard quite as much, but if you record super quietly and boost the volume in post, you will be able to hear the hiss from the preamp much easier!

It’s not just the noise from the preamp, any background noise from the room you’re recording in will also get raised and might compete with the person or instrument you’re trying to record.

Just keep in mind that ALL the noise will be raised when you boost the volume in post, so it’s better to get the dynamics between your subject that you’re trying to record, and the noise floor right to begin with, so you don’t need to deal with all that noise afterwards.

Do You Need to Worry About a Preamp?

I touched on this a little already, but you almost definitely don’t need to worry about getting a separate preamp. If you have a USB microphone, it’s built directly into it. If you have an audio interface, most of the time that will be enough.

If you have very quiet microphones like the Shure SM7B, or the EV RE20 for example, you may need an extra boost, like the Cloudlifter or the Fethead, in order not to introduce too much noise when boosting/compressing it in post. If you’re buying a microphone, most of the reviews will tell you if you need extra power.

Mic Technique: Why it Matters for Loudness

Keep the microphone relatively close to your mouth! Usually about 3-5 inches away is about right. This may seem too close if you’re new to recording your voice, but trust me, it’s the right technique and it will get you the best results!

This is the same concept as the noise floor. The further away from the mic you are, the more you will be competing with all the other noises happening around you. Got your computer fan running? Is your window open? Is your AC on? The further away you are the more that stuff will interfere with your voice.

Think about it this way, if you had a fan running on the other side of the room, and you stood right next to it to record, you would barely be able to hear your voice over the sound of the fan blowing. That is an extreme way of saying the closer to the noise and further from the mic you are, the more background noise you will introduce.

Even if you have an untreated echoey room, you could still get ok audio if you stick close to the mic and speak quietly.