4 Types of Podcast Editing to Consider (and How to Edit Faster)

By and large, the most time consuming activity for podcasters is editing. Many edit their own show (something I generally recommend against), which can take 2-3x longer than the actual recording.

Since podcasting is a loss generator for most starting out, it’s understandable that one may not have the budget to hire an editor. So how do we, as podcasters, save some money while also getting a decent edit on the show? There are a few different ways to edit, depending on your process.

1. The Super Polished

I think this is the one a lot of people want to go for at first. The problem is if you’ve never edited before, it can take a long time to learn and the work may go…unappreciated. This is also a lot harder to do if you’re putting out a weekly podcast

For long time podcasters, like Myke and Grey from Cortex, who do a monthly show and pass the edit back and forth, listening to the episode multiple times, a polished edit might make sense.

The same goes for the Gimlets and Wonderys of the world, who have a staff of editors that can clean up already good recordings, add foley¹, and edit in a way that tells a story.

This is probably overkill for most shows.

2. The Quick Clean Up

Instead of going to great lengths to get everything sounding perfect, you can employ the quick clean up, which is what I do for most of my podcast episodes. My editor will combine the audio, clean it up so it sounds better, add the bumpers and sponsors, and remove an retakes².

Note, that this does not remove ever um, like, ah, and pause from the recording. Most of the time, that will make the recording sound weirdly cut and unnatural.

This is what I’d recommend for most podcasters. And with apps like Descript, editing this way is a bit easier. You can run through a transcript to remove words that correspond with the audio edits.

And with Studio Sound being out of beta, you can even clean up rough audio…just make sure to have a listen first because you may lose some sounds, especially if you trail off while speaking.

Doing this edit allows you to spend some time editing the show, but not so much that you’re sinking 4 or even 8 hours into it.

3. Intro, Outro, and Ship

One of the fastest ways to put some polish on your show without doing too much editing is to add an intro and outro, maybe with a music bed, and ship it. You can create a template in GarageBand, Audacity, or Descript, and record the intro/outro after you record the full episode.

This allows you to make the show a little more dynamic, let the audience know what’s coming, then recap at the end. This also allows you to add a relevant call to action after the fact too.

I will do this when I’m in a pinch, but I really do prefer to do a little more…especially if there are things I want to edit out. A little TLC on your episodes shows your listeners you care.

4. Record and Release

Finally, there’s “Record and release.” Some will also call this “record to tape.” Basically you just record the episode and release it as is, no editing.

This likely works best if you script your show, in a controlled environment. I do this with WP Review, which is mostly scripted, and just me on the mic, recording into equipment I’ve dialed in to sound perfect over years. Not a whole lot of editing necessary for this fortnightly news show.

I would generally caution against this one though, especially if you have guests. The effort you put into the show is evident³. Doing some editing is likely required for every podcast, even the ones that also live stream.

How to Reduce Editing Time

While this topic can be a blog post of its own⁴, there are a few quick wins for making editing easier. The most important thing to remember here is that any editor will tell you prevention is a lot easier than fixing. It feels like the editor’s version of, “ask for forgiveness, not permission.” If you get a mic that doesn’t pick of every car that drives by, and you move your dog to a room away from where you record, you won’t have to edit those sounds out later.

On top of that:

1. Make sure you and your guest are recording in a quiet place, free of distractions.
2. Make sure everyone wears headphones. Seriously.
3. Have you and your guest record your audio locally and separately. This gives you the completely uncompressed, cleanest version of the audio. You can use a service like Zencastr, or have your guest record in Quicktime or Sound Recorder. Having separate tracks makes editing one person easier too.
4. Pre-record what you can. Bumpers, sponsor reads, anything that you can drop in later. Adding short gaps in your recordings help too.
5. When you do need to reset and rephrase something, do it at the beginning of the thought. This is a “clean take,” so you’re not trying to merge 2 takes together with milliseconds in between.
6. Set up templates in Descript or whatever editing app you use. Having the intro music already in place, for example, makes editing a bit faster.
7. Remember done is better than perfect. Clean up what you can, but don’t try to scrub every um, ah, or car that drives by.

Finally remember you can iterate, grow, and hopefully get to a point where you can hire an editor!

1. A fancy production word for sound effects ↩
2. I point these out by clapping my hands into the mic, so it makes a long, thin line on the wave file. ↩
3. Case in point: WP Review is not nearly as popular as How I Built It, though they were both on the same feed for a while. ↩
4. opens a new sheet in Ulysses ↩

When to Hand Off the Edit to Someone Else

Editing your own show can feel virtuous, but there comes a point where it stops making sense. A good rule of thumb: if an episode takes more than three times its raw length to edit on a regular basis, we are probably losing money somewhere else. That could be time we spend booking guests, researching topics, promoting the show, or just sleeping. Plenty of podcasters burn out not because recording is hard, but because they spend every Sunday hunched over a timeline removing mouth clicks.

The cost of an editor is often lower than people assume, especially if you work with a freelancer rather than an agency. Rates vary wildly, but many skilled editors charge per episode or per finished hour. Before you dismiss it, go get two or three quotes, ask for before-and-after samples, and start with a single test episode. You may find that a partial handoff works best: an editor does the heavy technical cleanup and rough cuts, and you do the final listen for tone and content. That still saves hours while keeping you in control.

Common Editing Mistakes That Waste Your Time

Most editing overruns are self-inflicted. One of the biggest mistakes we make is trying to remove every single filler word and breath. Yes, a wall of "um" is distracting, but if you cut every pause and every inhale, the speaker starts to sound like a robot, and you might spend an extra hour making the show feel less human. A better approach is to remove only the fillers that break the rhythm or sit at the start of a sentence, and leave natural breaths alone unless they are unusually loud.

Another common time sink is trying to fix a bad recording in post. Noise reduction can work wonders, but it cannot restore a guest who recorded in a tiled bathroom with a laptop mic. No amount of EQ will make that sound like a studio recording. Here are a few more time-wasters to watch for:

• Editing in random order instead of first pass for content, second pass for audio.
• Re-listening to the whole episode repeatedly instead of marking cuts while recording or using a transcript.
• Applying effects to each clip manually instead of building a reusable preset or chain.
• Normalizing volume at the start, then having to redo it after every cut changes the levels.

If you catch yourself doing any of these, stop and write down a repeatable sequence. The goal is not a perfect edit, but a repeatable one that produces a consistent show on schedule.

Choosing Editing Software: Don't Overthink It

There is no single best podcast editing tool, and switching software every few months will cost us more time than any feature will save. Start by matching the tool to your type of edit. If you are doing a quick cleanup, Audacity or GarageBand are more than enough. If you want stronger compression, de-essers, and loudness metering, Reaper is inexpensive and extremely capable. Hindenburg is built specifically for spoken word and includes useful auto-leveling. Descript takes a different approach: edit the transcript like a document and the audio changes with it, which is great for interview-heavy shows.

The main mistake is buying a full professional DAW because you think you need it. Pro Tools or Logic are fantastic, but they come with a learning curve and endless options that can distract from simply shipping the episode. Whatever you pick, spend an afternoon learning only the tools you actually use: import, cut, fade, export, and maybe a noise gate. Then save a template with your mic tracks, music beds, and routing already set up. A boring, well-known workflow beats an exciting new plugin every time.

Audio Repair vs. Creative Editing: Know the Difference

We often blur two very different jobs into one long, frustrating session. Audio repair is technical: removing background hiss, taming sibilance, cutting low-end rumble, reducing clicks, and getting loudness to a consistent level. Creative editing is narrative: deciding which tangents to cut, tightening pauses, moving a story around, choosing where music comes in. If you treat every pass as both at once, you will constantly interrupt one kind of work to fix the other, and the episode will take far longer than it should.

A workable order is to do creative edits first on the raw audio, then run the repair chain, then do a final loudness pass. Keep the repair chain simple and save it as a preset. A typical chain might include a high-pass filter around 80–100 Hz to remove rumble, a de-clicker, gentle EQ to add clarity, light compression to even out levels, and loudness normalization to a podcast-friendly target. You do not need to understand every control, just what each stage is for and roughly where to set it.

• Pass 1: Cut content, remove tangents, tighten pauses.
• Pass 2: Apply noise reduction, de-click, EQ, compression.
• Pass 3: Normalize loudness and export.

Separating these passes feels slower at first, but it prevents the endless loop of re-listening after every tiny change. It also makes it much easier to hand off just one stage to someone else later.