“Dynamic Range”: One of the Keys to a Compelling Podcast

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I love In Our Time on BBC Radio 4. It’s an institution: A panel of academic experts discussing their niches while Melvin Bragg sasses them? Delightful.

But if you asked me to tell you something I’ve learned from an episode, I honestly don’t think I could. Why? Because the show has zero dynamic range.

Melvin Bragg: Sassy Man

What is dynamic range, and why does it matter to podcasting?

The human brain uses a tonne of energy – around 20% of the body’s overall consumption – and that means it looks for efficiencies where it can. If your brain thinks everything’s ticking along smoothly without any new events it needs to be vigilant to (hungry approaching tigers, etc.) it’ll conserve energy by going into autopilot, and that means it stops paying attention.

That’s why, no matter how much you want to learn about the Hanseatic Language, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, or the Great Stink, after a few minutes of academics explaining them to Melvin Bragg: Sass Machine in the same voices, volumes, and pitches, like it or not you’re going to stop listening.

Mixing up the dynamic range – the timbre, volume, and pace of your piece – is vital to making audio with impact, because that’s what keeps your audience engaged.

How can you keep people listening to your podcast?

There’s no hard and fast rule to working with dynamic range, and you should always follow your own tastes, but I find the sweet spot for holding an audience’s attention (or mine at least) is a little under two minutes.

This means that roughly every two minutes, you want something to change. It could be the person speaking, the energy in their voice, the music, sound effects, archive, or something else, but you can’t just keep alternating between the same two things. When the brain starts to sense a repeating pattern, it’s going to assume it doesn’t need to listen anymore.

This is basically about musicality, which is central to interesting sound design and something I’m going to write about in a future blog. A lot of music is about establishing patterns and interrupting them – theme and variation – and the same is true for speech-based audio.

So, in terms of sound (because content and narrative are something else I’m going to write about in future posts):

Dynamic Range + Variety = Compelling Audio

What does strong dynamic range sound like?

To illustrate strong dynamic range that keeps an audience engaged, I’m going to pick apart the intro I made for an episode of the Guardian’s award-winning Today in Focus podcast.

(Listen to the full episode here)

Now, this clip is just over 2 minutes in itself, but being the introduction to an episode it needs to be especially arresting. There’s some kind of dynamic variation every 5 to 10 seconds here, which would be exhausting to listen to for a full 30 minutes, but might be appropriate for a hard-hitting intro, or a climactic sequence somewhere in your piece.

Here’s a rough breakdown of what’s happening:

  • 0” – 8” Presenter Nosheen Iqbal is speaking without anything underneath. We’re around a 2/10 here.

  • 8” – 48” Around 40 seconds of alternating speech and archive, changing every 5 to 10 seconds, over some droning music. A solid 5/10

  • 48” – 1’08” Sooner or later that’s going to get boring. Your brain’s going to figure out the pattern and start switching off. So we change up the dynamic a little. A (thematically appropriate) clock starts beeping, and the droning music starts to rise up in the mix, some other sound effects come into play. Pushing up to maybe 8/10 here!

  • 1’08” – 1’20 But careful! The ear’s only going to tune in to that kind of dense noise for so long. So after a brief climax the dynamic comes down again: a single note repeated on the piano, then Nosheen with nothing underneath her. Notice how there’s still some residual tension from the previous section. 3/10.

  • 1’20” – 1’36” Now we’re mixing up the dynamic with some music again, but notice that this isn’t too full on. It’s got rhythm, but no beat. 6/10.

  • 1’36” – 2’06” Now we take it up a notch, introduce a beat and return to our pattern, alternating between Nosheen and fairly urgent-sounding archive. 8.5/10

  • 2’06” – 2’11” There’s a lot going on now and we’re nearly at the end, so just to give one last boost to Nosheen’s last line – the all-important title – we’re going to switch up the dynamic one last time, taking the music down a notch. 7/10 here, but not for long…

  • 2’11 – 2’16 … after a few seconds, we crank everything back up for the final line, which is all the more emphatic for following a moment of relative calm. 9/10

 

Now see how these (very scientific) scores out of ten look plotted on a (very accurate) graph, and you get an idea what’s going on… It’s all a bit “Kurt Vonnegut explaining story structure,” right? You’re creating a dramatic arc with sound!

 

So there you have it: speech, archive, music, and effects all brought together with dynamic range and variety in mind. The result: An intro that holds your attention, compels you to listen to what’s being said, and ultimately makes you want to stick around and hear the rest of the episode.

Again, you don’t want to sustain this kind of pitch and pace for a whole piece, but the same principles slowed down some will keep listeners tuned in.

How can you improve the dynamic range in your episodes?

Dynamic range doesn’t necessarily mean you need to pack your podcast with music, archive and sound effects. Many speech-only podcasts are brilliant, but they often rely on gifted presenters and great guests with plenty of chemistry to keep the dynamics varied and the energy up.

You can have a go at improving the dynamic range of your episodes yourself using some of the ideas above, but there’s no substitute for the trained ear and technical experience of a producer who can really make your audio sing (ahem).

Want help making sure your audience tunes into everything you’ve got to say? Get in touch.