Producers Institute Special: Mixing Best Practices with Rob Byers and Michael Raphael

While the technical barrier to podcasting is lower than ever, even budget Digital Audio Workstations and recording equipment are complicated. It can be hard to know how to produce quality sound at the right volume. Join Rob Byers and Michael Raphael, two audio nerds who have mixed and mastered for dozens of shows, as they share the rules of the road for audio mixing in this free, virtual session for the VPM + ICA Community Media Center.

Rob loves working in audio! He has led live international broadcasts from foreign soil, recorded artists from Lizzo to Yo-Yo Ma, mixed beloved podcasts like Criminal and This is Love, and worked on shows like All Things Considered, Weekend America, Morning Edition, and the Peabody award-winning documentary Betrayed By Silence.

Rob trained audio producers across the country with NPR Training and wrote educational guides for producers of all experience levels, including The Ear Training Guide for Audio Producers, The Audio Producer’s Guide to Loudness, and The Producer’s Handbook to Mixing Audio Stories. Rob is now the Director of Broadcast and Media Production at American Public Media.

Michael Raphael has worked on the production teams for The New Yorker Radio Hour, Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, Marketplace, Weekend America, and Radiolab.

His work can be heard on Voyages: Listen to the World from the New York Times, Performance Today, Fiasco, and This is Love, among others. He is an expert field recordist whose company, Rabbit Ears Audio, provides authentic sounds to the film and video game industries. If you need the sound of an Mi-24 Hind helicopter from the Soviet Union or an Olivetti Lettera 22 Royal Standard Model 10 typewriter, he can help you. He is one-third of the audio storytelling post-production and consultation group Final Final v2.