Welcome to Pocket-Sized Podcasting, brought to you by Alitu: The Podcast Maker. And on this episode, we’re talking about background noise. Let’s clear up a bit of confusion amongst podcasters - the difference between sound treatment, and sound *proofing*. On the last episode we talked about reverb, and that’s very much in the sound *treatment* camp. But many folks mistakenly believe that, once they’ve stuck up some acoustic tiles, they have sound *proofed* their room. If Dave Grohl was to move into the flat next door and start playing his drums, you’d quickly find out that your room hasn’t been sound proofed at all, though. Eliminating unwanted background noise can be harder than *treating* the sound of a room, for obvious reasons. There are some low-hanging fruits, though. Getting rid of that annoying clock, closing a window, or giving Dave next door a crisp 20 to nip down the pub for the next hour. The good news is that most unwanted background noise will be too minimal to be picked up by your mic and cause any distraction on your audio. A dynamic, cardioid microphone like the Samson Q2U, for example, does a great job of rejecting unwanted sounds around you. So do your best to minimise background noise, but don’t obsess over it. Conditions will rarely be perfect, after all. And you can’t let them get in the way of your progress as a podcaster. For a more detailed look at dealing with background noise in podcasting, go to http://thepodcasthost.com/noise