Does Sound Quality Really Matter?
Yes, it does.
Sound quality can actually have an impact on what a listener thinks of you and your content.
In 2018, Drs. Eryn J. Newman and Norbert Schwarz conducted a study at the University of Southern California. They had participants listened to two talks: one by a physicist and one by an engineer. All of the participants listened to the same two talks, but they heard the talks in different audio quality. So some of them heard the physicist talk in crystal-clear audio and the engineer talk in slightly distorted and echoey audio. And then the other half heard the physicist's speech in a low audio quality and the engineer speech and a high audio quality.
After they heard each speech, they were asked to answer four questions using a scale of one to five, five being the most positive.
How good do you think the talk was?
How smart do you think the speaker is?
How much do you like the speaker?
How important do you think the research is?
Participants who heard the talk in the low quality audio versus those who heard it in the high quality, found the talk to be less good, the speaker to be less intelligent, and less likable, and the research to be less important.
So why would that be if the talks are exactly the same? The only difference being the audio quality? One reason you might think of is that the audio quality was poor enough that maybe the listener couldn't understand the content. But to account for that Newman and Schwarz had the participants answer some questions about the talk to make sure that they understood the content first.
So the reason that they suggest the low quality audio had such an effect on the listeners' perception of the talk is that when messages are difficult to process, people think they're less compelling. Other studies have shown that people are less likely to trust information if it's difficult to read, like in poor handwriting, or low-contrast print. So an example of that would be like yellow text on white paper is much harder to read than black text on white paper, which is very high contrast.
You could have the best podcast content in the world, but if you have poor audio quality, your audience won't perceive it that way.
We’re not saying this because you need to go out and buy super expensive audio equipment and set up a studio in your house to have a good podcast. But it is really important to pay attention to your audio quality for your podcast.
If you want more information on the study by Newman and Schwarz, you can find a link to the paper here.
The study really focuses on high audio quality versus low audio quality, but what about terrible audio quality? If audio quality is really bad, it can make a podcast absolutely unlistenable. And it is so frustrating as a listener if you can't understand the audio, or if there's like an annoying sound in the background. And that will definitely make a listener turn a podcast off. So if you record an episode and you listen back, and the audio quality is really bad, like you can hear your fridge buzzing in the background the whole time, or maybe you had the mic turn the wrong way. It's absolutely worth it to address that audio quality issue and then re-record the episode. We highly, highly recommend doing that.
1. Newman EJ, Schwarz N. Good Sound, Good Research: How Audio Quality Influences Perceptions of the Research and Researcher. Science Communication. 2018;40(2):246-257. doi:10.1177/1075547018759345