The Case Against Echo Cancellation
I have a relatively simple takeaway for you: if you can help it, don’t use echo cancellation. Why? Turning on echo cancellation sabotages a conversation’s sense of mutual presence and turns a “conversation” into a transaction!
No matter what software you use to record those interviews, you’re likely familiar with “echo cancellation.” It’s a useful little feature that lets you record with another guest without having to obsess over that annoying echo that can sometimes arise from remote recordings.
Echo cancellation will make your job easier, but it will make your podcast worse. Every time.
What does echo cancellation actually do? When your guest forgets to wear headphones, your voice flows throughout their room willy-nilly. The same is true on their end when YOU forget to wear YOUR headphones. And this can cause that annoying “Oh, I can hear myself” effect. Annoying in Zoom meetings. Disastrous for podcast episodes.
Echo cancellation’s approach — to mute the other side until you’re done talking — reduces a conversation down to two individuals taking turns talking.
This is not what a conversation is, and it’s certainly not what presence feels like. Presence is shared and organic — it’s not alternating. When you spend time with your friend, you are constantly aware of one another’s presence, constantly hearing various meaningful verbal tics and expressions of affirmation, surprise, and questioning. And this is not to mention standard interruptions, which have, honestly, gotten a pretty bad rep, but can actually nurture some captivating conversation.
You’re trying to present your audience with an authentic, organic conversational experience.
Turning on echo cancellation will not only sabotage that conversation’s sense of mutual presence, it will also subtly train you and your guest not to speak over one another.
You’ll slowly learn not to even make a sound.
Instead: turn off echo cancellation, make sure you both have headphones, and record the natural way. Practice presence first.
