Using Stereo in Podcasts

11 Jul 2018 at 18:55 // under Podcast

I have finished listening to a podcast that consisted of an interview between two people.

The creator of the podcast decided to make full use of the stereo streams. The interviewer was asking the question in the left audio channel and the interviewee was in the right channel. This may have been ok when listening in a room with two speakers on one wall, however that is not how I listen to podcasts.

I was initially listening with headphones on, and so I could only hear the interviewer in my left ear, and the interviewee in the right ear. This was very distracting and also lead to me missing bits. Perhaps there was a lot of noise on one side of me that drowned out what I could hear from that ear. I later tried listening in the car but had a similar problem. In the end I listened to it on my phone without any headphones so both streams were coming from the same point.

If you are deaf in one ear¹ then you are completely unable to follow the conversation.

It would be much more inclusive and sound more natural if there the full conversation could be heard in each ear. That is not to say that stereo should be thrown away and only listen in mono, but do it in moderation. 80% in one ear, 20% the other rather thar 100% to 0%.

1. or you have a broken set of headphones ↩

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