Tell me if this sounds familiar. You click on a video, the first few seconds play, and something feels off. You can't name it yet. The visuals look fine. But something is pushing you toward the back button and you don't know why.
Then you realize — it's the audio.
Your ears process discomfort faster than your eyes do. Bad audio registers as a problem before your brain has even had a chance to evaluate the content. And yet, audio is almost universally treated as the last priority in video production. An afterthought. Something the editor handles on the way out the door.
That's a mistake, and it's costing creators more than they realize.
The workflow for most YouTube videos and video podcasts is pretty consistent across the board. First the video gets recorded, then it goes through post-production — editing, VFX, color grading, and audio mixing. Usually this is all done by a single person. Sometimes, when a creator starts making money, they hire an editor to take care of the entire post-production process. We'll call them a jack-of-all-trades editor — the most common type of editor found in the creator space.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a jack-of-all-trades editor. They're budget-friendly, and they will almost always deliver a decent final product. But what if you want that final product to be better than decent? At that point you need more than a jack-of-all-trades editor. The problem is master-of-all-trades editors don't exist. Something will always suffer, and that something is usually audio.
It's not because editors are lazy or don't care. It's because audio is a completely separate discipline that takes years to develop an ear for. Most editors have a working knowledge of audio, but working knowledge and specialist-level skill are two very different things — and that gap shows up in every video they deliver. Excessive mouth noises, over-compressed dialogue, music drowning out the voice, inconsistent levels from one segment to the next. You get the idea.
Whether you're flying solo or managing a full production team, the answer is the same: stop treating audio like an afterthought.
If you're doing everything yourself, learn enough about audio to understand what you're listening for and why. Understand gain staging, compression, noise reduction, and loudness targets before you publish another video. The investment pays off in every video you make from here on out. And even if you eventually hand the audio off to someone else, knowing the basics means you can give useful feedback instead of just approving whatever lands in your inbox.
If you have a video editor who isn't strong on audio, you've got two options. Get them proper training, or bring in a mixing engineer to handle audio post separately. Good audio doesn't have to be expensive — but it has to be deliberate.
If you're hiring out your entire production, the same rule applies. Learn enough about audio to advocate for what you actually want. You don't need to know how to run a compressor to know that your host sounds like they're breathing into a paper bag. Know what good sounds like so you can ask for it.
If you want a dedicated audio post engineer without adding another full-time hire, that's exactly what Riot Anthem Studios is built for. We handle everything from noise reduction and dialogue cleanup to music balancing and platform-ready delivery for YouTube creators and video podcasters. Your editor keeps doing what they're good at. We handle the thing that was suffering.
Audio isn't secondary. It never was. Your audience's ears will tell them something is wrong before their eyes even catch up, and by the time they've consciously registered the problem, they've already decided whether to stay or leave.
Stop treating audio like a checkbox at the end of the production process. It's not a feature you add when you have budget left over. It's the foundation everything else sits on.