In the first part, I talked about the painful decision to abandon a long edit and start again from the original recordings. The second part was about the workflow that came out of that decision: the recording and editing chain I now use, and the places where I try not to wing it.
The central shift is that I no longer want processing to rescue poor audio. I want the microphone capture to be good enough that the later stages can stay gentle: careful recording, light cleanup, editing on good audio, loudness adjustment, and then the slightly humbling discipline of listening through properly.
It sounds technical, because it is, but the point is practical. Every tool I remove is one less chance to damage the voice. Every decision I make early is one less problem to repair later. And if tone has to be right at capture, the next question becomes unavoidable: microphone technique.
Happy reading, and happy listening.
–Eddie.