The better your source recording sounds, the better your final product will be. While there's much that can be done to "clean up" noisy or glitchy audio, the truth is that the aural quality of the final product depends on the quality of the source.

Here are three of the most important things you can do to create a good source audio recording for your podcast: 1) Record in a quiet place and avoid noises while you record. Choose a time and a place where you won't be interrupted and background noises (people in the next room, loud music nearby, etc.) are minimal, inasmuch as you can control. Don't have your mic on the same surface as your computer keyboard, your mouse, or your coffee. Speaking of drinks, put them on a padded surface (a folded pillowcase or thin towel works) so that when pick it up and put it down, there's no clunking. Avoid using your keyboard at all if you can. And, before you start speaking, record about fifteen to twenty seconds of "room noise." This provides a baseline for noise reduction (tells me what sounds can be removed from the entire recording). 2) Place your microphone about six to eight inches away from your mouth and three to four inches to the side or below. Don't speak directly into the microphone, and if possible, employ a foam or screen pop / wind filter. 3) Speaking of your microphone: it doesn't have to be top of the line, but your recording software should be set up to record at the highest possible quality with *no noise reduction or effects.* The goal is to create a high-fidelity and "pure" recording. BONUS: If you make a mistake speaking, pause, click your tongue three times, pause again, and continue. The tongue click creates three spikey shapes in the "waveform," the graphic representation of the sound, which makes it easy for me to see where mistakes need to be edited out. BONUS BONUS: Stay hydrated! A dry mouth results in a lot more icky lip and mouth noises than human beings normally produce when they speak.

This depends on how you're recording and what software / service you're using. But here's the common denominator: if at all possible, make sure each participant is being recorded to their own audio file. Zoom and most of the cloud recording services offer this functionality. If you're all in the same room, everyone should have their own microphone and they should all be uni-directional (and, obviously, pointed to that speaker). This will minimize "bleed" -- each microphone picking up other people's speech and other noises. The benefit to individual recordings for each speaker is in the editing and mixing phase. Other people can be silenced while on person is speaking. If people talk over one another, the secondary or tertiary speakers can be lowered in the mix or muted. And so on. This is impossible if all voices are recorded together, because it's all one sound.

This depends on the quality of the source material and how many voice are in the recording(s). A good rule of thumb for a tightly edited and great-sounding final product is 3x the time of the source material. That estimate is for the audio editing and producing only. Other steps in the process, such as transcript creation and a video version of the episode, take additional time.