Podcast Monitoring: Review Edits With Your Host in Real Time
By David Payette · audio engineer, professional musician · About →
The approval cycle that shouldn't take three days
You finish the edit. You export an MP3. You upload it to Dropbox and send the link. Your host listens — sometime in the next 48 hours, between meetings, in the car on their commute, on laptop speakers in a noisy coffee shop — and sends you a voice note with four timestamps and a general vibe note about "something feeling off in the intro."
You go back to the session, address what you can interpret from the notes, export again, upload again, send again. They listen again, same fragmented conditions.
This is the standard podcast review workflow. It's slow, it produces low-quality feedback because the listening conditions are inconsistent, and it treats approval as a file-transfer handoff rather than a conversation.
Podcast editing is a creative collaboration. It should feel like one.
The Auxfeed flow
Your editor opens the DAW. The session is live — the edit is playing. They drop the Auxfeed plugin on the master bus. The host opens the Auxfeed app on their phone, taps the session name, and the edit is playing in their ears.
Now both parties are hearing the same thing at the same time.
The editor plays through the episode. The host flags a moment out loud — "that cut at 4:30 is abrupt, the breath is too loud right before it." The editor finds the edit, smooths it, plays it again. "Better." Thirty seconds total. They move on.
An approval session that used to span three days of asynchronous file exchange now takes 30 minutes on a call together. The feedback is better because it's in context. The decisions are faster because both parties are in the same moment.
Why phone speakers matter for podcast editing
Most podcast editors work in treated rooms on good headphones. They're optimizing for detail and accuracy. That's the right environment for editing. It's a terrible preview of how listeners will hear the show.
Roughly 80% of podcast listening happens on phone speakers, earbuds, or car Bluetooth. These playback environments are not neutral. Phone speakers have pronounced midrange, limited low end, and coloration that treated-room headphones don't reveal. A podcast that sounds clean on studio headphones can sound honky, boxy, or fatiguing on the device your actual audience is using.
The standard workaround is to bounce, AirDrop, and check on your phone manually. That's a one-way check — you make a note, go back to the session, adjust, bounce again. It's slow and you lose the reference conditions between listens.
With Auxfeed, you can flip from your studio monitoring chain to your phone speaker mid-session, while the DAW is still playing. Adjust the de-esser on your monitor chain, flip to the phone, hear the result. Flip back. The comparison is immediate and in context.
Codec choice for voice content
Auxfeed supports three codecs: PCM (lossless), Opus, and AAC (iOS only). For podcast review, Opus is the right default.
Opus was designed for voice. At 64 kbps, it's perceptually transparent for spoken word content — the kind of quality difference that blind tests consistently fail to detect on podcast material. It uses less bandwidth than PCM, which matters if you're reviewing over a relay connection with a remote host on a variable internet connection. And it's royalty-free, which means Auxfeed can include it in the free tier without licensing restrictions.
AAC at 256 kbps is also excellent for voice, and it uses Apple's hardware-accelerated encoder on iOS, which means low CPU impact and high quality. If you and your host are both on iOS (and your DAW is on a Mac), AAC is worth considering. It's not available on Android receivers or Windows plugin hosts, so if your host is on Android, Opus is the universal choice.
PCM lossless is the right choice when audio quality is the primary concern and bandwidth is not a constraint — say, a high-production narrative podcast with sound design, music beds, and complex mix decisions that deserve full-resolution evaluation. For a standard conversational podcast, PCM is overkill but works perfectly.
What this looks like across podcast workflows
Host approval workflow. This is the core use case: editor presents the finished (or near-finished) edit to the host before delivery. Instead of an async file review, you get on a call together and stream the episode live. The host can respond to moments in real time, timestamp feedback accurately because they're hearing the same playback position you are, and confirm changes immediately when you make them.
Editor-to-producer review. On larger podcast productions, an editor hands off to a producer or executive producer for approval before delivery. The producer doesn't need to be in the same room — they open the Auxfeed app on their phone, connect to the session, and review while you're on a call together. Notes happen in context; nothing gets lost in a feedback document that's detached from the timeline.
Multi-host podcast with hosts in different cities. Both hosts want to hear the final edit before it goes live. Stream it once, share the session code with both of them. Auxfeed supports multiple simultaneous listeners on the same session — both hosts connect from wherever they are, and you walk through the episode together.
Interview pre-screening. Before an interview episode is published, the guest sometimes wants to review their own audio for sensitive content or corrections. Instead of handing them a downloadable file, stream it to them during a brief call. They can flag moments without having a copy of the file — which some guests and legal teams prefer.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work for video podcasts?
Auxfeed streams audio only — there is no video component. For a video podcast, Auxfeed handles the audio monitoring part of the review (the host can hear how the audio feels on their device), but not the video. If you're reviewing video timing, picture edits, or B-roll against audio, Auxfeed is not a substitute for screen sharing a video preview. For audio-only podcast review and approval, it covers the job.
We use Squadcast or Riverside for recording. Does Auxfeed integrate?
No direct integration. Auxfeed connects to your DAW's output, not to a recording platform's audio path. The typical workflow is: record in Riverside or Squadcast, import the stems into your DAW for editing and mixing, then review the DAW output via Auxfeed. The review stage is separate from the recording stage.
Is the latency low enough for live back-and-forth commentary?
On peer-to-peer Wi-Fi (editor and host on the same network), latency is typically 10–20 ms — not perceptible for conversation. On relay over the internet, latency is typically 80–150 ms — similar to a long-distance phone call. For live commentary or detailed back-and-forth, the Wi-Fi path is comfortable; the relay path works but feels slightly like a satellite call if you're talking while listening. Most podcast review sessions are "editor plays, host reacts" rather than real-time simultaneous commentary, so the relay latency is not usually a problem in practice.
Free vs Pro: which do I need for podcast review?
If your editor and host are on the same Wi-Fi network (same office, same studio, same facility), the free tier covers everything. If you're reviewing remotely — editor in one city, host in another — you need Auxfeed Pro for the internet relay. Pro is $9.99/month. The free tier has no account requirement and no time limit; it's not a trial.
Try it free
No account. No time limit. Download the plugin, install it in your DAW, and get the Auxfeed app on your host's phone. The first review session should be running in under five minutes.