Interview podcasts have natural silences — the editing reality is they often need a bed to soften the pauses without cueing "B-segment". This preset solves that. Pure ambient pad, no rhythm, designed to be invisible until needed.
Heavy music does — drums, hooks, melodic motion all signal "this is produced". Pure ambient pad doesn’t register as music at all to most listeners; it reads as "room tone with depth". That’s the design intent.
Drop the bed at -28 dBFS (a 6dB cut from a typical -22 dBFS bed). Don’t use sidechain ducking — let the bed sit at constant level under the conversation. The volume is low enough that even continuous speech doesn’t need ducking to stay intelligible.
For news interviews, yes — the bed is genre-neutral. For true crime, use the Video Essay BG preset instead — it has the same no-rhythm framing but darker tonal coloring that matches the genre’s gravitas.
15 secondsPodcast intros set the cognitive frame for the next 30 minutes. This preset cues "smart, curious, worth your attention" — jazzy upright bass, brushed drums, Rhodes piano. The kind of intro that NPR earned a generation on.
BPM · 100–112
30 secondsPodcast outros do double duty — emotional close-out plus sponsor read plus next-episode tease. This preset gives all three room to breathe. Fingerpicked nylon guitar, brush drums, Rhodes pad. Never peaks.
BPM · 88–98
