In reply to JJJ.

Here's my suggestion. Listen to this episode. Then listen to a regular episode of ATP. I hope you can hear the difference.

Based on your description, my guess is that the audio sounds good from the source, but is then greatly compressed by Google Hangouts. If Jeff is recording locally on his machine, that would explain the difference.

You might try a side-by-side comparison of your local Quicktime file and the published podcast. You might be surprised.

I know that some podcasts fly in their local audio instead of relying on the Hangouts audio. That's obviously a lot more work and may not be worth it to you, but I think that yields a good result.

As for you comment about recording my answer in high fidelity audio, I could do that, but not sure why. I don't have a podcast.