In the course of engineering audio, I’ve noticed that the bilabial plosive (meaning the b sound when voiced and the p sound when voiceless) is sometimes recorded with too much gain, even when I have placed the microphone at a reasonable distance from the mouth. Meaning that when I open up an audio file, whenever someone says “book” or “picture,” I must meticulously correct it in postproduction. Not having an expensive processing unit, I am wondering if there is a workaround that would save me such time. (I am guessing that switching to condensers is probably the answer.) I am also curious why the bilabial plosive is so prominent (particularly in deep-voiced male speakers). Could it be the not bad yet dynamic microphone I am using? Or perhaps the signal is simply coming in too high.

[UPDATE: It may in fact be audio compression (PDF), but if other podcasters are having sibilance issues, please offer your thoughts, theories and solutions in the comments.]