Episode 1: Podcasting – The Rest

Audio Only:

In Episode 0, we covered podcasting microphones at various price points. In this episode, we cover everything else you’ll need to get started. Below you’ll find a collection of all items mentioned in the episode divided into various price points. To get you started, we’ve also included links to a microphone recommendation for each price point so that each list contains everything you’ll need.

Budget Setup: $50-100
Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB $60
On Stage Foam Ball Windscreen $2

If you want to get a more professional sound than can be achieved with just the built in microphone in your laptop, phone or tablet, you don’t have to break the bank. The Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB / AT2005-USB microphones (the differences are largely cosmetic) sound great, reject background noise, include workable, if not sufficiently tall, stands, both USB and XLR microphone cables and contain headphone jacks for monitoring their output without latency. Just keep in mind that if your show has multiple hosts, in order to record more than one at a time via USB, you’ll either need to spin up multiple instances of Audacity (a free piece of recording software, also known as a DAW or Digital Audio Workstation) for each microphone and then import the separately recorded files as multiple tracks into a single project, or purchase software like Cakewalk’s Sonar that’s capable of working with multiple interfaces at once. Either way you’ll need to issue a single clap in front of all microphones at once so that you can later sync up the tracks from the same peak (even using Sonar, depending on your setup, each microphone will likely have a slightly different delay and thus produce an echo in any sounds loud enough to be picked up on more than one mic without doing so).

A Step Up: Add a budget Audio Interface: +$150-200
A decent audio interface like the Presonus AudioBox 22VSL will provide a slight boost to sound quality over the built in USB interfaces in the ATR2100 as well as allow you to easily record more than a single microphone at a time. Its preamps aren’t powerful enough on their own to support professional level dynamic broadcast microphones, but it can handle the ATR2100 or any condenser microphone with aplomb. If you need support for higher end microphones, a Cloudlifter or FETHead per channel will work great, or you could check out the more expensive Focusrite Forte described below. The Presonus AudioBox 22VSL USB 2.0 Audio Interface also includes a copy of the excellent Studio One recording software. If you need more than two inputs, similar options exist with 4 inputs, or you could opt for a mixer like:

Or a Mixer: +$180-400
While you could get by with something like the Mackie PROFX8 8-Channel Mixer, we recommend the Behringer UFX1204 Xenyx 12-Channel Mixer. While the preamps and overall quality of the Mackie are likely a bit better, the UFX1204 has two huge advantages over every other mixer in this price range: the ability to act as a USB or Fire...