How to Start a Podcast

Podcast equipment: best mics, mixers, and more

• Season 1 • Episode 3

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In Episode 03 of How to Start a Podcast, you'll learn how to choose a good microphone and which accessories we recommend for 1-person, 2-person, and 4-person podcast setups.

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Alban:

Welcome back to recording number three. Alon and guess what we're talking about today we're talking about microphones, episode three.

Gilon:

Welcome back to episode three of the how to start a podcast, podcast. Do on an album here.

Alban:

How's it going, everybody? Welcome back. And today we are talking about equipment. We're talking about the mics, we're talking about the sound boards, the audio mixers, we're talking about the accessories, headphones, boom, arms, pop filters, hot filters. If any of this sounds weird to you, we're gonna break it down, and we're gonna talk through it. So get ready. Here we go.

Gilon:

So first things first. I know when you start a podcast, even when you start researching about a podcast, the equipment part of it, I think, is where everybody leaps to first, like, I need a mic. I need this. I need that. And sometimes that's where people fall off. But there are so many options. So let's start with the mic piece of it. What are some considerations when you're looking for a mic? All right,

Alban:

well, the first thing I want to say when you're buying a mic is you would be shocked by how many big podcasts don't care about what they're using. They're just using basic, cheap USB microphones. And they're also lots of really tiny podcasts that never got launched. They have $1,000 setups, big facts. So if you're the person who thinks like, oh, I need to buy this really nice mic so that I get the perfect sound for my podcast. You know, that's like somebody says, If I really want to get this job interview, I need to get a really nice car to drive to the job interview, like, no, no, you got to do the stuff, the job interview to get the job, how you got there is actually much less important. So take a step back and relax a little bit before we start pulling out our wallet,

Gilon:

for sure. And I think it's a really important step. Kind of like when you hopped into cover art before you really started your podcast. I think a lot of times, people will start with equipment and buy a bunch of stuff. And you maybe don't use it or don't launch the podcast, but don't really like need all the things that you bought. So we know for a fact you need bare bones. You need a microphone, right? Headphones are helpful. Yeah, you may or may not need a mixer.

Alban:

Yeah. So let's dive into it. So what's the thing? Everyone needs? Got to have a mic?

Gilon:

I have a mic.

Alban:

What are some of the considerations? Maybe when we're talking about mics? Price? Yeah, price

Gilon:

point. For me, I would be the person's like, I gotta buy all this stuff. And it would be kind of like, I would buy it to make an excuse of why I can't start. And so I don't want people to think that they have to get the most expensive mic to be able to start you kind of need to start right. And there are plenty of affordable microphones out there to get to begin.

Alban:

So one of the things we're looking at is price. There's also a few different types of microphones. So there's microphones that are dynamic or condenser microphones, there's are two different kinds.

Gilon:

What does that mean? Do they look different on the outside,

Alban:

they don't, it's on the inside how they're actually registering sound. Dynamic microphones really are listening for your like a loud noise. They're not just recording everything. And so they're much better at not getting background noise. But they're not what people use when recording like music. They are recording with condenser mics, because they want all the nuance. Well, when you're recording a podcast, unless you're recording in a treated studio, like an actual musician, getting musician like studio time, you want to get a dynamic microphone, because there is going to be background noise. There's a refrigerator, there's your dishwasher, there's your kids, there's the lawn guy, there's the dog, there stuff in the background, unless you want that on the podcast, we're gonna be really limiting our conversation to dynamic microphones,

Gilon:

which is important because I think podcasting especially for people that are just hopping in is super DIY, the likelihood of you being in a sound treated room is low, very low. So you kind of want to give yourself the best chance of having good sound by picking a microphone that's going to isolate for your voice and not hear all the things that Alban just mentioned.

Alban:

Yeah. And then the next thing we're talking about is connections. So there's two big kinds of connections for audio equipment really, for mics. You can have XLR, which is this special adapter, a lot of music equipment uses a lot of microphones use, you have to get a special cable has to run through an audio mixer, or now we've got this new thing called USB. and lots of mics now are just using USB connections, which is so nice, because these mics can plug directly into your computer. Yes,

Gilon:

it's great. It's my favorite because I'm not super techy. So I just What do I have already a USB port, I want to connect that microphone that I'm trying to figure out how to use to the computer that I already know how to use so USB is one of my faves. So

Alban:

that's one of the things to really consider is like what kind of connections we have. And we'll talk about those when we give our recommendations. And then last but not least, because I know everybody's already doing this anyway, is looks right? Like people are thinking about this not just how the mic sound It's not just how much it costs, we also kind of want a cool mic, especially if we're doing a video podcast. And it's not surprising one of the mics will recommend is the one you see on every YouTube podcast. It's not used on most audio podcasts, but every single YouTube one, they are using the same mic. So we will talk about that one in our group. Is there anything else we're considering?

Gilon:

What about sounds like How should my mic sound? Are all mics created equal when it comes to sound?

Alban:

Yeah, absolutely not. So that's a really good question. With radios, there's actually people who will help each person on the radio, like, here's your way Your voices, let's talk about, like, what Mike actually is picking up the right frequencies for your voice, then let's do a custom EQ for your voice. And they're doing a whole process, you're probably not doing that for your podcast, I barely know that that even exists. So I've never done that. But what you can do is test out a few mics. So if you go to like a podcasting conference, you go to a Guitar Center or something, they probably got a few of these mics there. And you can just go and record a one minute clip, and just listen to them, and then play with the settings a little bit and be like, Oh, my voice is sounding a little tinny, it's sounding kind of hollow. Or maybe I'm getting lots of plosives. We'll talk about what all those things mean later. And then you can make adjustments or pick a mic that matches your voice.

Gilon:

Alright, so let's talk about our recommendations. These are the official Buzzsprout microphone recommendations.

Alban:

This is from, you know, 12 years or something of talking to tons of people about podcast mics and troubleshooting with them, and trying to find things that are simple. And this is where we've ended up if anybody works, Samson, we have sent you a lot of people who want so much microphone. So the number one mic we recommend, John, what is it?

Gilon:

It is the Samson, Q two, you have heard it throughout all our videos, it's probably made so many appearances in our blog posts, it is the one we go to.

Alban:

If you think of the mic emoji or like you're dropping a microphone like it looks like that. It looks like a standard mic comes with a nice stand. It comes with a USB connection. So you plug it directly into your computer. And it's solid as a rock. It's also got great sound. And it also is committed at a great price point like you can easily get it for 70 bucks or less. It's checks like all the boxes for us. Yeah, there's not a whole lot to say that's negative about this, we put it up on tests against other mics that are four or five times as expensive. And in a lot of places people are like actually prefer the sound of a Samsung cue to you to some of these more expensive mics.

Gilon:

The other thing that I really like about the Samsung Q to you is that it's one a great beginner mic, it's not hard to figure out you're not dialing in a bunch of things. But it also has two different cables. So it'll carry you through your podcasting career honestly. So if you start out on you know, your Mac or your computer, you can plug it right in. But if you elevate and then use a mixer, you can also use the XLR cables, and it adapts to both just fine.

Alban:

It's really nice that it has that versatility, because we're going to talk about one person setups, two person setups for person setup, like, hopefully not eight person setup, how to record, this mic works in all of those. So what's great is you buy it now. And if the composition of your podcast changes later on, you've now added to three co hosts or maybe you do another show later on. Or you end up in you just move into music or you're streaming on Twitch like whatever you do, this mic still works. So it's really nice that you didn't buy something expensive and then ends up just sitting in a drawer, your Paracels

Gilon:

for sure, because that's never happening. Alright, so let's talk about our second pic. We know Samsung Q to use reigning king. So what is your second recommendation.

Alban:

Another one we talked about a lot is the road pod mic. And I don't know like how to describe the look, but it just feels like a big piece of metal. It's like very heavy. It's very solid. It's got a cool look to it, but it is a XLR only mic. So it needs to a stand, you'd need to buy that separately, you'd need to buy an audio mixer. It's got a slightly different sound than q2 Though maybe not the best. I know Travis, it's his preferred mic at the lower end. And you are going to need a lot of these other things for this mic to work and it costs 100 bucks to start out. So there's a few reasons why you might be still leaning towards that cue to you. But if you have a chance to try out the pod mic, it's one that for a lot of people is a really good option. Okay,

Gilon:

so it's number two for a reason, but it's still a pretty solid mike doesn't quite have the versatility when it comes to the cable piece of things but good sound $100 You can still kind of get in the game with that as well.

Alban:

Yeah. Now the thing we've got to talk about is the mic that we're actually using. Right?

Gilon:

Mm. We should probably start. Okay. Yeah.

Alban:

So the mic that we're using is the Shure SM seven B. These are not cheap.

Travis:

Yeah. So I just looked it up. And the SM seven B is currently available for $400. So just a little bit more than the Qt U and the pod mic.

Alban:

Yeah. And this is a really cool mic. And if you go look on YouTube, and you search with any podcasts, almost all of them use this microphone,

Gilon:

its claim to fame is that it allegedly was used to hoard thriller, aka Michael Jackson's hit song.

Alban:

So yeah, if it can record, thriller, I'm sure it could do well with your podcast. I really like it. It looks really professional, which I think is why a lot of people picked it up. I think the first time I really saw it was the mics that Joe Rogan was using. I think that got a lot of people thinking like that mic looks cool. What is it, and then they started looking into it. I'm sure Joe has sold lots of the Shure SM seven B's over the past few years. The downside is that price point is shocking, right. And we've got all the issues we had with the pod mic. It's not a USB mic, it does need to go through an audio mixer, it does need a stand, it does need still like headphones and stuff like you're going to need all of that stuff. And so for the setup we're using here, you can be looking 1500 bucks, easy once you've got two people, and you're setting this whole thing up. So it's a very, very different perspective than when we were looking at a $70 Samsung cue to you. For a lot of people, I'm not sure that you're going to notice the audio difference almost at all,

Gilon:

I feel that it's kind of to the point that you said most podcasts that are strictly audio are using pretty simple devices that may not even be that expensive. So

Alban:

three different mic options. One that we didn't talk about is the Blue Yeti. So we're going to get a bunch of people who are saying, isn't that mic that I keep seeing? I see that one on YouTube a lot too. And a lot of people recommend? Why is that not on our list?

Gilon:

It was actually a podcasting conference where I first heard that the Blue Yeti was not really a solid mic. And that was amazing to me, because it was recommended so highly. So yeah, let's talk about why we don't recommend it. What don't we love about the Blue Yeti?

Alban:

I mean, the first thing is, is a condenser microphone. So it's picking up a lot of background noise, everything. And it's marketed as, hey, this one mic can do a lot for you. It can be for one person, it can be recording the room, it can record two people having a conversation in different setups. And that's all cool. But yeah, in theory, but what ends up happening is you can't record on separate tracks. Because it's one mic, a lot of people misuse it, they speak into the wrong side mic just because it looks totally different. And you are always picking up that background noise. Yeah, it's also a pretty big, heavy mic. And so getting it up close to your mouth, is going to be a whole nother hurdle. And the price point isn't there. So it's not like it's a bad mic. If it's the mic you already own because maybe you were using it for something else. Hey, by all means, hold on to it and use that to start. It's not like it's going to hold you back. But if we're walking over to the store, and we're gonna put down some money or put something on the credit card, this isn't the mic that I think you want to spend extra money to go ahead and get, it's gonna be hard for me to move off that Samsung cue to you it could be years from now, there should be dozens of other mics I'm going to go. I know. But this checks so many boxes for such a low price.

Gilon:

Yeah, he make really good points as someone who's used the Blue Yeti before, the background noise is the most difficult thing to really filter out. And I think when you're just starting out, you don't realize that minimizing background noise is really something that can make or break your audio. There's only so many things you can pull out and kind of drown out when it comes to background noise. And the Blue Yeti is just simply very sensitive to sound. And so that is one of the main reasons that we don't recommend it. But Samsung cue to you pod mic and even the sure those are really great microphones that we often push people towards.

Alban:

Alright, so let's start talking about some sample setups. So if earlier you said I want to do a one person setup, what are we looking at? Like what do we need in total,

Gilon:

a mic and some headphones and maybe a pop filter? Yeah, baby boomer.

Alban:

So the nice thing with that Samson cue to you is it's coming with a small stand. It's coming with a little foam cover. It's coming with a USB mic is going to plug into the computer and all I need to do is add some set phones so well that sounds pretty good. What kind of headphones do we want to look at?

Gilon:

You know, you can get into the game for free, right? If you've got some Apple headphones, you can totally use those that may not provide the best sound over your headphones really help you hear a little bit more clearly how you're sounding and coming through from the mic.

Alban:

The main thing to remember is we're using headphones because we don't want sound from the other person speaking to us to come into our mic, that's called Audio bleed. So imagine you were talking to someone on Zoom, you need to be able to hear what they hear, but you don't want your microphone to hear it. So that's like what we're doing with these headphones. The other thing is, and I'm going to do some bad mic technique here. But if I start drifting away from the microphone, and coming back, I didn't move away a whole lot, you know, maybe a foot. As soon as I just move back a foot and the audio drops way out, I need to notice that. And the headphones are giving that constant feedback. Hey, it doesn't sound the same. Did you move away? Or did you get like, a little excited there, he started getting loud, and it's not gonna work, it's maybe gonna peek, all that stuff, having the headphones, man, they eliminate those issues, because you are getting feedback on what's working and what's not.

Gilon:

Definitely you're able to hear yourself and then kind of adjust in the moment as opposed to talk talk have tons of plosives have background noise running that you didn't even know it was getting picked up until you go listen to the audio. And then it's like, can I even use this? So headphones definitely help you monitor that?

Alban:

Yeah, I know that I have recorded an entire podcast one time where I was using my computer microphone, rather than my microphone microphone. But because I didn't set up headphones. I didn't notice that until I went back to listen, and I'm like, Man, those 30 minute voiceover, it would be really helpful to have just stuck some Apple earbuds in. And to figure it out there. Don't look at studio headphones. There's a lot out there. Those who are used for like sound engineers, people who are mastering Taylor Swift records, you are not mastering Taylor Swift or I don't know that. So Apple earbuds, maybe some audio technica in 50x. And we can put a couple other options down in the show notes in case you want to check out some headphone options, but that's probably not the spot to spend your money.

Gilon:

Okay, so do things get a little interesting when we add a second person does everything change,

Alban:

everything changes once you add somebody else. So the problem is, a lot of computers start freaking out when you plug in multiple microphones with a USB setup. So I take both of them and plug them into a computer, the computer starts being like, I'm not sure which of these microphones is which. So when you have two people and you need to plug two microphones in, it's best to go through an audio interface. And the one we really like is the Focusrite Scarlett two i Two is $170 audio interface, what it allows you to do is plug one cable into the computer, and then both your microphones using XLR cables plug in to the audio interface.

Gilon:

And why would you want to do that other than freaking out your computer,

Alban:

one, we want the computer to be able to get separate audio tracks for both people and to recognize them correctly. But to it allows us to monitor ourselves and the other person at different volumes so that it's easier to have a conversation, we're able to adjust the gain. So maybe if one of us is a little bit of a louder talker, and the other one's a little bit more quiet, I could turn my game down if I'm getting a little amped up or something. So you're just able to get better audio quality from two different speakers rather than just trusting the computer or the post editing, you know all that process to figure it out.

Gilon:

That makes total sense. Are there any other pieces that we need for a two person setup.

Alban:

So the shopping list here is going to be two Samsung Q to use one focus right to i Two as the audio interface, the cables you need will all be in those boxes. And then I think we need to get a headphone splitter so that we can both listen to the headphones. And then we're going to actually need some sort of headphones, but I would just bring whatever I already have. So whether it's your Apple earbuds to something quite nicer, anything in there, they will work for you. Alright,

Gilon:

let's say we multiply double it out from two to four to things get even more complicated.

Alban:

Well, they're not getting more complicated. They're getting more pricey now more expensive. Alright, so if we're looking at three or four people, again, we need a mic for everybody. So you know which mics you've got up out there for options. I'm still going Sampson, q2, you if you're upgrading, that's your decision, right?

Gilon:

For people and so I think we need to be a little bit economical now. Right?

Alban:

Yeah, you might have like one, you know, high roller on the team, and they're like, No, I'm going for the big mic, and then you all start realizing like that really didn't matter a whole lot when we started listening to this sound quality, but you got to get your four mics. They all need XLR cables. And then those all plug into now we need a different audio interface, when we really like that has a lot of inputs is called the road caster Pro. And this is like a pretty nice soundboard. It's actually what we're using here. It's got a lot of features. It's really nice, but the price point is getting up there.

Gilon:

So we are looking at about 599.

Alban:

About exactly five IDs. So you could sometimes get a little bit of a deal. It's not super common, this is a really nice soundboard, you put some sounds on it. So you could program if you wanted to have like an air horn on there, or your intro music, you can do that. You could set it up. So you can record that phone call or something from Bluetooth, there's so many options. And one of the cool options is you can actually record your audio files directly to an SD card rather than recording it to a computer. It's got a lot of options, but 599. So that's what we're looking at. So if we're looking at three, four people, the prices are getting up there. But we do have one other option for people we do. Yeah, so if you're thinking like these prices are getting out of control, and I'm not looking to get into this, one that you can do is just record remote podcasts. And we're in this weird time in podcasting technology, where the microphones are cheap. A lot of people already have computers. And actually recording everybody on some software is the easiest bet. So lots of people, what they're doing is you your co hosts, everybody gets a $70 mic hooked up to the computer, and then uses something like zoom or some remote recording software, we can talk about options in a few episodes, and you record all there, that means we're not plugging a bunch of mics into our computer, all the computers, no, I'm recording this audio file. And we have some videos out there on how to get the best audio out of zoom. And so this is a really legit option for a lot of people. The other nice thing is that you don't have to actually drive and meet in location, you can all just hop on a zoom call and record with all your friends,

Gilon:

right? So logistically, financially timewise all of it, it's really helpful. It's kind of like a nice little workaround, like if you don't want to drop 600 bucks on a mixer, but you do want to have four plus people on the podcast, remote recording is really a nice, a nice option.

Alban:

Now we're not doing that because the one thing you lose when you're not in person is you lose some of that interactivity, you lose some of the connection that you have for your co hosts like, we know the energy level, it does go down once we start doing remote recordings. So we decided like, hey, we both live like 45 minutes away. But let's meet at the office, let's set everything up. And let's record because we know the quality is going to be slightly better.

Gilon:

And then I think there's also some sort of technological advantage to being in person, we can talk over each other, and you can still hear both of us. But if one person start talking over another on a zoom call, everybody kind of gets drowned out or only one voice gets heard. And so crosstalk really becomes more of an issue when you're doing remote recording.

Alban:

Yeah. And you've got issues of just whenever there's a little bit of a lag, like if you ever been in this calls where everyone's talking over each other all the time, and you realize like, oh, it's because like, we don't know, the other person started talking. So there's some pluses and some downsides. Now there's a few other things you may look at. So these are like the accessories, what kind of accessories are we considering gotta buy

Gilon:

more things.

Alban:

You don't have to buy more things. There's just lots of things that I know people are thinking about. So we want to be able to help them along the way if they decide to

Gilon:

it being helpful. Okay, so there are boom, arms. What the heck is a boom arm I think boom, boom stick, like a gun from the Muppets movies. But what is the boom arm?

Alban:

Very different. All right, the boom arm is the thing that holds the microphone. And so if you ever think of like watching somebody on the radio, where they've got something that they're adjusting to get the mic right in front of their mouth. That's a boom arm. And what's really nice about the boom arm is that you can sit perfectly up straight, you can turn your head no matter what movements you have, you can always adjust the boom arm to keep the mic right at the perfect location. So there's lots of different boom arms. One we really like is the Rode PSA one, and we like it because it stays still like that's the main thing you want with a boom arm like I can sit up straight, you know your chest is expanded, you're taking full breaths, you're not hunched over and the Maitreya in front of you. It does that well, and it's$100. Again, this is something down the road, you don't have to jump into this on the front end.

Gilon:

Okay, so next we got a boom arms or mic is being held steady, possibly, if that's something that's in our budget as we're starting out. Next thing, pop filters, do I need a pop filter? Like what's wrong with my naked microphone?

Alban:

So let's give some examples. And so Travis if we can, like let's try to leave these in. But a pop filter is when you get these like plosives the peas that like they actually it's a bunch of wind, hot air that's coming out of your mouth, and it's hitting the capsule in the microphone. And so Why there's foam, often around a microphones cover, like I've got the foam on right now the pop filter, and it's disperses a lot of this wind, I guess, I don't know, wait right way to say it, it disperses it so that you don't get a big hit on the capsule and thus get that popping sound. Yeah, there's other sounds like the SS, sibilant SS. And so people's Ss are kind of like that kind of grating chalk, you know, scraping the chalk, the chalkboard sound like, those are also getting cleaned out by pop filter. So it's often just these foam covers that are going over the end of the microphone. A lot of microphones include them, there are some that you can look at upgrading. But this is something like, check to see how your voice works. We have some microphones that work for some people. And sometimes when I get behind it, I realized I need to start doing other things because the peas aren't the issue for me. But it's more than SS. I start getting that kind of civil s sound. And when that comes through, it starts getting annoying. So I need to make sure that I'm compensating for that. All right.

Gilon:

And then last but not least, I would say the second most important piece of equipment would be the headphones do your recommendations.

Alban:

I mean, just what we said earlier, this isn't the spot to spend your money people might recommend you might buy a package that has headphones and you may see some headphones that are like rated for podcasts, every headphone is rated for podcast, just go ahead, get one that's cheap. Don't overthink it. This isn't the place to spend your money. This is a place to save money. And really do you want to be that person who's got like your podcasting headphones, but you're also your music headphones, but also your air pods. He listened to the house. You don't need all this junk, save whatever you're using. Use that and it'll be perfect.

Gilon:

So be an essentialist is what you're saying. Exactly. All right. So we have talked about microphones, we've talked about setups, we've talked about all the other things you need to buy? Travis, do you have any resources for us as we make these considerations about where to spend our money for our podcast?

Travis:

Absolutely Jalon. So there are four videos in particular, that I think would really be helpful for you as you're listening to this podcast and trying to get a sense of where you should spend your money and some of the other things that we talked about. So in the video covering how to record your podcast using zoom, the video chat software, there are some particular settings that you'll want to have turned on to get better audio quality. So definitely watch that video, if you want to start there to record your audio. And then I got three microphone videos for you. The first one is the cue to you that we've been raving about are all in one overall best microphone for new podcasters we did a full review of that microphone. So you can find that on the YouTube channel. There was also a fun video I did where I compared the Qt u to the SM seven B and did a side by side sound test. So you can really see the difference and decide for yourself if investing in the SM seven B is going to be worthwhile for you. And we also did a video covering the Blue Yeti. And so you know, we're talking about the background noise rejection and the problems that we have with that you can actually hear an actual real life example of the Blue Yeti stacked up against the cue to you. And you may or may not hear a three year old singing to let it go. And you can find links to all of those in the show notes for this episode.

Alban:

Alright, so lots of places that we could spend money. Hopefully we're helping you save some through this whole process. So go check out those resources. And next we're gonna be talking about the software. We're gonna be talking about how to actually record we talked about some of those remote recording options and we'll go through a deep dive of all the pros cons of different options and what recording and editing software should be check out until next time, keep up the great work and I'll see you later