2020 is an exciting time for podcasting in part because everyone is staying at home more, and there are fewer social or cultural outlets – concerts, parties, social gatherings, even restaurants – available. Podcasting is something one can do from home that is social, creative, and a link to the world. And, compared to most mediums, podcasting is easy to do.
To get a podcast to sound good, you do need some equipment. The right tools – both on your computer or phone and physical equipment – will save you time later in editing or publishing podcasts, and will allow your audience to focus on your content instead of how it sounds. Which seems like something that shouldn’t matter, but 88.3% of negative podcast reviews* fixate on sound.
*We’re making this up. But it feels like the truth – people really care about the sound of a podcast as much as the content, and if your podcast sounds amateurish, you might lose a listener before you have the chance to win them.
So, what equipment do you need to be a successful podcaster?
Microphone
This is the most obvious piece. You need to record your voice on a podcast. Most desktops come with a built-in mic, but a USB plug-in mic is the easiest way to upgrade your sound.
I use a Blue Yeti mic. It records a full, rich sound. I always record on ‘cardioid’, the setting that focuses on what is directly in front of the mic. The mic is still quite sensitive, and there is other equipment out there to help control for noise that might leak into your recording.
Another mic colleagues have used is a RØDE. They even have a mic called the podcaster, and it seems to deliver a good sound.
Shure is a legendary microphone maker, and they have mics with USB inputs as well. These can come in handy for reporting driven podcasts where you are looking to interview people outside of an office/home studio setting.
The Blue Yeti retails for $130 right now, just to give you a ballpark range.
As a quick aside, if you do go for a Blue Yeti, it makes sense to buy extra USB cables – the cable that comes with the Yeti isn’t very long and is set in a way where it often breaks after a bit of use. Backup cables are $5-10, and will come in handy.
Mic Stand
A mic stand allows you to set the mic directly in front of you, so that it’s not prone to vibrations from you touching the desk it sits on or otherwise (see common recording mistakes). I’m not aware of any relative differences in mic stands – I bought a “Tencro Professional Microphone Suspension Boom Scissor Adjustable Arm Stand ” off of Amazon for 26 euros, and found that to be perfectly adequate. Open to suggestions, though I think your aim is to make sure it adapts to your recording environment, whether that involves standing, clamping to your desk, or otherwise.
Shock Mount
I found it useful to also get a shock mount, which screws onto the base of the microphone, between the mic and the mic stand. This finally took out all of the reverberations that came from touching the microphone. I selected the YOUSHARES Shock Mount for a Blue Yeti; it’s a little challenging to get the USB cord through the shock mount’s ring to plug into the Yeti, but otherwise, it does the job.
Pop Filter
A basic pop filter can help clean out the ‘plosives’ from your speaking, the puh sounds when you say the letter P. It can also filter out a little bit of your breathing from the recording; some producers like a really natural sound on their podcast, while others prefer the words to be clean so the listener doesn’t get distracted. A pop filter is one way to get you closer to that clean sound.
Mic shield
Related to a pop filter, you can consider a mic shield or portable vocal booth. What these do is block out other sounds from your microphone; even though the blue yeti cardioid setting is meant to capture only sound directly in front of it, if someone else is talking in the house it will bleed onto my recordings, for example. I don’t have personal experience with this but am planning to try one in the coming months and will update this post accordingly.
That pretty much does it for physical equipment. Headphones are useful but not a must, and you may already have plug in headphones that do the job. That leads us to software.
Recording software
You need to capture the sound as an mp3, m4a, wav, or other easily convertible/transferable/editable file, so that you can turn your recording into a publication.
If you are recording in person, whether on your own or with a co-host/guest, a recording software is all you need. Audacity is effective and works on Windows or Mac; GarageBand is an Apple native software for Macs that also works well. ProTools is a higher-powered software we’ll touch on in the next section.
If you are recording remotely with a guest or co-host, we recommend Zoom for simplicity, or Zencastr if you don’t have the budget for a Pro level Zoom account. Zoom recording offers a generally high standard – the sound is pretty good, there are only occasional audio glitches (and that is often a result of internet connection), and there’s no audio drift, so your track and your guest/co-host’s track are the same length, which will be a blessing in the editing process. If you do put on the video, it also makes it easier to read one another’s body language to know when to jump in or not. (That said, we record most The Razor’s Edge episodes and about half of our first season of A Positive Jam without video).
Zencastr offers good audio quality, but is subject to some audio drift, and the calls themselves sometimes drop or get cut out. I should say I haven’t tried this since switching to Zoom at the beginning of 2020, and I liked what they were doing as a business.
I’ve tried CleanFeed, Skype using an mp3 call recorder, and Ringr (not the Bill Simmons website, an app for recording calls), and found Zoom and Zencaster a cut above.
Editing software
Once you have the files, you may want to add sound effects, clean up the conversations, remove filler words, sweet or level the sound in post production, etc. This can be a tedious process, but it also lets you sink your teeth into your recordings so you really control what you are putting out.
Audacity is a free tool, but it’s also a really good one. It offers multi-track editing, basic post-production effects to boost sound, stereo and mono, and is fairly intuitive.
Adobe Audition is one that comes recommended by many podcast experts. I do not have personal experience with Audition, but it’s one of my planned tests in coming weeks, to upgrade to it and try it out. It’s a paid software at $20-31/month, depending on the term you pay for.
ProTools is considered industry standard. I find the software itself super clunky, and editing on it at least on my PC was not intuitive at all.
Hindenburg is another software that comes up on a lot of podcast editing job postings. I’m less familiar with it as a tool, so I can’t say much.
GarageBand, pre-installed on Macs, should substitute for Audacity effectively as well.
Hosting platform
You record the podcast using a microphone, with some tools to make sure the sound is as clean as can be. You record on a software. You use that or another software to edit the file to its final format. The last piece of the puzzle – you need to host the podcast somewhere, so that the podcast gets distributed to the main channels – Apple, Spotify, Pandora, a number of podcast apps, etc.
The way to do this is through a company dedicated to hosting podcasts. We are currently using Podbean, for example – $14/month for each podcast to host unlimited amount of audio. We’ve used Libsyn in the past as well, for $15-$20/month.
There’s not a ton to distinguish sites from one another. Unlimited storage is a plus because it removes headaches. Some of these hosting providers charge on a # of listens basis, for example, which probably only affects really successful podcasts but is also sort of a tax on that success. The level of support is important, and I’ve found both Podbean and Libsyn to be satisfactory. There are companies providing more service, like Megaphone or Art19, but that is meant for serious advertisers; for the nuts and bolts of hosting a podcast, they’re not much different from the first two.
Your podcast host provider will also be the best source of stats for your podcast, as it collates stats from all of your channels. Podbean is slightly better than Libsyn in stats provision (though I’ve been off Libsyn for almost a year, to be fair), but that’s another vector to consider.
Anchor is a Spotify owned platform, and Spotify has more ownership over the podcast, which I think is mostly a matter of ads and how the podcast appears. It’s also free. To this point, I’ve viewed the platform as a ‘you get what you pay for’ deal, but would love to hear what other people’s experiences have been with it.
That’s it. You pull all that together and you’ll have the tools and equipment needed to make your podcast a success.
That doesn’t mean the podcast will be a success. You need to decide what success is, and how much preparation, thought, and development you want to put into the content, the guest list, the editing, and so on. But, having the right equipment makes it a lot easier to get there.