When I had the idea to do a podcast for Collo, it seemed like it would be simple enough to execute. It turns out that podcasting is more complicated than I thought, and the advice that is out there is not always helpful. I'm not sure if this will be any more helpful, but here is a rundown of how I produced the first Collo podcast.
***Disclaimer***
If you download soundboard shows of your favorite artists in lossless formats, or only listen to music on 180 gram vinyl, this information is not for you.
Equipment
I thought I had struck gold with the equipment. The Honors College has two nice Shure XLR mics and a FireStudio audio interface. By all accounts, this should be fairly decent equipment with which to start a podcast. This first take with this equipment was, um, bad. Because the interface required a firewire connection, I was limited in where I could record. I think this was the biggest problem. The room was far less than ideal. It was open, had hardwood floors, and an angled ceiling. The mics just didn't generate good quality on the voices.
On take two, I used a Logitech video conferencing webcam. Most advice out there says to stay away from USB mics. In my case, this mic produced a much better sound than the original setup, and I was able to record multiple people with one mic. So this gets high marks for simplicity. The sound is not particularly good, but it is serviceable. It really was just plug and record.
I also had access to a a Blue Snowball Mic. I would say this produced the best sound of the mics and setups I tried. It is also USB and really easy to use. If you're doing a one-person podcast, I'd recommend this. It's ambient setting does not do a good job of picking up multiple voices.
My takeaway is that recording a podcast with multiple hosts or guests makes things more complicated. The original setup with two mics and audio interface seems like it should be the best, but other factors made this more complicated and, at least right now, not viable. The Logitech mic ended up being the easiest way to get decent sound with multiple people.
Software
On take one, I used Adobe Audition. In theory this should be a step up from free software that is out there. In reality, it was not. I thought the interface was unintuitive and it has a lot more bells and whistles than I needed. On take two, I used the free recording software Audacity. I don't have any complaints. It was easy to use and had all the tools I needed. And it's free.
Post Production
The Logitech mic required more post-production tweaking. The main problem was the different volume of the two voices. I mainly used the compressor effect to even this out. The results were pretty good. I used the normalization effect to eliminate clipping. Again, the results were pretty good. I also used audacity to create the intro, which is a combination of effects and creative commons licensed music. Overall, Audacity was straightforward, intuitive, and did what I needed it to do.
Overall
For the cost of a decent USB mic, you can produce a non-terrible sounding (IYAM) podcast. This is not up to the standards of the professionals, but you also don't need a course in audio engineering to produce it, and you don't have to invest a small fortune to make it happen. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to record multiple voices into Audacity. My simple solution was the Logitech mic. In more ideal conditions, I think the Shure mics with the audio interface would be the way to go. In less ideal conditions, the Logitech produced better sound.
Here is the first episode, so you can judge for yourself on the overall sound quality.
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