Podcasting means many things to many people: self-expression, self-promotion, or even a career. Regardless of what you plan to do with your podcast, you must produce a quality show if you expect anyone to listen—especially given that there are more than 100,000 podcasts to compete with.
This article focuses on audio podcasting. Remember that you’re creating a podcast, not a music album, so simplicity and voice quality are most important. Your audience needs to be able to understand you and your guests. This requires reasonably good equipment, good techniques, and good post-production.
Most people listen to an audio podcast while doing something else; they are walking, running, driving, or working. They often want something to fill that time. Keeping that in mind, 30 to 90 minutes is a good bet for length. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
Gear
To start a podcast, you only need a mic and your Mac. For software, you can record your voice with Apple’s $29 QuickTime Pro or GarageBand ‘08 (; part of the $79 iLife suite). But you need a mic that you can put close to your mouth. Your Mac’s internal mic picks up too much of the sound around you to be useful. I suggest picking up a USB audio interface and an XLR microphone (with XLR, you have more flexibility and potentially higher-quality audio than with a USB mic).
My two favorite starter USB interfaces are M-Audio’s $130 Fast Track USB and Centrance’s $200 MicPort Pro, which is particularly great for travel.
M-Audio's four-input Fast Track USB interface is small enough to take wherever you need it.Either option lets you choose from the literally hundreds of XLR microphones on the market so you can find the right mic for you. Frankly, you are looking for something that makes you sound good. The best thing to do is go to a store and try a bunch of them. If you don’t know where to start, your safest bet is Shure’s SM58 Vocal Microphone (about $100 online). It’s relatively inexpensive, has a solid sound, doesn’t require phantom power and is nearly indestructible. We have six of these mics and use them often for remote recordings. For a bit more, you can try Heil’s PR 40 ($325 online), which has a very clean, warm sound.
If your podcast is going to have more than just you talking, you’ll need to mix everyone together. You can generally do this by using a mixer or capturing multiple tracks using a larger USB or FireWire audio interface. Through much experimentation, we’ve found Mackie mixers to be our favorites. They are solid, reliable, and quiet.
You’ll need to buy a mixer with at least one auxiliary output (more on this later). The size of the mixer depends on the number of mics you need to mix together. If you get a mixer with six XLR inputs, you probably won’t ever need more. If you are thinking about more than six people talking, I suggest reconsidering. The optimum number is three or four people—you can include five or six if you need to, but shouldn’t ever have more people than that. On the road, I’ve taken to using M-Audio’s $450 Fast Track Ultra USB interface, which supports individual inputs that you can capture separately into Apple’s Soundtrack Pro 2 (; part of the $1,299 Final Cut Studio), GarageBand, or even QuickTime. By recording the tracks separately, you can address any individual issues later.
Production
Microphones and mixers themselves are only part of recording a professional-sounding podcast. You also need to consider how you use a mic and where you use it. Generally, mics sound best if you are within about four inches of the recording surface and speaking across them (if you speak directly into them, you will tend to “pop” your
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