I remember my first attempts to record the music I was creating back in the mid-80s. Home recording equipment was just becoming affordable to the average musician and I was slowly building up the components of a home recording studio. But, having just bought the equipment, I was rather surprised at how bad my initial recordings sounded. Not really knowing anything about proper microphone placement and other basic elements of a recording engineers skill set, I spent a lot of time with trial and error, got lucky sometimes but ended up ruining a lot of recordings because of poor recording studio fundamentals.
With so many people creating podcasts now, the basic knowledge of what makes a good recording is gradually coming from the specialized world of the recording engineer into the mainstream. Podcasters who want to improve the quality of their productions need, at some point, to learn about microphones – there’s no question, having a good, professional-grade microphone will immediately increase the quality of your podcast production. Today there are many microphones being marketed expressly for podcasting.
Here is really smart article by Cleveland-area IT Specialist, Aaron Shaffer A Review of Seven Microphones, The Heart of All Podcasting.
Aaron looks at seven different microphones including headset, lapel, wireless, and standard tabletop microphones and judges their strengths for podcast recording based on affordability and usage. He points out that a microphone should be chosen based on the recording situation in which it will be placed. For instance recording a lecture for a podcast requires a different microphone than recording a table interview between two people. Aaron gives actual recorded samples of each microphone and then offers his opinion on each mic’s strengths.
Here are his final conclusions based on the microphones he tested, but you should read the complete article because there lots of good podcasting information in it.
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“What would I recommend to you as a professor or lecturer if you want to podcast? Without a doubt the AudioTechnica wireless mic. You can connect it to any laptop or mixer and get great quality. What would I recommend to those interested in dialogue type podcasting with two or more people? The MXL-990. You can’t beat it for the price. And If you’ve got money to blow, go with the Heil PR-40 all around.”
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If you have a little more money to spend, consider these USB microphones, most created by the manufacturers to appeal to the new podcasting market.
Blue Microphones Snowball $134
Marshall Electronics MXL USB.006 $170
Rode – Podcaster $349
Samson CO1U $210
Samson Q1U $90
See also Podcasting In The Classroom and
Tools to take Podcasting to the next level
If you are interested in sound effects for your podcast to create openings, transitions and endings between your interviews and other broadcast segments, then check out this sound effects set created specially for Podcast production.
