In yesterday’s blog post, we discovered the three main stages to creating your own podcast:

• Recording
• Editing
• Publishing/Hosting

Today we’ll look at the cheapest and easiest ways of recording the source audio for your podcast.

Recording Equipment

Do any sort of Googling about hardware for podcasts and you’ll seen the following setup mentioned.

The suggested equipment for podcasting. I’d advise against this.

• Microphone (either a condenser like an NT1 or a dynamic like an SM58.
• Audio interface such as the Focusrite Scarlett connected to a laptop or desktop computer.

I think that’s a wrong move.  For one, there’s the expense.  You’ll be spending nearly £200, money I’m guessing you don’t have lying around. In addition this equipment tethers a lot of your recording to a single location or at least to where you can safely take this equipment.

SO WHAT DO WE NEED INSTEAD?

At a basic level I’d suggest all you need for your recording is the inbuilt microphone on your smartphone.  

Your smartphone is good enough to handle the gob of basic podcast recording.

From my experience the microphone on an average smartphone is completely acceptable for the task of recording podcast audio (with a few caveats, which we’ll discuss tomorrow).  Using just your phone won’t cost you anything plus you’re ready to record at a moments notice: backstage, in the rehearsal room, anywhere.  As long as you have your phone you are ready to record!

You can use the ‘voice recorder’ application found on on your phone’s operating system to  record your podcasting chat but the the one issue you may find, especially with long recordings and large file sizes is a difficulty in getting the audio off your phone and onto your computer for editing.  To solve this , you could use an app like Voice Record Pro 7 for iPhone (free) or Skyro Voice Recorder for Android. 

Both these apps allow you to sync your recorded audio to your Dropbox account.  

Next Level Recording

If you want to go up a level for better quality audio recordings, you can buy ‘add on’ mics for your smartphones which increase audio quality.  Check out the Zoom iQ6

The iQ6 is a stereo mic that slots into your iOS phone.

or the
iRig Mic Cast

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss recording techniques.

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