Great tools don’t make a podcast great. But they do help get distractions out of the way, make the show good to draw attention to your content, and create efficiency so you’re spending less time on the process.
In this post, we’ll cover microphones, cameras, lights, recording and editing software, all focused on the person creating their own podcast.
Microphones
A disclaimer: your sound quality is determined by several factors, not only what microphone you use. The acoustics of your recording space, using appropriate audio capture software, appropriate post-production techiniques, and using your mic correctly all factor in to how good you will sound.
We do recommend your own phone as a video camera later in the post. I don’t recommend your phone as a microphone, however, since even the cheapest entry-level microphone below is a huge leap in sound quality.
Beginner: The ATR2100x-USB ↗️
Priced at an easy breazy $80, this is the perfect introductory microphone and I still use it as my travel mic and in content filmed on my phone in my studio. Those nervous around tech need not fear, since it connects to your computer via an included USB-C cable.
Created by Audio-Techinica, it’s an accessible brand-name mic that does well picking up close sounds and rejecting those further away. It also has an XLR connection (a traditional sound cable) for when you’re ready to upgrade your process.
I’ve used this mic for a long time and have many clients that use it, and have learned the ins and outs you need to know to get the most out of it. Find that information in this blog post.
If you have two people recording together into your computer, you’ll need to purchase a USB interface like the Scarlett Focusrite. This is the middleman between your microphone and your computer.
Intermediate: The Shure MV7X ↗️ paired with the Scarlett Focusrite ↗️
The next level up takes us to using real audio cables and a USB interface. You’re a real sound pro now!
Shure is a reliable brand so the MV7X will serve you well at the $200 price point. Since this is a fancier microphone that will produce better sound, it uses what’s called an XLR cable (if you are interested in history and research and patents, just google what XLR stands for). A standard computer won’t have a place to connect your XLR in to, so we need a tool to go in-between called a USB interface; in our case the reliable Scarlett Focusrite. This small box will take in the XLR cable, provide a few controls, and output the sound via USB cable into your computer.
The setup is quite simple. The MV7X and the Focusrite connect via XLR cable, and the Focusrite and your computer connect via USB. Most computers will recognize your Focusrite as an audio input source as soon as it is connected.
Advanced: The Shure SM7B ↗️ paired with the Scarlett Focusrite ↗️ and a Cloudlifter CL-1 Preamp ↗️ ($730 MSRP)
The Shure SM7B is the great industry-standard podcast microphone that will look great on video. There’s no USB connection on the microphone, like the previous microphone. The Cloudlifter pumps clean gain into your recording – that is, it gives you more of your voice without adding bad noise.
This is the setup to purchase if you want the best content creator setup (before you graduate to full recording studio engineer) and you’re willing to put money into it.
Cameras
While audio-only podcasts can absolutely accomplish plenty of goals, using video in your podcast (which you can publish on YouTube and Spotify) is a great strategic choice for additional engagement with viewers and especially for generating clips for social media.
We have two recommendations for you, one beginner and one advanced, and one that’s… your phone.
Your Phone: It’s your phone.
Your phone probably has a great camera on it. There’s several ways to make use of that for a video podcast. The first is connecting your phone to your computer so you can use the phone camera, but record on to your computer:
- On an iOS device, the feature is called Continuity Camera.
- On Android, where they don’t feel the need to brand features that everyone has had for a long time and should be standard, it’s just called “plug your phone into your computer and it shows up.”
You can also record straight onto your phone. Depending on storage, you may be limited on how big your files can be, and sometimes it takes a long time to offload or upload your video to your computer later. If you record straight onto your phone, you’ll want a small phone tripod of some kind.
Beginner: The Logitech Brio ↗️
If you want the simlpicity of a USB webcam, you cannot beat the Logitech Brio. Just plug it in, pick it as the input from your list, and boom, you’re good to go. Since it is simply a high-end webcam, it also works great as your standard camera for meetings.
Advanced: Sony Alpha ZV-E10 ↗️
This bad boy is an actual camera. It’s designed as a “vlogging camera” so it has features that will make using it for a video podcast easier. If you use it right, it will capture better video and at a higher resolution than other options.
Setting up a recording solution with this camera can be as simple as mounting it on a tripod and capturing with the camera itself, or you can purchase something like an Elgato Camlink 4k to help it plug in to your computer.
Lights
You’ll see no $30 ring lights in this list. As someone who came up through theater, trained in lighting design, then spent years lighting TV commercials, I simply cannot abide the use of a ring light for anyone taking their video podcast seriously. It does about as much good as pointing a desklamp straight at your face, creating weird shadows, and flattening out your attractive mug.
The lights below are filled with LEDs and have a diffusion plate to create an even, soft glow. Most units can have their “color temperature” adjusted, meaning you can switch between neutral, blue and red tints to match any other light in your room.
If you’re unsure how you would use these lights, read this blog from Vimeo describing the classic three-point lighting approach↗️.
Cheaper: 2x Neewer NL288 ↗️
Neewer is a reliable budget brand and will get you good results. Most folks won’t be able to tell you aren’t using something fancier. Make sure you’re getting stands for these, to attach them to your desk or have them freestanding.
These have physical knobs to adjust the light intensity and temperature, making them more of a “content studio” item than a causal use item.
Pricier: 2x Elgato Key Light ↗️ (see also the Key Light Mini)
These are what I use at my desk. Elgato is a dedicated content creator gear company, and these lights are designed from the bottom-up for someone sitting at a desk or couch to light themselves indoors.
The controls run through an app; there are not brightness or color temperature controls physically on these lights, but for my home studio this works great (aside from my fear that the tech will simply fail at some point and I have no physical inputs to manipulate). They do come with their own desk mounting hardware for an easy all-in-one package.
Recording Software
These three options for recording vary wildly in complexity and what the best use-case is for them, so I’ll dive into what each can do, how they are best used, and how complicated they are to learn and use.
You won’t see Zoom or Google Meet on here. They are not intended for quality recording and you are guaranteed to aget a lower-quality, often choppy recording if you use them due to how they record the audio. More on that in the third section, below.
Audacity↗️: For audio only; for solo, or duo in-person; moderate level of technical ability needed.
Audacity is a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW. That means it’s a program that lets you edit audio. It’s free, open-source, and can record audio too. Once your microphone is recognized by your computer, it will be available in Audacity as an input. If you’re recording just audio for solo episodes, this is a great choice.
Open Broadcast Software (OBS)↗️: For solo in-person video recording.
OBS is for streaming, but it’s fantastically good at recording local video too (e.g. recording video on your computer instead of sending to a stream). It’s free with plenty of tutorials available online.
This is one of the most reliable ways to record a video of yourself. If you dedicate yourself to learning it, you could record certain kinds of multi-camera setups, a remote interviewing setup, or nearly anything else. It may not be necessary for you depending on how you want to use your content; other tools may meet your needs more easily, and with less complication.
Squadcast.fm↗️: Remote multi-person recording software.
Squadcast is my favorite among the in-browser, client-side recording applications that became megapopular during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The key different between these apps and recording on Zoom is that Zoom will pass the audio and video through the internet before recording it, preserving any hiccups that the internet connection had.
Client-side record apps have the record occur on the subject’s computer first, and then it uploads that recording to the cloud. So, if you’re using Squadcast and you hear your companion’s voice cut in and out, it’s only happening for you since the audio had to cross theinternet to get to you. Their voice was recorded, uniterrupted, on their side and is uploaded as you go.
Editing
Once your show is recorded, you’ll need to edit it to make it ready for the listeners. We won’t cover the vast number of factors and considerations for editing here, only how the recommended tools matter according to use case, price, and complexity.
In short, you’ll need to do things like removing excessive pauses, removing retakes, excess filler words, normalize audio levels, dealing with room tone, adding your intro and outro, and any number of other adjustments.
Audacity↗️: For audio only; any number of speakers; moderate level of technical ability needed.
It’s our ol’ faithful back again, Audacity. For audio-only, you can’t beat this free tool. Completing a few tutorials and playing around with some test projects will grant you the ability to import files, edit as needed, and export finals with ease. If you must not spend any money, have time and a desire to learn old school technical editing, this is the way to go.
Descript↗️: Text-based audio and video editor, minor to moderate technical ability needed.
Descript is the industry leader in a new category of media editor: text-based editing. It transcribes the words spoken in your media, identifies different speakers, and allows you to remove a word from the media itself by deleting it in the transcript.
For example, if your podcast guest said something like “I’m a really big, uh, you know – Zutara shipper” you could remove “uh, you know -” from the media simply by deleting it in the transcript.
There are several price points for using the tool – and it comes with access to Squadcast.fm, mentioned above. Professionally, I use the $30 per month option, which is a steal.
It also has some of the most reasonably designed Large-Language Model (commonly called AI) tools on the market, where it can automatically remove any filler words (um, uh, etc.) and make the cuts to the media (among MANY other function). Any use of the automated tools like this one must be manually reviewed and adjusted to ensure quality, but it saves a lot of time over traditional editing methods like in Audacity.
Hosting
No, this isn’t the part where we talk hors d’oevres and amuse bouche and how to find a good interior designer (wrong blog, sorry). Finding a podcast host means finding a place to put the podcast’s audio files onto the internet, in a format finable by Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Goodpods, and any other podcast listening platforms.
I will categorize my three recommendations into three categories: Free (with a raised eyebrow), Budget, and Professional.
Free: Spotify for Podcasters ↗️
Spotify has itss own hosting arm, formerly called Anchor.fm. Since Spotify is at megacorp status, they allow you to host your show on their service for free. The catch is the old pricinciple: “If you get something for free, you’re the product.”
While hosting for free on Spotify is certainly the right move for many, you are likely to have less control (either now or over time) regarding your content. While regulation and the public keep Spotify somewhat accountable, and you can always keep your original episodes saved elsewhere for posterity, Spotify could do just about whatever they want to your podcast in the future whether that’s limiting downloads based on topics covered, farming your content from large-language model training, or anything else that they think of.
Budget: Libsyn ↗️
Libsyn is the most reliable of the budget options (avoid Podbean). You’ll have limits of various kinds for length and file size that you may or may not hit, but Libsyn will deliver all the basics that you need for your podcast’s hosting service.
Professional and Full-featured: Transistor.fm ↗️
If you want high trust in your podcast host, all the features, great support, and all still at a strong price, I cannot recommend Transistor highly enough. My business is built on it; all my client’s podcasts live on Transistor.
There are a hundred ways a podcast host can be high or low quality, and the Transistor team consistently updates items or launches features that care about quality, experience, and reliability, whether it’s ensurring your episode descriptions are formatted correctly (yes, the host has a big role to play in this), not counting downloads from known spam IP addresses, or a myriad of other items.
I must also mention another high quality platform used by many of my podcast business peers, Captivate↗️. While I don’t use it myself, many professionals making a living in this industry swear by it – so it’s worth checking out.
Must Mention: YouTube
YouTube is not a hosting platform; however, any podcast that is serious about distribution must be on YouTube. About 20% of podcast listeners use YouTube Music, and these stats hold true for my clients.
There are two ways to put your podcast on YouTube:
- Upload a video version and put all episodes in a the specific Podcast-type playlist.
- Connect your podcast’s feed to YouTube so that it auto-imports news episodes into a video playlist. It will use your show’s art as the visuals.
As of writing this setup for YouTube is still in its first year and they are refining items and trying to specify exactly how a few things work, both on the technical side and on the monetization side. It’s important to be on YouTube, just know that the situation may change and evolve as YouTube figures out how to best handle the relationship with our medium.
Your Next Steps
So, you’ve created a great reason to begin your podcast.
Then, you made a strong, practical plan to serve that reason.
Now, you have your purchase list for gear.
Once you have the gear and software, treat it like a playground for a few weeks. Do a test recording with a friend, try out editing with it. Going straight into attempting to produce and launch a podcast from here will mostly likely lead to overwhelm if you’re not already experience in this area, so get some practice first.
If reading all this helped you realize that you would, actually, like to pay someone else to run all this for you – and you have a specific podcast idea in mind – fill out this form and book time to talk with me about working with Rooster High Productinos.