This was recently asked of me, and I thought for a minute to realize that I haven’t, really, described my Podcast setup fully. You can get an idea of what I’m using on the about page at WRR, but I’ll go into a little more detail here.

Hardware

I actually have quite a bit of gear that gets used in one way, shape or form, in the creation of a show. Here is the breakdown.

• Audio Technica mic
• Shure mic
• Behringer UB805 mixer
• M-Audio Mobile-Pre USB Audio Device
• Edirol R-09 portable Digital Recorder
• Audio Technica shotgun mic for Edirol that I stole from Todd

The mixer that I used to have was the Alesis multi-mix 8 USB. As it turns out, the US version of this device will not work with EU power (even through a transformer), so I cooked it last summer. I hope to replace it soon as it’s a very nice mixer.

Software

I’ve used and/or tried many apps to record or mix and think I have finally come up with a solid setup that fits my workflow.

• Skype
• Apple Garage Band
• Audio HiJack Pro
• Audacity

I’ve tried Ubercaster, Castblaster and a few others, but they were too complicated/not stable enough to use on a regular basis for the WRR show. For a 1 person show, or a show where all participants are in the same room they might work better.

Bring it together

Not listed about is a boom mic stand (I actually have 2) that keeps the microphone off the desk. When it’s on the desk, it picks up all of the typing sounds. No good that.

My mic is connected to the mixer, which I output to the M-Audio device. M-Audio device is connected, via USB, to the Macbook and set as the primary audio source in Skype (for everything). Audio HiJack grabs all of the audio going through skype and I monitor the sound through the USB pre.

Mix it up

Once the show is done, I import it into Garage Band to add the theme, and background music or sound effects, and to edit it for length, content or whatever. Once that’s done, I import from GB to iTunes, tag it, add the album art and upload to the server.

I keep Audcity around for editting the raw file as well. If I do use Audcity (which I don’t too often since it runs so poor on the Mac), I save in the original format and mix down to mp3 in iTunes using custom settings. While the LAME encoder does a pretty good job at higher bitrates (128KB or higher), at lower bitrates the sound quality isn’t near as good as iTunes.

So, that’s how I do it. Of course it’s a long way from the USB headsets and audacity and patch cable setup I used to have. Ugh, what a night mare.

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