Comments on: Your Input Needed: Podcasting Setups

By: weldon

weldon — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:03:24 +0000

I know Behringer offers really low prices, but I have to speak up and ask you not to recommend them because they have blatantly stolen amplifier designs from US companies and reproduced them in Asia, down the same exact circuit board layouts and front and rear panel designs. Of course, they use cheaper components as well as not paying engineers to actually design anything (since they can steal the designs) to reach those low prices. I detest Behringer, but feel for the hobbyist musicians who like to get stuff on the cheap.

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 05:10:24 +0000

some great suggestions guys. I’ll pass them along. Thanks!

By: Brian Polensky

Brian Polensky — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:28:42 +0000

Try Ubercaster. I use it and it is great. They have a new mic enhance function that when enhancing a simple logitech usb mic, sounds just awesome.

By: Dai Jones

Dai Jones — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:12:53 +0000

I use ProfCast (http://www.profcast.com/). It’s specifically designed for lecture recording, and will add a videotrack with slides from PowerPoint or Keynote in sync with the lecture. I go into the lecture room, hook up my MacBook with a BlueTooth headset, then click record on ProfCast. ProfCast records my voice, and also controls Keynote, meanin I don’t need to worry about syncing slide changes with the voice track at a later date. I tried doing this in GarageBand and it’s a nightmare. The other problem with GarageBand is that it has a limit of 999 beats of recording, or something stupid, meaning you have to remember to set the tempo real low to record a long lecture or your machine will hang when recording straight into it

By: AJ Cann

AJ Cann — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:28:39 +0000

Garageband, Blue Snowball mike, Feeder.
Colleagues struggling to use Audacity have mostly given up.

By: Ryan irelan

Ryan irelan — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:39:15 +0000

Unfortunately, our education system is notoriously strapped for cash. For them to purchase a bucketload of audio hardware to start out with is ridiculous.

If they are doing a simple one-person podcast, then they certainly could start out using the stock Mac software (assuming their edu machines come with iLife) and a built-in mic. It’s not the best quality, no, but it will work as a start.

If they would like to invest a little bit of money, the first thing I would purchase is a quality USB microphone (maybe the Blue Snowball?) and still use GarageBand as their recording software.

If they want to invest a little more money for a better quality sound, then I think a stripped down version of what Rob Walch (see comment above) has would work well: a quality mic, a USB Audio Interface, and maybe a small mixer like the Behringer UB 802. This will allow them the ability to expand to more than one microphone.

My approach to recommending equipment to new podcasters is to first evaulate what they want to do and give them three options - simple to more complex. Nothing above is really that complex but it can be if you have to justify costs versus return. There is no one size fits all podcasting rig.

By: Freese

Freese — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:28:41 +0000

Take a look at this pretty cool Podcasting suite. It works actually pretty good altough it is still beta. Very promising.

http://www.ubercaster.com/

By: Ken Cieszykowski

Ken Cieszykowski — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:48:55 +0000

My University (University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) went all Mac a while ago. For basic podcasting needs, we use GarageBand — it is the simplest and most powerful thing that amateurs can use. It can be taught super quick, and is cost effective (as it comes with all Macs).

As for inputs, we have a couple studio quality mics that are hooked up to a mixer, which is in turn hooked up to the Line in. The microphone cost a few hundred dollars (a decent one can be had for around a hundred dollars), but I’m not too sure how much mixers cost. Ours has about 8 different inputs for minidisc/cart/mic1/mic2/mic3/tape/CD, etc.

Our equipment was purchased a few years ago, so quality may have improved or price may have gone down… but you can get something that sounds damn near professional quality for a couple hundred dollars.

… shameless plug, but our classes PodCast is PantherCast, found on iTunes or http://panthercast.blogspot.com

By: Kamal

Kamal — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:25:15 +0000

Theres is a complete solution from apple called iTunes U or itunes university which is free . Stanford and some other at US and some in Canada are using this solution and it comes with complete life cycle of developing the podcast until the publishing. you can look it up in apple.com and stanford.edu and get more info. We tried to to the same at Ryerson in Toronto but it failed because of some political issues. If you have more questions don’t hesitate to email m e.

By: Rob Walch

Rob Walch — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 01:53:36 +0000

http://www.podcast411.com/mixer.pdf

Here is my setup. It is optimized for recording Skype Interviews and also just recording directly into the computer.

By: Rob Kaufman

Rob Kaufman — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:31:05 +0000

I would think that for a Professor to record during lecture a bluetooth headset (like the handsfree cell phone ones) would work very well. That way you can walk around and play on the white board w/o having to worry about cords or cables. I’ve found that these headsets give you a “good enough” mic without going high price.

By: Michael Clark

Michael Clark — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:02:44 +0000

For my podcasts, I use Audacity to record. We have a Behringer UB804 (?) mixer from MusiciansFriend.com, two mics. The mixer plugs into the audio-in jack on our iMac G5. In this regard, Garageband doesn’t see two users, so that isn’t a big plus for us. For telephone interviews, we use GizmoProject. It all works like a champ.

I’ve had good luck with Audio Hijack Pro doing the recording as well, but then edit the file in Audacity.

By: weldon

weldon — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:28:20 +0000

I think iLife might be all they need. There are a couple tools out there, but I haven’t used them.

M-Audio makes a podcasting studio bundle with a high quality mic, amp/DAC, and some software. Also there is an app from Potion Factory that purports to make podcasting even easier.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/PodcastFactory-main.html
http://www.potionfactory.com/podcastmaker/

By: Rob Sayers

Rob Sayers — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:52:47 +0000

I have not yet used Garage Band 06, but I used to do a podcast some time ago and used GarageBand05 for everything. I used a mic to record the vocal track, then mixed in intro and outro music as needed and then exported the whole thing to an mp3. The latest version is supposed to make the process even easier.