Our first gear & production setup for Nori’s startup podcasting experiment

We were podcasters once, and young. Our third episode with a giant rat’s nest of cables.

If you’re thinking of doing a podcast for your startup, read this post first. I cover if you should do a podcast, how we developed Nori’s Reversing Climate Change concept, and how we approach the topic for marketing and business development aims. Those are way more important topics than the quotidien gear selection.

If you’re recording a first test episode, you can just record with GarageBand and the mic on your computer. It won’t sound wonderful, but the floor price for a test is effectively zero.

If you’re sold on the idea and want to proceed to make a podcast, here is the gear we chose with travel in mind. If you’re going to be podcasting from a set location, I’d choose different gear that is better quality but more sensitive to jostling, like condenser mics over dynamic mics, different filters, etc. We chose mulish gear that is rough and ready. Our two goals were: gear that will survive frequent travel, and don’t spend a lot of money to get the podcast out the door. If you share these goals, or aren’t sure if you will or will not be traveling to podcast, I think our choices are a safe middle-of-the-road default for cost and quality.

Nori’s main podcasting gear:

Oh, stalwart Zoom recorders, as far as I can tell you are best in class.

1. Recorder ($349.99): Nori uses the Zoom H6 Six-Track Portable Recorder. I’ve used the Zoom H4n for a long time for video work. Both units have traveled all over the place and taken a beating. The main difference between the two devices is that the H6 has four inputs for XLRs (mic cables), while the H4n only has two. If it’s only ever going to be two people talking, go for the H4n, but otherwise the H6 is worth the extra hundred bucks.

Dynamic mics are workhorses.

2. Microphones ($39.99/each): We have four Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphones. They do the job. They aren’t anything to write home about but they are built for wear. When musicians record vocal tracks in the studio, they generally use sensitive condenser mics. But when you see them perform live, they typically use dynamic mics. Why you may ask? If I drop a dynamic mic, I’m not sweating. If a condenser mic hits the ground, I start reading my warranty materials and weeping gently.

The one caveat I’ll offer here is I do not care for these stands. They have limited ability to articulate in different ways and given standard table heights they often require bad posture and leaning in. Upgrading to better mic stands is on my wish list for the future.

You’ll get over hearing yourself speak.

3. Headphones ($39.99/each): we use the LyxPro HAS-10 Closed Back Over-Ear Professional Studio Monitor & Mixing Headphones, Newest 45mm Neodymium Drivers for Wide Dynamic Range — Lightweight. We bought four of them, though this has occasionally penalized us if we have had two guests on as Producer Paul was not able to wear one for levels and had to eyeball it. Our verdict: good for the price, and we’ve felt no need to upgrade as they do their job well. If and when Nori has an in-house studio in our office I’ll start drooling over more high-end products I wouldn’t feel comfortable with on the road.

Accessories:

1. Gear bag ($100ish): go for something rugged like the Musician’s Stage Duffle Black by Phitz. There are a lot of options here so I’d read the reviews and shop around. Something designed for musicians, filmmakers, or audio gear in particular is going to have a lot of cushioning so I’d probably opt for this over a general hardware bag despite Carhartt making a beautiful product.
2. Microphone windscreens ($9.38): we bought the On-Stage Foam Ball-Type Black Microphone Windscreen, 5-Pack to cover our microphones and avoid the hard vocal popping and sybillant sounds. They’re fine given that we travel, but I’d get a much nicer pop filter on a condenser mic if we had a static setup.
3. SD card ($62.49): nothing you haven’t seen before, you’ll need something like the SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB up to 95MB/s UHS-I/U3 SDXC Flash Memory Card — SDSDXPA-128G-G46 for your recorder. Get a bigger size one like the 128GB just to make sure you don’t have to stop in the middle of a podcast, and make sure you’re always backing everything up and only then clearing the data off the card. The rule for film sets is that it’s not truly “in the can” until the footage is backed up a few places. Do the same here.
4. Cables: this is the only area where we had to upgrade from basic run-of-the-mill XLR cables that came with the microphones. We recorded an episode in a skyscraper in Seattle and ended up picking up some radio station or other traffic that sounded a bit like the recon droid in The Empire Strikes Back. We upgraded to gold-shielded cables to avoid this hassle again. No problems… yet. I don’t think you need to start with fancy cables though. Just keep that in mind in case you hear interference and try not to layer cables on top of one another when you’re recording.

5. Splitter ($9.50): your recorder won’t have enough monitor outputs for all of your podcasters’ headphones, so a device like the Belkin RockStar 5-Jack Multi Headphone Audio Splitter (Blue) (F8Z274btBLU) is the unsung hero of our kit.

All of this gear comes to about $850. That isn’t to say you can’t do it more cheaply. You definitely can. We weren't optimizing solely for price as we pretty quickly realized we wanted to podcast long-term and thus it was worth the upfront investment. You could also spend a lot more on better gear, something we’d like to do, and I’ll most likely write that up here when that happens. As I said, this gear has served as well as a solid travel-ready mid-range podcasting kit.

Hope you’ve enjoyed. Read the other post on developing your podcast concept, and check out Nori’s Reversing Climate Change podcast too!

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