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Podcasting Tips Daily is now going multi-format: Available as a Podcast, an Alexa Flash Briefing Skill and as a video on Facebook and InstagramTV…
This episode covers the much asked question of what podcasting microphone should I use, buy or record with.
If you want more consistent help with planning, building and growing a podcast you will love, check out http://podtips.pro the membership site for podcasters.
This podcast is created by Chris Huskins.
Transcription:
Here there, welcome to your podcasting tip daily. Today I am going to cover; what microphone should I use?
I see this questions a lot on podcasting forums, and when getting started it’s a kind of a natural question to ask. What should I use to record my voice and how much is it going to cost me?
Well, here are my favourites in price categories from free to megabucks, so, find something that suits you.
Free. Obviously that’s your smartphone. The microphone in your smartphone phone has got much better over recent years and a lot of them come with headsets — the Apple phone headsets are actually nearly as good as the ones you buy for gaming and that sort of thing. And on occasion, sometimes, this can be your only choice. There are many podcasts that use this for pretty much everything. So check out your smartphone microphone to get started.
When you are moving to the medium range we love the ATR2100 or it’s sort of copy, which is the Samsung Q2U. For podcasters, these are perfect microphones. It has a direct feedback to headphones with volume control. It has an XLR port if you wish to use a mixer, or a recorder, or a sound card. And it also has a handy USB connection, if you need to plug it straight into your laptop. And it works out about £79 (British pounds) or $59-$99 (US dollars).
The Blue Yeti mic. It’s made very much with podcasters in mind. The Blue Yeti mic is a USB bidirectional microphone, and it comes with a table top stand built-in. It’s massively used, it’s massively loved. And some of the different Blue Yeti microphones have different features, and they do have different price points, but the basic one is about £99 (British pounds) or $130 (US dollars).
If you go and right up to the high end, and I am not saying you should start at the high end, don’t go out and spend megabucks or think I can’t afford to get this microphone, so I don’t want to podcast yet. Use the free stuff, use the medium range stuff, it’s likely all you will ever need.
If you do want to go high end though, we love the HEIL PR-40, it’s a top quality audio for voice recordings. It’s worth noting that you would need an adapter to be able to plug it in via USB directly to computer, or your Mac, as it runs on XLR only, so you would need a sound card, which we would recommend when you are going up this high end. Anyway, it’s about £300 (British pounds) or $380 (US dollars).
And the other high end microphone we talk about is the Audio-Technica AT4040. We love the Audio-Technica stuff ourselves, it comes with a large diaphragm and it picks up a great range of sonic characteristics — and your voice, and different people’s voices, it’s really great. Again, it’s an XLR only microphone so you won’t need an adapter for USB. And it’s a little bit more expensive than the HIEL, it’s goes about £400 (British pounds) or $500 (US dollars).
Thanks for catching today’s Podcasting tip. Don’t forget you can get this as a podcast, alexa skill or by video by following me Chris Huskins on Facebook or Instagram TV.
If you want more consistent help with planning, building and growing a podcast you will love, check out podtips.pro, the membership site for podcasters.