Equipment Needed to Podcast

[Vinny O'Hare]

We often get a lot of questions about podcasting and what we use. Quite a few times at Affiliate Summit people stop me and ask what we use. It ends up leading to a conversation about why the person is not already podcasting.

There is not much in equipment that is really needed, it is the time and subject matter that is often what stops someone from actually podcasting.

We have a couple pairs of headphones with a mic. We record using Skype and a program called Pamela which cost about $29. We take the file and run it through a program called levelator and that's about it.

We upload it to the website or Geekcast.fm and write up some show notes.

[Deborah aka Loxly]

Something to remember when you are using Skype and Pamela to record calls for podcasts, you can save it as a .wav file and in stereo, but make sure that afterwards you use a program called Levelator to make the sound more equal and then use a program like Audacity to convert the stereo tracks to mono so that people listening with only one earbud can hear both sides of the conversation

Levelator and Audacity are both free programs.

[TrishaLyn]

Levelator is awesome. And if you use Audacity, you'll also need the LAME codec to be able to save as an .mp3, which is required for the widest distribution.

[Deborah aka Loxly]

Good point! I always assume that people would download lame when they download Audacity, but some people might not read the page and know they need to I convert everything from .wav to .mp3 before we upload it so that more people can access them.

[Gabe Carter]

I want to start a small podcast and found this iRig Mic on Crunch Gear and thought it'd be great to have a simple mic and my iPhone to record it instead of a bunch of gear and wires. What do you think about it? http://www.ikmultimedia.com/irigmic