In this instructional lesson, Shaun Whynacht walks viewers through practical recording techniques that elevate podcast audio quality and avoid common mistakes. He compares studio-style and USB microphones, explaining that despite different connections they share the same pickup patterns and require similar handling. Shaun emphasizes proper mic positioning—talking past the mic at a 30-degree angle, using pop filters, and keeping the mic slightly off-center—to achieve consistent sound and comfortable conversation, especially during interviews. He details handheld mic usage, stressing the avoidance of direct plosives and maintaining a consistent distance between speakers to prevent level fluctuations. The lesson also covers specialized microphones such as lavalier, tabletop, and shotgun models, noting their typical use cases. Shaun then provides budget-conscious gear recommendations, outlining cost ranges for headphones, portable recorders, mic stands, microphones, and mixers, and explains how to combine multiple mics via a mixer into a recorder for field recordings. The video concludes with a preview of the next lesson on show imaging, branding, and structure.
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Hi, welcome back to the podcasting learning series. I'm Shaun Whynacht, and if you've been following along, we covered several different topics already. We talked about what goes into creating a podcast, you had some homework to come up with the topics and ideas that you want to put together into a new podcast for you, and then we spent some time looking at all the different types of technology. Now in this lesson, I want to talk about some of the recording techniques, some of the things that will take your recording to a whole new level and help you avoid some of the mistakes that you have. So let's see if we can demonstrate some of this. Let's first look at using a studio-style microphone. Now this one here plugs into a microphone cable and then runs into a mixing device. I have another one where I do most of my podcast recording on my computer and it's a USB microphone, which means that instead of a microphone cable, it actually plugs just a USB cable into my computer and then my recording software can record all the audio that way. That being said, the structure of the microphone is exactly the same and all the same techniques come into play. Now, when we look at this, a microphone has a distinctive front and back, okay? So there's a front and usually they're labeled. This one here, you can't see it, but it says back on the back, okay? And it has a fairly close, what we call a pickup pattern. So if you could kind of put your hands around the front of it like this, right? This kind of shape, that's where it's gonna pick up the audio. It's designed to not pick up most of the audio in behind. Unless you have a microphone that allows you to select the different pickup patterns on it, my USB microphone does have that, where I could put this between two of us and then turn on the back part so that if a guest's on this side and I talked into this side, it would pick up both of us, okay? The best technique is to always give each guest their own microphone, if you can do that. So the idea behind this is you don't want to Tighten that up there. You don't want to be sitting here talking directly perpendicular into the microphone, right? You don't want to sit here and talk directly into it because you are then allowing your voice to hit that microphone hard, dead on to it, okay? What I like to do and suggest, and it's worked really well, is I like to talk past it, about 30-degree angle, just past the microphone. So we're going to either turn the microphone stand, or in this case we can actually rotate the microphone so that it's just kind of hitting my face at an angle. You want to point the front of that microphone so that it's pointed at your mouth, but your mouth is going to talk past it. Then you're going to put that pop filter in place, and then you're going to talk. The other thing too is if you're interviewing a guest, you don't want to have this microphone right in front of you because it's kind of building a barrier between the two of you. You want to have the microphone slightly off to the side so you can have an open conversation back and forth. And it really makes for a better sounding recording. You may be thinking, you know, that sounds really silly, Shaun, why would you do that? It would make more sense to talk right into it. You would think that, but what I've found over the years at recording many different audio recordings is that it allows you to do this. The other thing too is if you've got some notes or some cue cards or a script that you want to read from, By actually having it off to the side, it allows you to be able to pull that up in front of you and still talk and not have to turn your head away from the microphone to see that paper. If you're talking straight in, you'd have to look down, and now you've broken the path of the audio, and the audio recording is not gonna be consistent. It's gonna be up and down in the sound volumes. So that's the key with that. Okay, that's with a studio microphone. With a microphone like a handheld one like this, It's the same type of thing, okay? You don't want to be holding it straight in because for one, there's no pop filter on this. So you could put those plosives and those air bursts right into the microphone, have those popping sounds. You want to just have it kind of either down below a little bit so that it's pointing up at your mouth and you're talking over the top of it. Never want to talk straight into it. And then the distance, okay? You don't want to have the distance be too close like this because it's going to be really loud and distorted. And if you don't match the consistent space between your mouth and your guest's mouth, then the levels are gonna be up and down between the two people. You can adjust them later, but over time, if it's a long interview, it's gonna take a lot of editing after to keep adjusting those levels up and down. So making sure that you have a consistent space between you. If your guest is soft-spoken, meaning they speak a little lower than you do, then you can put the microphone a little closer to them. Don't jam it right up in their face, right? They're gonna be freaked out for one, and you're gonna be rude for jamming it jamming a microphone in their face, but they're also going to be conscious that there's a microphone there, especially if they're not used to being recorded, and they may clam up and not give you the best interview possible. So be aware of that. A little bit off to the side, that's fantastic. Now, the only time that this is a bit of a different case is when you're using a microphone like this. This doesn't have a fairly long pickup pattern like some of the other condenser microphones do. So you have to be fairly close to get good audio. And there's kind of a pop filter built into these, right? There's a bit of a foamy covering inside here, which will eliminate the chance of those high pops. With these, you can have the microphone, as you can see here, fairly close to your mouth when you're recording. Okay, so that's the key with it. Again, you probably don't want to have it straight on. You can have it down. It's a little more comfortable that way. That's the only objection to that rule, is using a microphone like this. And going in reverse order, coming back to something like your phone, same type of thing, okay? You're gonna be holding it down here, you're gonna talk over it, you're not gonna talk right into it, because these are designed to have the microphone look out and pick up your voice. The further you're away with any type of recording device, it's more, automated, a phone being one where it will automatically adjust the levels for you, the further away you are, the more it has to strain to pick up your voice and it's gonna start to raise the level of recording and any background noise that's in the room or around you will be heightened as well. So the closer you can go, then the better it would be for that. So that's the key thing with this type of audio. Now there's several other types of microphones. There's lavalier microphones we can clip on here. There's microphones you can put on the table for a conference. On this camera, there's a high-sensitive shotgun microphone. You see it like a boom in a movie where they're holding it over top of somebody. There's tons of different microphones that are out there. The ones that I showed you here are the most common ones that are out there. Now, when you're thinking about the technology and what should you expect this to cost you, couple bucks for the app. For here just to record, okay? That's the key is a couple bucks. There's a couple free ones out there that allow you to export it like I mentioned, but get something that's good quality that's out there. Headphones, headphones don't have to be super high quality. You're not looking for something where you're picking up all the different frequencies. Basically these are just reference headphones. These are, yeah, okay, I can hear the person, you know, maybe I hear a hum. They have to be somewhat of that quality. You're not gonna pick up a pair of headphones at the dollar store But these, I went to our local Long and McQuaid store here, which is a music recording store. And I think these were under $20 for these headphones. And these have been through the end of the world and back for us in recording video and audio, and they still work. They're all frayed, but they are awesome, right? For a couple bucks. And you can spend hundreds of bucks on headphones. You don't need to. This recorder here, This was just under $100 on sale. But this, this is a phenomenal tool. Anyone who's going out doing any kind of podcast recording or interviews on the field, I strongly recommend you get something like this. This will do you a huge amount of work. And the other benefit too is if you have a tripod or a lighting stand, there's a threaded little nipple on the end, but there's a threaded spot right here that's the standard size, so I could screw this onto a stand and set it there and stand in front of it and talk into it. So it allows you to have a lot of versatility in there. These studio microphones, this is probably about $150, $200 per microphone. Your stands are going to run you about $30. And then if you're getting into a mixer, this power— this Mackie mixer, probably in the $250 to $300 range. And you get smaller ones You can get bigger ones, but the key is you want to make sure that it has a way for you to record this into your computer directly there. All of them don't have that ability, some of them do. If you don't have that, you then have to put this into some other recording device. So I could kind of build this combination where I could run 5 different microphones into this and then output the 2 mixed channels into this recorder to do my final recording. So even though this only had 2 microphone inputs and maybe I have 4 guests, I would then add a mixer into this, use this as a recording on-site, and then all would be good. Okay, so there's a bit of combination and playing around that you can do with your technology. Alright, so now what we're going to do in the next video is we're going to talk about the imaging, the branding, how do you put together the show, how do you structure the show, what is the best practices for building a podcast. I'm going to talk about that. In the next video.
