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Building A Radio Station Recording Studio On A Podcasters' Budget
December 12, 2017
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I've teamed up with Detroit comedian Mike Geeter to launch a new podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene called The D Brief. In this column, I am sharing the lessons I learn from it for other radio broadcasters who want to do the same.
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You don't know what you've got til it's gone. One of the most challenging things about being a podcaster is that you have to play the role of every radio station staff member: on-air talent, program director, production director, salesperson, etc. For me, the hardest role to step into has undoubtedly been that of audio engineer.
Throughout my radio career, I was lucky enough to work with some wonderful engineers. Folks like Bill Bracken at WBCN in Boston and Dennis Knudsen at WBRU in Providence made my radio stations sound spectacular, usually without me having any clue how they did it. Let us take a moment to express our gratitude to the engineers, the unsung heroes of the radio industry whose work goes largely unnoticed (until something goes wrong), but who have a profound impact on the listeners' experience.
Most of us podcasters aren't in a position to have a full-time engineer, so we have to handle all the technical aspects of making ourselves sound professional on our own. It's not easy, and it's definitely not my strong suit.
When I set out to launch The D Brief, my new podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene, I had a few goals in mind:
- To sound like a commercial radio morning show, complete with sweepers, music beds, and compression
- To create a setup that allows me to spend most of my time on show preparation, and as little time as possible on post-show production
In short, I wanted to recreate a radio station studio...but without a radio station budget. Fortunately, I had the help of James Clausen, an audiophile with experience recording sound for film. James and I met online a few years ago, and he has been graciously helping me with the sound of my podcasts. His insight has been invaluable, and I sought his advice when assembling my new rig.
My previous podcast recording setups have been designed for post-production editing. I would use a computer or digital recorder that allowed for multi-track recording, meaning that each microphone would be recorded to a separate track. This way, if two people talk over each other, or one person is louder than the other, I could correct it in an audio editing program later. I would also add a produced into and outro to the podcast in the audio editor, add any processing such as compression or equalization, and then bounce it down.
But with The D Brief, I wanted to record directly to a stereo file, and minimize all of this post-recording editing. So, James and I decided to incorporate a mixer into the equation. For this podcast, we knew we would have two co-hosts, with the eventual addition of a third, plus a guest. We also wanted sweepers, music beds, and interview snippets that would be pre-recorded. Because the interview snippets would need to be played over the music beds, they would need to come through two separate inputs on the mixer, requiring six channels (four mono mics and two stereo inputs) in all.
I upgraded from my ATR-2005 mics that I had used for my previous podcasts to the R0de Pro-Caster mics. The ATRs are fantastic portable mics that provide respectable sound quality when recording on the road, such as for my Worldwide Radio Summit podcast, but James advised that I step up my mic game to achieve commercial radio sound with this podcast. We looked into Shure S7MBs and the Heil PR40s, which are favorites among other podcasters, but because we needed to purchase four, decided that the less expensive R0des were the way to go.
I had been using the Sound Cue app on my iPad for a while and, despite the occasional crash, was happy enough with its performance that I decided I would use it for the podcast's production elements. However, I would need a second device to play pre-recorded interview clips from. I did not want to shell out for another iPad, so I looked for a piece of inexpensive audio hardware that might be up to the job. Everything I found was designed for sampling in a set by a wikky wikky DJ, not a radio DJ. I found a number of Abletron controllers -- I didn't know what Abletron was! -- but they also didn't look like a good match for the job.
After weeks of searching, I decided to purchase an inexpensive Kindle Fire and look for an Android app that would work. Unfortunately, the Android apps in this space are far inferior to the iOS apps. Ultimately, I settled on an app called Soundpad, which, along with Dropbox to transfer the audio files, had to be "side-loaded" onto the Kindle. It was a painful process, and not one that I would recommend, but in the end, it seemed to work.
I also purchased a Tascam DR-40 digital recorder because I've heard way too many horror stories from podcasters who lost a recording when their computers crashed.
Which left me with just a mixer to buy.
After weeks of research, I learned that most mixers are designed for live performance by bands or DJs, not for podcasters looking to recreate a recording studio. I struggled to find a mixer with all of the features that I wanted:
- 4 mic inputs
- At least two more stereo channels
- Equalization
- Compression
- Light enough to be portable
- Affordable
This was not an easy task. At one point, I purchased a Yamaha mixer, only to return it when I discovered it didn't meet my needs. I finally settled on an Alto 1202 mixer, a brand that received good if not great reviews but a model that met all of my needs.
I brought the mixer home, set everything up, and performed a test recording. To my dismay, there was a notable hum from the microphones. I began trying to track down the source. All four microphones produced the hum, so I knew none of them needed to be exchanged. I replaced the mic cables with higher quality cables, but that didn't help. I brought the entire setup into the office for a trial and, to my surprise, the mics stopped producing the hum. I was confounded.
After several days of Googling, I learned that dimmable lamps can be a source of noise. I have three dimmable lamps in my living room. So I took the mics and my headphones and began wandering around the room, pointing them at the lamps. I imagine that I must have looked like Gene Hackman in The Conversation. Sure enough, the humming got louder when the mics were pointed at the lamps, and softer when pointed away from the lamps. With four mics and three lamps in the same room, it's no wonder I was hearing so much humming. Fortunately, we wouldn't be recording the podcast in my living room. So the mixer would work just fine.
At long last, I had my new podcast gear. In all, I spent around $4,000 -- far more than I had spent on any previous podcast setup, but far less than the price tag on your average radio station setup. The process took weeks of research, and it would still take several weeks of trial and error to find the right equipment settings. But I felt that I had assembled a rig that would produce a podcast that, while not quite NPR-quality sound, was certainly good enough to pass for professional in the ears of the average listener.
LISTEN: Hear the latest episode of The D Brief podcast.
More Glimpses Behind the Scenes:
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