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Where did the daily Podcasts go?
On January 1st, 2007 I vowed to have a new Podcast every day. I purchased three Blue Snowballs to do this task and created a small podcasting studio to make this happen. It worked fairly well for a while but since the Snowball is a USB microphone it was difficult to do a multi-track recording without jumping through a lot of hoops. I decided to build a REAL Podcasting studio.  As you can see we're not quite done with the studio yet, but the initial tests are very promising. The acoustic foam still needs to go up, I need to grab a second and then third KSM44, but very soon we'll have something we can use on a daily basis. While we were building the studio we asked the question, "how can we get the Technology Evangelist community involved in the conversation?" This is where the new studio gets very exciting! I won't spoil the surprise, but we'll be having a lot of fun in the coming months extending the conversation beyond what users traditionally think of in a Podcast. Really, that's what we're all about: pushing the limits of what technology can do and evangelizing the cool stuff. We'll be back soon with better sounding, more engaging and a community driven Podcast series soon! I'll also work on getting those blog posts up daily too, just been slacking on that one.
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2. Posted by: Shane McGregor on March 14, 2007 11:41 PM:
KSM44s? What a colossal waste of money! Don't get me wrong here. KSM44s are excellent mics but they are suited for more sophisticated purposes such as recording musical instruments and the like. Using them for a podcasting studio is like using a chainsaw to tear a sheet of paper.
I think you were on the right track initially with the Blue Snowballs. Heck, Shure SM58s are plenty good for recording speech for a podcast. How do you get from a Snowball all the way up to the KSM44? You guys must have obscenely deep pockets over there!
3. Posted by: Benjamin J. Higginbotham on March 15, 2007 1:21 PM:
I actually have a couple SM58s for video field work. They are pretty much the defacto standard there, decent sound, near impossible to break. Problem is that the really suck when trying to do a roundtable discussion. Since I have no way to control the polar pattern, I simply can't get the sound I want.
Keep in mind, we do this for a living. This is not a hobby. I want us to be the best at what we do, and having freaking awesome mics is the first step to getting that rich, beautiful sound. Right now MP3 takes a lot of that away at lower bitrates, but who is to say that in 5 years we won't have a much better sounding technology evolve as the new standard? I want to acquire at the best possible rate and the dumb it down for distribution. I do the same thing with video and that has served me well over the years.
We will be doing more than simple podcasting with the KSM44s. I need pro-grade VO work, roundtable discussions and intros for our videos. Video is 80% audio and by having mics that work well in multiple situations, I improve my audio and video production quality significantly.
Personally I think the KSM44 is a steal. You can pick them up for around $800.00 or so new, they have a decent (not great) mounting system and sound very, very clean. The next closest mic that I have found that I like is from Blue, and it's very, very expensive (although much more versatile than even the KSM44). For under $6,000 I'll be able to get an acoustically great room, great mics, great A/D conversion and have something that sounds as good as if not better than radio but on the web for a fraction of the cost. To me that's very inexpensive. All depends on ones needs though.
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1. Posted by: Corey Donovan on March 12, 2007 2:33 PM:
Can I come over and play? :)
ie. Any chance you'll be renting out studio time?...