Creating Your First Home Podcasting Studio
Many aspiring podcasters make the mistake of thinking they have to do a significant amount of work to get their podcast up and running. This does not have to be the case. In fact, you can create a basic home podcasting studio very quickly, easily, and cheaply.
There is no reason why you can't use the internal microphone on your computer to get you started in podcasting. If your computer doesn't have an internal microphone, you can find inexpensive external microphones for or less.
You'll want to monitor your own voice when you are recording using headphones. This is an important but often overlooked aspect of podcasting. Listening to yourself with headphones gives you instant feedback on how you sound through the microphone. For example, are you too soft or too loud? Can you hear a pop when you say words that start with a p? Can you hear a hum, buzz, or external noise in the background? Monitoring your recording will allow you to catch these quality issues quickly. Most headphones will do an adequate job of voice monitoring.
Another piece of hardware you need to consider is your PCI sound card. For best results, you'll want a sound card that supports 24-bit recording at either 48 kHz or 96 kHz. If your sound card only supports 18-bit recording, that is still fine, but you may consider upgrading in the future. Many sound cards on the market today have great features, such as multiple line-in capability, but yet are still reasonably priced.
Once you have these elements in place, the only other thing you'll need is software to record and edit your recording. One of the most popular software packages used by amateur podcasters is called Audacity. It gives all of the basic features a person needs to record and edit a podcast. It works on PCs and Macs, it's easy to use, and, most importantly, it's completely free. Once you've created and edited a recording, you'll need to convert it to MP3. Fortunately, there is also free software for to do this. One popular choice is called the LAME encoder. You can also use iTunes to convert your audio file to MP3. What you use is really just a matter of your preference.
That's it! You are now ready to start recording and publishing your podcasts. You should consider using this basic set up for at least a few episodes of your podcast before you start looking to upgrade your studio. That way you can see what works well and where you can get the most bang for your buck when you do decide you have money in your budget to get some more advanced technology.
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