Podcast Recording and Pre-Production
In preparation for my podcast recording I first had to decide the format of the podcast itself as this would be a deciding factor to the microphone choice I would go forward with for the recording. As I prefer a more natural conversation to one person talking to a microphone, I opted to have a podcast consisting of two speakers as I believe this to be more engaging for the listener. Scripting the podcast I wrote several short questions for Das aimed at creating a discussion between us, this I thought would give the podcast a good dialogue that would be informative and engaging.
With having two speakers I had to pick from the mic choice the Rodes NT2A which was available as this was firstly a large diaphragm condenser microphone which having a high frequency response and clean present tone for vocals would better than the other ribbon and dynamic mics as these experience more of the proximity effect which could have led to issues with the volume levels of my own voice being lower then Das’ and subsequently leading to an unbalanced recording, secondly and importantly for my setup the Rodes also had figure-8 polar pattern functionality which I would require to get two 0degrees points where the speakers could talk into. Utilising exactly this, the microphone was placed in the centre of the table on a mic stand, with myself and Das on either side at equal distance where each of us sat along the 0degrees (180degrees) axis and therefore could direct our voices straight towards the diaphragm properly.
Recording setup consisted of using focusrite audio interface to connect the Rodes to the computer and digital audio workspace. This followed the chain from the Rodes microphone with low-end rolloff and figure-8 polar pattern being connected via an XLR carrying a balanced signal to input 1 of the audio interface, where it was sent phantom power to power it as well as pre-gain to bring the mic-level up to a more usable line-level which is then digitised within from it’s originally analogue format and sent from the focusrite audio interface via USB to the computers audio recording software which can then read this digitised signal and represent it via a string of bits graphically shown as a waveform, which is then read through and played back by the digital audio workstation.
So with the microphone, audio interface and DAW connected, the DAW needs to be programmed to record from the interface so going through the settings I set the audio input to the focus rite and in the recording channel strip on the mixer set the audio input to number 1 on the interface, with the DAW in use being Pro Tools. This was then armed and the levels checked via a soundcheck to ensure no clipping was occurring but that the audio signal itself was still at a loud enough level for the audio to be clear and audible.
The recording was then underway, setting the playhead to the project start and pressing record begun the process of turning those soundwaves uttered into digital bits of 0s and 1s. Once we had gone through the recording, I did a check listen to ensure no unexpected errors had spoilt the audio and that there was all the sections needed for the post-processing, after packing down the equipment I was finished with the recording stage and moved to the editing.
