This might serve as a lesson in proper podcasting hardware. While most people may go overboard to some extent, I think the latter selection of goodies the fellas in this article ended up with were a pretty good choice all and all.

Well if you listened to Podcast Studio Show #2, you might have noticed the poor audio quality. Chris takes some credit with the phone he was using, but a lot of it was due to the setup we had with the Yamaha Mixer and Sound Blaster Input Device. First, for a sub-$100 mixer, the Yahama is great for only studio recording. So if you want to start podcasting, or need a small mixer to travel with to events, this is a good choice. On the other hand, the Sound Blaster Extigy we were using said it was 24bit, but was recalled (send you a rebate) because it wasn’t. It was a $150 external sound card with nothing else. What a rip off.

Well those days are gone! John and I traveled up north to the Musicians Friends Warehouse and picked up a Mackie Onyx 1620 and the Mackie Onyx FireWire Card. This setup is amazing. Even though we aren’t using nearly the amount of inputs possible, the features are incredible. The Mic Preamps are top notch and I can’t say enough about having a mute button for our mics. During an interview, with condenser microphones, everything is picked up. Moving a chair, simple giggles that you dont want recorded, or a random sneeze. Now I can mute our channels and you will just get the caller. [Read the rest]