The Truth About Audio Mixers for New Podcasters

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 All right, welcome back to the Idiots Guide to Podcasting.

spk_0 I'm your host Scott here with my brother Kevin.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 Welcome to the Idiots Guide to Podcasting.

spk_0 And we talked a little bit about music, music copyright stuff, the very limited stuff

spk_0 that we know about that last episode.

spk_0 And this week with that kind of following that trend, we're going to talk about audio

spk_0 mixers.

spk_0 Essentially, what they are, it's a piece of equipment that allows you to record multiple

spk_0 audio signals kind of into one spot.

spk_0 And you'll see a lot of times musicians will use this, right?

spk_0 They'll plug all of their various instruments into a mixer that mixer takes all these different

spk_0 signals and it can record separate tracks, but then also kind of give them all you give

spk_0 them all together or they can mix them all together.

spk_0 So that's essentially what an audio mixer is.

spk_0 It can also give you some finer control.

spk_0 So really when it comes to audio mixers, here's some of the benefits.

spk_0 And first off, the question you want to ask yourself is do I need an audio mixer?

spk_0 The reality is no, not today.

spk_0 In today's environment, Kevin's using Kevin and I are recording remotely, right?

spk_0 And so really the audio mixer in this sense is the platform that we're using online.

spk_0 Like tonight we're using Riverside because we were having an issue with our other platform.

spk_0 And so really the audio mixer there is the Riverside platform.

spk_0 We normally use squadcast and oftentimes squadcast is that quote unquote online audio mixer.

spk_0 I'm recording on this end.

spk_0 Kevin's recording on his end, the platforms they put them together and they give us either a mixed

spk_0 emerged file with the audio is all together or actually they give us two separate tracks so

spk_0 that we can do some more fine tuned control and post production.

spk_0 So why would you have a separate audio mixer for yourself if I wanted an audio mixer sitting

spk_0 right here in front of me?

spk_0 That is the question of the hours.

spk_0 That's the question.

spk_0 So I actually do use one and I didn't even realize it because I don't think of it as an audio mixer,

spk_0 but it is.

spk_0 So one of the popular companies out there is Zoom just like it sounds, the OOM.

spk_0 And I use the web meeting, right?

spk_0 Not the meeting people.

spk_0 This is a company that does audio.

spk_0 And so if you start googling Zoom audio equipment, you'll find them pretty quickly.

spk_0 But I use one that they actually developed a couple years ago.

spk_0 It's called the Zoom Pod Track P4.

spk_0 So they kind of developed it specifically for podcasters.

spk_0 So it doesn't have a lot of like bells and whistles that musicians would not want or maybe need.

spk_0 But it does have inputs and outputs for four microphones and four headphones.

spk_0 So I could record four tracks all at once.

spk_0 So if I had four people sitting around a table, each with their own microphone and each with

spk_0 headphones, if we wanted to do that, everybody would be able to hear what's going into the mics.

spk_0 And the pod track P4 would record every single microphone as a separate track.

spk_0 And the reason that that is useful is because that allows you impose production.

spk_0 If someone's kind of talking or coughing in the background,

spk_0 while I'm talking, I can lower that person's audio, that track to remove, essentially remove that.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 Right?

spk_0 That's essentially what for most podcasters, they're going to consider an audio mix or four.

spk_0 So I have one because Jen and I, we run talk with history together.

spk_0 And like many bootstrap podcasts, I have to set it up at my dining room table every night.

spk_0 We podcast and I have to tear it down afterwards.

spk_0 And so I have the cables, I have the mics and I just do two mics in, two headphones out.

spk_0 And so she and I record directly to that.

spk_0 And then I transfer that to my laptop.

spk_0 So one of the things too is that it gives you that finer grain control.

spk_0 So you can adjust the gain or essentially the volume of the microphones going in.

spk_0 So if someone's like a really quiet dog or and they just don't protect very well,

spk_0 you can raise their volume because they're just a quiet talker or the opposite.

spk_0

spk_0 Like myself and Jen, we project pretty well.

spk_0 And so I turn that gain down a little bit.

spk_0 So you can find two of those controls.

spk_0 And that's what you're always going for when it comes to audio mixers is the better,

spk_0 the better kind of product you can put into your post-production software,

spk_0 the better you're going to get out of it.

spk_0 So let me ask you some questions here.

spk_0 Sure.

spk_0 Now I'm, I've got editing software, I'm editing my podcast.

spk_0 They have controls inside of the software that, well, you could turn it up and turn it down.

spk_0 What's the difference there?

spk_0 Yeah, so the difference there is if I'll give you an example.

spk_0 You know, for kind of, I'm going to kind of set the box.

spk_0 I have learned a little bit about this, but I don't know enough to kind of explain it

spk_0 very well for the technical stuff.

spk_0 But if you're using your kind of average microphone with the PodTrack P4 like what I use,

spk_0 if I started shouting into the microphone, I could clip, right?

spk_0 I could shout so loud that it could only handle a certain volume level.

spk_0 And then it would lose potentially the signal, right?

spk_0 My voice wouldn't be able to read my voice if I started shouting really loud at the top of my

spk_0 lungs for whatever reason.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 Excuse me, just the opposite if I spoke too softly.

spk_0 If I was recording directly into my laptop and then I was trying to adjust it after the fact

spk_0 with my laptop, I wouldn't be able to save that signal, quote unquote.

spk_0 Okay.

spk_0 I wouldn't be able to pull the low volume up enough to be able to make it

spk_0 listenable, audible.

spk_0 I wouldn't be able to pull the, the two loud signal down enough to save that audio.

spk_0 It was just gone.

spk_0 It's, it's clipped, right?

spk_0 And if you take a picture of the sun, the bright spots, you just can't get it back.

spk_0 It's too bright.

spk_0 It's blown, it's blown out.

spk_0 Same thing with audio.

spk_0 What the audio mixer allows you to do is when you're listening with your headphones

spk_0 as you're plugged into that audio mixer, you hear exactly what's coming into your signal,

spk_0 right?

spk_0 Because you use headphones with a microphone.

spk_0 So you can hear exactly what's coming in.

spk_0 So you can adjust those audio levels as you need to.

spk_0 Let's say the room is really super echoey or you're sitting too close together, you'd be able to

spk_0 hear that you have mic bleed, which is if Jen was sitting next to me and we were talking,

spk_0 like she's talking into my her microphone, but she's also kind of some of her residual sound

spk_0 is getting into my microphone, which would make it sound like an echo in post-production.

spk_0 Right.

spk_0 So I could actually turn my microphone gain down a little bit because I turned it up too high,

spk_0 so it's too sensitive and it's picking up too much.

spk_0 So I can turn that down with this mixer so that the mics aren't so sensitive that they're picking

spk_0 up, that both mics are picking up my one voice. It's really just your one mic picking up one voice.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 So that's what a mixer is going to allow you to do in as you're getting to take on in real time.

spk_0 So by the time you have recorded your podcast, assuming that you're paying attention and kind of

spk_0 mixing and adjusting as you go, you're actually getting a better quality starting off.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 Before you can hit post-production.

spk_0 Essentially you're getting a clean file, like a clean signal.

spk_0

spk_0 Right now once you set your levels, you don't, I mean ideally you don't want to mess with it too much

spk_0 as you go. You kind of want to test a little bit. And so Jan and I, we've done this enough,

spk_0 we've done it enough times like we know our spots, I know what angles to put our podcast in,

spk_0 I know the levels for my mixer, like we know all that stuff.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 And the other thing is too, that'll help with things like that with that clean signal,

spk_0 is room treatments, right?

spk_0 Don't record in your bathroom and just a bunch of tile on hard services.

spk_0 If you can record within a room with curtains or whatever it is, if you can treat the room somehow,

spk_0 that always helps.

spk_0 So you can get improved audio quality because sometimes these mixers will help with that.

spk_0 It gives you a little bit more flexibility because it's kind of, you're not necessarily tied to

spk_0 your laptop, like we don't actually have to use, we don't record directly to my laptop,

spk_0 we record to the mixer which has it as an SD card. And actually when we traveled not too long ago,

spk_0 I just kind of have my little podcast create bin that I store my stuff in, I just toss it

spk_0 in the back of my car and we record it on the road one time in our hotel room.

spk_0 It gives you again, it gives you more of that control as you're recording.

spk_0 And then sometimes this is the one thing that audio mixers will often do is it's easier record

spk_0 separate tracks. When I say separate tracks, that means my voice during this recording for

spk_0 you and I, Kev, is one track, your voice is another track.

spk_0 Those are two files that you're going to put into your whatever software you're using after the

spk_0 fact. And a lot of these platforms like Riverside or Squadcast, they'll give you an option for

spk_0 a merged file or two separate track files. But you can use put two, two, the two separate tracks

spk_0 into certain post-production software like I use Hindenburg. And that will let you do your own

spk_0 fine tuned controls for each track as you see fit. I do that in Hindenburg to apply a certain kind

spk_0 of bass compression sounds to it. So it kind of gives, it compresses our voice a little bit so it

spk_0 doesn't sound quite as echoey. And then it adds like a little bit of bass, just some volume,

spk_0 some kind of fluff to that for both Jan and I, gives a little bit more of that professional

spk_0 sound, a little bit of bass in there. So you can do that easier and you can individualize it to

spk_0 the person because the effects that I need to do to my voice might not be the same as Jan's voice.

spk_0 You can record separate tracks directly to a computer. So I actually looked that up ahead of time.

spk_0 So if you garage band on a Mac actually allows you to do this, it does require a little bit of

spk_0 YouTube video hunting on how do I how do I start do this and how do I do that? You can do that.

spk_0 It's not as simple but you can record directly into garage band. I know Hindenburg, you can record

spk_0 two tracks directly into if you set that up. So if you ever want to record directly into

spk_0 post-production software, there are options to do that. But a lot of times these audio mixers just

spk_0 handle a lot of a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Yeah, so it sounds like a mixer is going to be

spk_0 especially helpful when you have two or more people in the in the same room and you're all

spk_0 you're trying to manage multiple like voices and microphones at the same time.

spk_0 Yeah, it's definitely when you have a couple people in the same room. I think absolutely an

spk_0 audio mixer is a great addition. For me, I like it because I like the control of having the

spk_0 multiple tracks. So when when we do interviews, I can actually and I'll experiment sometimes. Like

spk_0 I mentioned to you on our last episode that I had just interviewed a book author. That one I'll

spk_0 probably edit it directly in Descript is one merged file. But what I've done in the past is with

spk_0 my my pod track P4 is I actually can take Jen and I in the same room and then of another virtual

spk_0 caller, let's say we called you and I plug that feed into my P4 and then I have three tracks.

spk_0 So then I get even more control. I have three tracks of control and then what I can do often times

spk_0 that I've done this for guests in the past with my because I have those three tracks. Then when I

spk_0 put those three tracks into my post production software, well oftentimes my guests don't have a

spk_0 nicer pod microphone or whatever like that. They're just talking on the laptop and it's super

spk_0 echoey. So if I need to do a bunch of echo cancellation or a bunch of post production, like audio

spk_0 fixing cleaning up, I can do it just to the one track. And so that's one of the other advantages

spk_0 of having these audio mixers like the pod track P4 that that that I got is you get that other

spk_0 that feed in and it gives you that fine-tune control so you can clean up that audio and post

spk_0 production and not just hope that it sounds good in one giant merged file. So for someone who's

spk_0 kind of doing their own thing, it's just them. They can sounds like if as long as they're sensitive

spk_0 to their surroundings, the kind of microphone they have, they could probably be just fine without it

spk_0 if they're not planning on doing a lot of interviews or whatever. Even might even be like

spk_0 if they're doing a lot of virtual interviews, they might be fine with just using something like

spk_0 Riverside or Hindenburg or Squadcast. Yeah, or Squadcast. Yeah, I mean really where I think

spk_0 when you nailed it earlier where the the audio mixer kind of shines is when you've got two people

spk_0 in the same room. Yeah, and even then you've got to be careful with placement. Don't sit right

spk_0 next to each other with two microphones. That's just kind of pointless. You got to sit a little bit

spk_0 separated. But really I think for if you're going to have two people in the same room and for me,

spk_0 I would love to have more people in the same room. I would love our Jen and I, we our goal one

spk_0 day is to have a little studio space where we could have another guest or two each with their own

spk_0 microphone and I can run that all through the zoom the pod track P4 and they've got some other

spk_0 ones. Right. So that one's kind of your middle of the road. I actually call it a lower end. I

spk_0 don't think it was is that much. But there's some other ones out there that are pretty popular. So

spk_0 again, zoom, they've got a bunch of ones. They've got like an H6, which is a little bit higher end

spk_0 than the pod track P4 road is another popular one. I've talked about road products before. But

spk_0 they've got the road podcaster and then they've got the road the roadcaster pro, which is like

spk_0 they're high end one. It's like a six to eight hundred dollar audio interface. But that one

spk_0 you can actually I think that you can have up to eight inputs and it's actually got like a sound

spk_0 board on it. So you can program certain buttons for sound boards and they can do all this like fun

spk_0 fancy stuff. I would love to get my hands on one of those one day, but I'm not I can't do it here

spk_0 where I'm living right now. Maybe Santa will will be nice to me sometime in the future. But honestly,

spk_0 I would say for most folks, they probably don't need one if you're just doing a solo podcast.

spk_0 If you want it and you're like, I'm going to go ahead and get it because I want that extra little

spk_0 bit of control. And I think in the future I could grow into something more sure, go ahead and get

spk_0 it. But honestly, to get started, if you have a USB microphone that can plug directly into your

spk_0 computer, you can start recording pretty easily. We've talked about some of the free software

spk_0 options. You can do it directly into GaragePaint if you like. I don't think it's super friendly for

spk_0 that. But there's other free stuff out there. So the I mean, those are the big things for

spk_0 those the audio mixers, right? Are you looking to record multi track and true multi track where it's

spk_0 not just two or three people on a Zoom call. You're all in different places and Riverside or Squadcasts

spk_0 going to essentially be your give you multi track files already. But you know, same people in the

spk_0 same room in my personal opinion. And do you really want or do you want that extra bit of control?

spk_0 If you do great, if you're a gear head and you love to fall down that rabbit hole and you've got

spk_0 a little bit of a budget, cool. I recommend that the pod track before as a great place to start. I

spk_0 think I'll be able to use that for a very long time. Ben Jen and I have been doing our podcast for

spk_0 creeping up on two over two years now. Maybe I can't remember if it's two or three years old.

spk_0 And then like I mentioned earlier, I would love to get my hands on like a roadcaster pro,

spk_0 something fancy, fancy in the podcast or world, not fancy in the true professional world.

spk_0 But yeah, that's that's the audio mixers kind of in a nutshell. There's a bunch of options out there.

spk_0 You can look on YouTube and they can kind of give you all the comparisons, the ups and the downs.

spk_0 But to be perfectly honest, the vast majority of folks, I don't think they need anything too fancy.

spk_0 If you want to travel with it, you can kind of consider that. The the pod track P4 is pretty small.

spk_0 And if it's if you've got a two mic set up, you can you can even operate that thing on battery power.

spk_0 Yeah, that's the basics for audio mixers and whether or not you want multiple tracks or you're flying

spk_0 solo on your podcast if you're doing solo as they keep it simple, right? Yeah. All right. There it is.

spk_0 Yeah, cool. Hopefully you guys learned something from this. And if you have any preferred

spk_0 audio mixers of choice or if you have any questions for us, please reach out. We will have

spk_0 some way to reach out to us in the podcast show notes because we haven't launched this podcast

spk_0 while you're listening to it. We don't have that yet. So the the contact link will be in the show

spk_0 notes of these of these podcasts if you want to reach out. Yeah. All right. Peace out.

The Truth About Audio Mixers for New Podcasters

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