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So, you want to reframe “Hey, I have a podcast” from a terrible pickup line to an actual statement of fact. This would require you to actually start a podcast, but you look in your wallet and you can barely afford the drink you are now wearing as a result of your terrible pickup line.
We can’t give you game, but we can give you great advice from a professional podcaster. And we can give you some encouraging news, too – most podcast studios do not look like Joe Rogan’s swanky set or even Marc Maron’s cluttered (but very expensive) garage. Better yet, you may already be sitting in yours right now, and at a fraction of the cost you feared.
Anyone is seemingly a few good products away from having a show of their own. (Having something interesting to say also helps, of course.) No serious techie knowledge or hermetically soundproofed studio necessary.
“That’s kind of the beauty of podcasting,” says Ari Cagan, host of “Things You Don’t Need To Know,” which premiered its second season March 17. “You know how people say anybody can make a movie now with an iPhone? That’s only true to a certain extent. But literally anybody can make a podcast if you have a quiet room and a mic.”
Cagan’s setup occupies a corner of his Manhattan home, with no more soundpro ofing than the most basic five-year-old acoustic foam panels – “the cheapest ones on Amazon at the time.” (Here’s a good basic current option.)
His microphone, a Shure SM48 Cardiod Dynamic Vocal Microphone, and his headphones, “just basic Audio-Technicas,” are tried and true and hardly set him back any real cash. But in deference to Manhattan’s constant background noise, his one splurge is on cabling.
“If you live in a city my pro tip is to get the most expensive XLR cable that has the most resistance to outside interference, because there are so many cell towers and signals and other crap that get in the way of the cheap cables,” he says.
Cagan’s podcast, produced by Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries and Three Uncanny Four, has found him on the phone with everyone from comedians and professional poker players, to pickup artists and air traffic controllers, as he embarks on a quest to learn more about niche, wildly interesting topics — all from the comfort of his home.
Check out all the equipment that makes it possible:
Ari Cagan’s Top Recs:
Laptop:
2021 Apple Macbook Pro – “I almost never upgrade gear, but this one is so much quicker. It feels like a real computer, the old one feels like a fat Macbook Air. It’s like a professional device, stuff gets done with this thing. It’s a great piece of engineering, shout out Jony Ive. It’s night and day compared to the older models. It’s completely worth the $2,000.
Software:
Pro Tools – “I used to make my podcast in Final Cut, but I very quickly realized that was never going to work. Pro Tools has so many more options for audio. It’s much more precise and you can modify audio down much more precisely.
Microphone:
Shure MS48 Cariod Dynamic Vocal Microphone – “They’re good, they’re reliable, they sound nice. They’re XLR, so it’s a cable that plugs into a sound mixer so it’s a little more complicated but once you get the hang of it you won’t want to go back.”
Headphones:
Audio-Technica ATH-M50X – “They’re made for listening to audio. So they’re really well-balanced, that’s the key. Some speakers can be too tuned into bass but the magic of these headphones is that they’re perfectly even.”
Portable Recorder:
Zoom H6 6-Track – “This is a really amazing utility product. I’ll use it for everything from podcasting to going out in the field and getting audio on random things going on, and I’ve even used it for making short films. It can save to an SD card or you can run it through your computer. It’s pretty effortless.”
Sage Advice:
“If you make any decisions on what to purchase, it’s always the connectors that fuck you. It’s such a small thing but it makes such a big difference.”
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