Please help me decide regarding podcast equipment

[focut9]

Hi,

I'm quite brand new making music, but definitely not new to listening music. For many years I been listening using jds amp dac + amp with 660s and so far I was unable to far anything better sound, no matter 000's so this kinda become part of me. I thought some time what I want to do next at some point in near future and I come to this idea of broadcasting. I don't have a room which I could turn into studio, but I want to see what I can do to improve things which could be improved.

My recording setup is shure sm7b, scarlett 4i4 and 286s with cloudlifter. I like setup, but I want to see what would be the "next level". Now this is where I need your advice. At first I thought about buying Art voice channel 'channel stripper', but then I just discovered this whole thing with 'vst plugins'. I'm not an expert, but what they offer seems impressive and it is kinda obvious that they offer much more than 10 - 20 times more expensive high end audio equipment. I was looking into that Art channel stripper because I thought that having enough features would be a good start, but after realizing that vst plugins offer much, much more I'm now having second thoughts and thinking about instead focusing on delivering as crystal clear sound from microphone to pc as possible and then take care of post effects with vst plugins. Am I thinking right guys? Also, looking at this preamp Rupert Neve Designs 5017 , would it be ok for a podcast to delivery as clear sound as possible or this is overkill ?Please advice.

[Mike Stranks]

Welcome!

There's a lot to unpack here...

You talk about 'broadcasting' immediately following your comments about listening to music. Does that mean that you want to play music in your podcast? If so, it's usually the case - although it is different in different parts of the world - that you will need a licence to use commercial music. Otherwise, you are breaching various copyrights.

Podcasts and any form of 'broadcasting' are all about content and not about equipment. Any respectable microphone/mixer/recorder combination will be quite adequate. In my experience, it's the constant need to find interesting content that is the big challenge. A selection of music linked by 'That was... this is...' won't retain listeners for more than a few minutes. Everyone has their own playlists... what would be special about what you want to do?

That said, if you really want to do this, then look at:

The Rode Podcaster

The Zoom L8

The Zoom Podtrak P8 and P4

Tascam Mixcast

... and then start thinking about how you'll get your podcast 'out there' - what means will you use to get your creation from you to those who you want to listen?

[The Elf]

^^^ Mike knows his stuff. The gear you're mentioning is *way* above the requirements of a podcast.

[focut9]

But why rather not just focus on delivering as crystal clear sound to the pc and then spending rest of the money on some vst plugins which will provide compression and all other potentially necessary features?

[Drew Stephenson]

The Shure and Focusrite you have are quite capable of giving crystal clear sound, and there are free plugins that will give you everything you need to manipulate sounds once you're in the box - but the question that has to be asked is 'what manipulation is needed?' The answer might well be, 'nothing'.

[James Perrett]

You already have everything you need apart from a good acoustic space to record it in. Room treatment, even if it is something that you put up and take down for each podcast, is going to give you the biggest improvement.

[MarkOne]

I recorded the bulk of my last album with a 2i4. I think you’d have to spend a significant amount more to really appreciate the difference. And as Drew said. You really won’t, unless you have a well treated space. Spend your money there first.

And depending on your podcasting platform. You may find their transcoding would mask any equipment benefits anyway.