How to Make Your Podcast Recording Setup Sound More Professional, With Rockwell Felder

There's a question that you've had that I get all the time. Sometimes it's from brand new podcasters who are just launching their first shows. Other times I get it from seasoned podcasters who have released plenty of episodes but are still not fully confident in what they're doing. And yes, I've had this question myself way back when and if you don't already have it now, you will. Now the reason I get this question so much from those who have just met me and even from those who have heard every episode of this podcast is probably because I really haven't talked much about this before. I tend to focus on how to make better podcast content like the stuff that you actually talk about. I focus on how to get more podcast listeners and how to drive podcast monetization. These in my opinion are the biggest weaknesses of independent podcasters. Yet it is not the thing that's most often asked about, not first anyway. No, the first thing that many podcasters ask when embarking on this journey is, okay, well, it's actually a couple of questions but they're all in the same vein. It's questions like, what microphone should I use? What recording software do you use? Do I have to record my podcast in a closet or for those who have been going for a while? Is it time to upgrade my equipment? These are all things that I've never addressed on this feed because like I said, we should really talk about premise and audience first, but it is true. These things are important. The quality of your content and the specificity of your audience are indeed the biggest things to get straight if your podcast is actually going to grow. However, the quality of your recording is also important. It plays a role. That's because the difference between a pretty good, okay, recording and a really high quality recording are subtle. But once you hear the difference, you understand why these subtle things matter. So today, this is what we're going to talk about on Grow the Show, your recording setup. Now, there are plenty of resources online that talk about these things, equipment, software, EQ, room treatment, but that's actually a bit of a problem. Everybody talks about this and everyone says something different. Furthermore, the people talking about it get pretty weird about their choice in equipment or recording software. I don't know why this is, but for some reason, many believe that the setup that they have is the superior setup and that anyone that uses a different mic or a different recording software is downright an amateur. That's not true. And if you use different equipment or different software than I'm about to recommend, that's fine. But if you are new to this or even if you're just really not sure, all the information floating around and all of the weird, my mic is better, I know more than you posturing that happens online can be super intimidating. So today, let's have a conversation and set the record straight, shall we? In today's episode of Grow the Show, I'm going to share with you what you need to know about recording high quality audio remotely, meaning recording outside of a podcast recording studio and recording an episode where the people talking are in different rooms, sometimes on different continents. Now, I've been able to take two podcasts past six figures in revenue in only three years. And yes, other podcasters have done more than that. I don't know at all, but I do know what it takes to make a living doing this without a network. However, having said that while talking about this, I wanted some help from somebody who talks about this specific thing, making a great remote recording setup way more than I do. And that someone is Rockwell Felder. Rock is the co-founder and CFO of squadcast, which is a remote recording software platform. And today, Rock is going to break it all down to the basics. And you might be surprised with what he has to say. Many podcasters believe that in order to grow their show, they need to invest thousands of dollars into microphones and equipment. But as Rockwell Felder is here to share, you don't need fancy expensive equipment or a state-of-the-art recording studio at all. In fact, with just a few adjustments and the right technique, you can take a setup that sounds like this and make it sound like this. This is Grow the Show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland, and my mission is to help you, the independent podcaster, to get more listeners and monetize now, so you can have a thriving podcast business. Today, we're going to be talking about remote recording quality and how you can get the most out of where you're recording your podcast without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. So stick around and give yourself a professional recording studio at home now on Grow the Show. My name is Rockwell Felder. I'm the co-founder and CFO of squadcast.fm. Rockwell and his partner, the co-founder of squadcast Zachariah Moreno, have actually known each other since they were just kids. I met Zach when he was 14. I believe I was like 16, maybe 17 then, so I pretty much known him even before high school, but really when he was in high school is when I got to know him pretty well. They were casual friends, and after graduating high school, they went on their separate ways. Zach became a software developer and rock himself went into accounting and got a great job in the financial sector. But like many who find success in the corporate world, including myself, rock began to feel restless. Four or five years into that career, I had this like itch that needed to be scratched. And like I said, I'd always been interested in business, and so I'd always thought like, well, what if I could start my own business, be a part of something from the ground up, make a huge impact at the ground level, and that's when serendipitously in the fall of 2016, Zach approached me. You know, when you get an unexpected call from a friend or a family member whom you haven't really heard from in a while, and for a split second before you answer, you wonder, what is this? Why are they calling me? Is this terrible news, great news? Well, after several years of not coming across each other, rock got one of those calls from Zach. It was the Friday in October of 2016. I was driving home from a client and got this call from Zach and was just like, huh, that's interesting. Like, you know, we're friends, but it was definitely interesting to get a call from him on a Friday afternoon, but took it and found out that Zach was calling because he had an idea. He was basically telling me that he and his friends who were distributed all across California wanted to create a science fiction podcast, and we're running into trouble with doing that remotely, specifically with quality, reliability. It wasn't easy, it wasn't fun, and so he was telling me he was pretty demoralized, but he started to think about it a little more and kind of came to the idea that like, well, maybe we could build something like this for the podcast industry, and it was kind of like an all-thing super app for podcasters. So not only could you create the content, but folks could listen, there was probably like some social aspect where you can follow people, see what they're creating, see what they're listening, but honestly, the true essence, it was all built around recording and collaborating remotely, and that just made a lot of sense to me. The idea was cool, but rock wasn't entirely sure why Zach was calling him. So at first, I thought it was just because he knew my background in business and accounting and was just trying to get some kind of advice or input on that angle. I never knew though that he intended to ask me to be his partner on this journey, his co-founder and stuff. So that was like, incredible. Zach was calling rock to see if rock would be his partner. And remember, rock was starting to feel restless in his 9-5. On top of that, while he wasn't a podcaster himself, rock was a podcast listener. And back then, that was more rare than it is today. Because even back in 2016, it was a very different environment and industry where a lot of people still weren't familiar with the term podcasting or weren't listening to podcasting as like their regular media consumption diet. And I figured it was always going to be inevitable that podcasting was going to become mainstream. It was just too powerful. Once you started to listen to podcasts, I saw time and time again, people just got hooked and just wanted more. So I figured it was a matter of time before that became a thing. On a large scale, the timing was right. The podcast industry was about to explode. And for rock, the timing was right on a personal level too. I was already in a weird way preparing to make a jump to something more entrepreneurial and independent. So I was kind of ready. So Zach and rock jumped right in. But unlike what most new excited entrepreneurs do when they have an idea, Zach and rock refrained from getting right to building. No, the first thing that they did and the first thing that all entrepreneurs should do when they have an idea is not to jump into building, but to jump into learning. We wanted to immerse ourselves with the community. So we attended events. The first one was podcast movement in 2017, which was in LA. We sponsored that event, got a booth for a couple grand drove down there with our founding team members. And that was our first time like exposing squad cast to the podcast community and really getting direct feedback from podcasters. And that's one of the things that they told us right away was like your ideas a little too inflated. There's a lot of good companies that are doing stuff in the editing space or the podcast hosting space, you know, companies like Lipson or Buzzsprout stuff like that. And then of course there's plenty of listening apps out there. They're like a lot of that stuff's covered, but what's not covered is remote recording. And that does seem to be the centerpiece here. Just focus on being the best at that. That's really what the community needs. It's not what we have yet. Not everybody has the option to record in the same room or access a nice studio. So building a virtual studio that can kind of make it super easy for folks to collaborate and not have to sacrifice quality would be a game changer for us. And that just was reiterated time and time again. And so that was really encouraging for us because we got direct feedback that like our idea, although it wasn't a direct hit was not off target either. So it really got us a lot of information and we got a lot of connections from attending that event. And basically just said, okay, we're going to be the best at recording remotely. This of course is much easier said than done. There's so many times where Zach and I had conversations where it seemed like, oh man, it's not going to work out, you know. This is because the challenge that squadcast is trying to solve recording high quality video and audio remotely while still allowing participants to see here and interact with each other in real time is actually really difficult technically. Like the way that we record on squadcast is we record locally. So it's a little bit different than Skype or Zoom where Skype and Zoom are recording over the internet. So your internet connection is going to depend on the type of quality that you get from the recordings that you're doing on those type of platforms. And that's fine. That's not, you know, Skype and Zoom weren't built for podcast creation. So not trying to talk them down. But with squadcast, we learned that recording locally is the best way to ensure the highest sound quality possible. But we wanted to develop some technology that would allow podcasters so that when they get those end files that they would be synced up together because, you know, your audio is being captured on squadcast right now. Thank you. Locally on your machine and then it's simultaneously being uploaded to the cloud so that it's automatically saved. So you never have to worry if you're going to get that recording. And then also when you go and line it up in your post production, the tracks will line up. So again, we should back up and say that we record everything into separate tracks. That's what podcasters have told us they prefer because they like to edit those tracks independently so that if, you know, a dog comes and barks in on my track that it's not competing with your voice as well. And it's just easier for the post production process. It's important to Zach and Rock that they stay super close to what their customers podcasters actually want and need. And in an effort to do that, they actually became podcasters themselves. Yeah. So our shows between two mics, Zach and I cohost the show. So our show is all about who's really pushing the boundaries when it comes to creating or just doing the different activities and podcasting. So two times a month, we interview folks that are we think are pushing the boundaries. Like I mentioned, and then the other two weeks out of the month are just him and I and we're just talking shop, talking all things podcasting. Sometimes we talk about squad cast and what's going on with the company or what's coming up in the future and stuff like that. But for example, or one of our more recent episodes, we discussed the news of Apple changing the subscribe button to follow. And we talk about like, why is the rest of the industry talking about this? Why does it matter? Is it a big deal? Is it not a big deal? And just kind of give our perspective on that just to make folks aware, but also let them know what we're thinking. So with the experience of building out a tech platform that allows podcasters to record interviews remotely. And with the added experience of being podcasters themselves, I want to know what have rock and Zach learned about producing great podcast episodes remotely? What do you and I as independent podcasters need to do in order to get the best highest quality sound? Well, as it turns out, when most podcasters think about the quality of their audio, the first thing that comes to their mind is usually not actually what makes the most impact. I fell into this trap for sure when I first started out and you may also be focusing on this one aspect of remote recording. One of the biggest hang ups that podcasters, especially new podcasters get into is getting like overwhelmed or overemphasizing the equipment. So they spend in my opinion like too much time thinking about a microphone or headphones and you should absolutely get equipment like a microphone's going to sound make you sound better. So having equipment is important, but what I'm trying to say is is not getting not letting the equipment get in the way of you creating content. I see the same thing. Many new podcasters think that the way to take their show to the next level is to take their recording equipment to the next level. Upgrading your setup is totally fun and yes, it can make you feel more legit, but unfortunately it doesn't do anything at all to make your show better or to get you more listeners or make you more money. In fact, the only thing it really does is cost you money. Yet, of course, you do still need to have equipment and there is a level of quality that you do want to reach at minimum. So given that, where is the balance? What recording equipment should you buy? We recommend dynamic microphones. It's just better for spoken word type of content. It doesn't pick up a bunch of extra noises that are happening around you. So I'm using an ATR 2100, but there's a few other great microphones that are really good for podcasting and that are dynamic microphones. This is worth emphasizing. It's super important to grab a dynamic microphone instead of a condenser microphone. If you're going to be recording a podcast, why is this? Well, this is because a condenser microphone is meant for situations where you do want to capture every little detail that the mic possibly can pick up. Think like a pop singer in a soundproof vocal booth who wants every little shimmer and shine of her voice to make it into the track as she's singing lead vocals. In that case, a condenser mic is great. But if you're a podcaster in a room with tons of echo, with a huge air conditioner, with a sink on in the background, with kids playing in the other room, you probably don't want your mic to capture everything it hears, right? Enter dynamic mics. These are designed to capture only what is right in front of them. And this is how a rock singer on stage can hold her mic and belt into it while standing in front of a super loud drum set. The mic that she's holding is a dynamic mic and it only captures her voice because that's what's in front of it. The drum set behind it doesn't get picked up at all. Can you imagine if she was holding a blue Yeti or another condenser mic? You would only hear the drums. It's the same thing for us podcasters. We only need our voice to be recorded, not all the other ambiance around us. For demonstration purposes right now, you're hearing me on a dynamic microphone. And I bet you can't even notice that I am in an echoey room and there is a bathroom sink on behind me. But if I switched to a condenser mic in the same exact spot, you can hear the sink. So no matter what mic you use, above all else, unless you're recording yourself in a soundproof studio, make sure it's a dynamic mic. As for which dynamic mic I recommend, for all podcasters, I highly recommend the Shore MV7. It does cost a little bit more than the ATR 2100 that rock is using. But to me, it is absolutely the best bang for your buck because it combines the highest quality dynamic mic with plug and play USB functionality so you don't need expensive, extra equipment like interfaces or preamps. And on top of that, it's half the price of the famous and fancy Shore SM7B, which is what I'm talking on right now, but it has virtually the same level of high quality. So whether you're looking to upgrade or grab your first podcasting mic in both cases, I say grab the Shore MV7 and be done with it. The link in the show notes will bring you to the Shore MV7 on Amazon. And yes, Uncle Bezos will give me a small commission if you use that link to buy one, but you totally don't have to. Anyway, no matter what equipment you use, what you get out of the equipment doesn't have to do with how fancy or expensive the mic is. The quality of your recording actually depends on something else. We have a local meetup in Oakland and another one in San Francisco where we do a hot seat. So each month will basically listen to someone's podcast and then in the meetup group will review it and like give feedback and stuff like that. And one of the things that comes up quite often is, hey, I can tell that your mic technique is a little off. You sound a little too far, you sound a little too close or you know, just simple stuff of just not using the equipment properly can actually have a huge impact on your quality as well as the environment that you're in. So what type of room you're in, what you're around can also have a huge impact on your quality. But what can you actually change about your recording environment to make your recording quality sound better? Try not to be around things that are going to cause like a lot of echo. So like hard surfaces or metal surfaces. Try not to be next to your refrigerator or put the dog away, stuff like that. Other things that I've seen podcasters do is like recording in their closet because the clothing absorbs a lot of that sound or having some curtains or putting a blanket on your table or also things that can really help absorb that sound and not cause a bunch of echo in the sound, kind of bouncing off of the walls or the floor or stuff like that. Like anything else, practice makes perfect. Before you actually record interviews with any new equipment or software, it's important that you know that equipment and software is in and out. This is one of the biggest mistakes that podcasters make with remote recording. They jump right into using a new piece of software or a new piece of equipment live for the first time in front of a guest. Of course, they don't know the setup. They don't know how it works and everything goes wrong. So we've seen people that are doing their interviews on squad cast for the first time and they've never used the software before. And you don't need, there's not an extremely crazy learning curve with it, but you don't want to be learning while you're interviewing while someone else's time is being used up here. I mean, we understand how much effort and work goes into the pre-production stages. So you've got to do some research or doing some scheduling, some outreach to get these folks on your show. So I get it. There's a ton of work that goes in there, but you definitely don't want to be using that time to like figure out the platform or figure out if your microphone is working and plugged in and synced up correctly. So I think just giving yourself that time and space to practice and get comfortable and confident with your setup is really important. So we have three main boxes to check when recording remotely. Number one, we want to be using a dynamic mic. Number two, we want to record in a room with as little echo and as little ambient noise as possible. And number three, we want to be familiar with the software and equipment we're using before trying to record with a guest. Those are all stuff that are within your control, like how you behave and what you surround yourself with are usually inexpensive ways to improve your quality. And then finally, of course, using the appropriate applications and software. So that brings us to the big question, what recording software should you use? We would love if you use squadcast, but there's other options out there that are definitely trying to accomplish a similar mission as ours. It's true. You have a few options. You can use squadcast, which is what I use or you can use one of squadcast's competitors like Riverside or Zencaster. Honestly, all three of these services do provide high quality audio and video recording. And all three of those services also sometimes have technical issues. The thing about what these pieces of software are doing, which is recording interviews remotely in sync and with high quality is that it's really hard technically to do that with 100% accuracy every time. This is because there are actually a ton of failure points when recording an interview remotely. And many times when a remote interview fails, it's because of something other than the software. It could be your internet connection, your microphone, your USB cable, your laptop, your camera, your browser, your laptop's charger cable, your camera's cable, or it could be your guest's internet mic cable laptop, camera browser, charger, camera cable, or yes, it could be the software. That said, I've used squadcast for two years now and have had an occasional hiccup or two, but never anything catastrophic and it's rare. So I stick with them. If you already use Riverside Zencaster or even Zoom and you're happy with it, that's fine too. Just make sure you're using a dynamic mic and you're recording in a quiet place because honestly, here's the thing about recording quality. It matters less than the quality of your content and whether that content serves and delights your audience. If you're show sucks or if it's boring, none of what rock and I are talking about here matters. Fix that before you fix your setup. However, a bad setup and terrible quality can be what kills your podcasts. So this stuff is important and make sure you have your bases covered. Oh, and there's actually one more thing that's crucial to do if you want high quality remote podcast recordings. Headphones are always recommended that's been a big thing of ours to recommend headphones, especially when recording remotely. It just helps with the quality. It's not intuitive, but like your headphones help reduce echo and different sound vibrations and stuff like that. It also ensures that your microphone isn't picking up the other person as they're talking. If you have that person's voice coming through your laptop speakers, your mic is going to pick it up and that's going to make things a nightmare to edit later. So what do we podcasters need to do to ensure the highest quality remote recordings while not completely destroying our budget? Number one, we need to make sure we're using a dynamic mic, not a condenser mic. In most cases, a $50 dynamic mic is way better than a $400 condenser mic, which by the way is the mic that I use for the Demonstration purposes here. It's $400. This one sounds better. Two, and more importantly, then one, you need to do your absolute best to record in an environment that has as little noise other than your voice as possible. You will not achieve perfect silence and that's okay, but you can get most of the way there by staying away from lawn mowers and air conditioners and by making sure there are soft surfaces around you like books, clothes, blankets or furniture. Really anything other than blank walls and hardwood floors will do. Two and a half, you need to make sure that you're using headphones to hear your guests. Otherwise, you're going to ruin your recording. And number three, you need to use software you're familiar with. Get off Zoom if you can because with Zoom, you're recording tons of wobbly, garbally internet noises because Zoom records the feed after it goes through the internet. However, if you're in a pinch, Zoom works fine. Above all else, good content trumps, good audio quality within reason. So just remember that. Now, I have a feeling that when rock mentioned the hot seat, which is where a bunch of podcasters get together in the bay area, listen to a show and give it feedback, I'm pretty sure that when you heard that, you thought, oh wow, I would love that for my show. I'd love to get feedback on my podcast from a bunch of other podcasters. Am I right? Well, you can. If you join us over in the free Grow the Show Facebook group, you can have your show stress tested in front of a thousand other growth-minded podcasters. Simply hop into the group and find this week's weekly feedback thread and you'll be able to get feedback on how to improve your setup and everything else about your show. Two pro tips, though. Number one, if you want to get feedback, be prepared to give feedback in return. Do not be a leech. And number two, remember that the best feedback comes when you ask for specific feedback. If you send somebody your show or post in the group, then you say, let me know what you think. You're probably not going to hear anything back, including from me because essentially, what you're doing is you're asking the community to figure out what problems you have and what problems you need to solve. Nobody has time for that. We're solving our own problems. Instead, ask for specific feedback. Come with specific problems and the community will help you solve them way faster than if you tried to do it all by yourself. So there you have it. Now you know how to optimize your remote recording setup so you can make a professional sounding podcast from the comfort of your own home. If you want to give squadcast a try, rock and the team have graciously offered you one free entire month of high quality audio and video recording. Simply use promo code grow the show to give squadcast an extended free test run. That link is in the show notes. Grow the show is a Q9 production. This episode was written and produced by me and Catherine Nails with post production by Jeremy Bishop and a very special thanks to Rockwell Felder, Ariel and Zach and everyone else at the squadcast team. For Grow the show, my name is Kevin Schmidland. See you next week.