Speaker 1: Podcasting is one of the best ways to grow your influence online right now. Did you know that 32% of Americans listen to podcasts at least once per month? In 2019, there was only 750,000 active podcasts. Compare that to the fact that there is over 15 million active YouTube creators, I see an opportunity in podcasting. That's why we launched a podcast this year. And in this video, I'm gonna be breaking down the gear we use, how we set it up and tips for you if you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your gear. And make sure to watch until the end of the video because I'm also gonna be sharing some of the best budget alternative options for starting podcasting. Let's jump into it. You gotta just press record. What is up, Sean Cannell here with Think Media bringing you the best tips and tools for building your influence with online video. And I'm super fired up because in this video, I'm gonna be talking about the gear that we mentioned in the title. Of course, the Rodecaster, the Rode Mic, sharing my impressions of it and why we chose this for our recent podcast launch. If you haven't heard about it, we started a new video podcast on a new channel called Think Marketing and we are distributing it across the interwebs to Apple, Spotify, Google and everywhere. And so we've learned a lot of lessons along the way. So let's just jump into the tips. Now, quick disclaimer, this setup that we're gonna be reviewing is not super budget or really for beginners. If you're serious about podcasting, this is a great setup. We knew we wanted to go all in, get gear that was scalable, super user-friendly, but also that had a lot of features and power and that's why we went with the Rodecaster. But towards the end of the video, I'm gonna be talking about some budget options that you can get started with for as little as $60. So definitely stick around. So the main unit that we wanted to use for our podcasting setup is the Rodecaster. You may have already heard about this beautiful and incredible all-around, all-in-one solution for podcasting and my friends, I am in love with this piece of gear. It has incredible audio quality and you're already hearing that right now. But if you're just doing a solo podcast like this right now, you may not need all of these channels and all of these features, but even so, you still might wanna invest in it when it comes to the sound pads and the ability to pull in Bluetooth from your phone and monitor with headphones and to have scalability. And you're hearing the vocals right now, but typically our show has two people on it with Heather Torres as the host of the Think Marketing Podcast and myself or other guests that we bring into the studio. So check out this quick clip of what the final result is recording with this unit. You really need to be positioned right, I think on YouTube to break through the noise.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so critical. And one of the things that we teach here at Think Media really is the types of videos you should be creating.

Speaker 1: So one of the coolest things about the RODECaster is just how easy to use it is and how user-friendly they have designed it, besides the fact that it's just super sexy. I mean, don't you agree? I mean, it's one of the coolest looking podcast units out there. You've got multiple channels to bring in different sources of audio. Now, I just have the one mic plugged into the first channel here, but you can add in other XLR sources into these four channels here. You've got a USB source. You could do an eighth inch from your phone and even bring in Bluetooth from your phone or another source as well and mix all of those different channels. You've also got your sound effects channel right here and you get eight different pads so that you can add sound effects to your show. Now it comes preloaded with some clapping and laughing and things like that. And those might seem like something you wouldn't use or something that's cheesy, but I saw my friend Pat Flynn, who uses this same unit, doing his live YouTube show and doing some podcasting stuff, putting on some different gaming sounds and funny sounds. There's a podcast called Dropping Bombs and every time the guest drops a bomb, Bradley hits that button and the bomb noise goes off and that's like that emphasis of that PowerPoint you just learned when that bomb was dropped. So it's super cool that you have those. You can have multiple headphones so if you've got the four physical guests with mics like this, they can all be monitoring and hearing their audio in real time and you've got those inputs. You've got your overall channel knob and so it's really easily laid out. Now if you're new to this and this still seems a little bit intimidating, the Learning Curve is super fast and it even comes in the package from Rode with all these color coded cards that just sort of hold your hand to get the whole thing set up. Next is the fact that it's a true multi-track recorder. Now when it first was released, one of the criticisms was the fact that wait a minute, it just combines all the files into just one source and you don't have multi-track but they quickly remedied that with a firmware update, bringing it from V1.1.0 and that gave you multi-track mode. In that mode, it allows you to record every input channel as well as individual tracks in addition to the summed stereo output for up to a total of 14 tracks. The cool thing here is that when you're done recording, you can just use that combined file because maybe that's good enough. Maybe nothing's wrong, maybe everything was mixed well, maybe you were playing even some music at the beginning of the show that you could fade in off of Bluetooth or off of your phone but maybe it wasn't mixed well and so you wanna actually do some mixing and bring up a quieter guest in post or reduce the music or the sound effects, whatever. When they added multi-track, I think it basically fixed the main weakness that the RODECaster had when coming out. So very versatile and then the cool thing about this is that it's also scalable. So again, you could do a solo show like I'm doing right now essentially and you've got this cool looking unit. You could use it for other things. You could record with a micro SD, the audio directly to the unit but it might be a little bit of overkill for solo. However, you're ready to go if someone comes in town and you wanna get in person and start shooting with other people. Coming up here on Think Media, we're gonna be doing a tech conversation with Omar and with Nolan and talking about different cameras and what's the best camera. So we'll be able to sit around a table and scale this up or down. We actually have used this same unit for our in-person mastermind and we used it basically as a soundboard and so we had a couple mics for people asking questions when they came here to Vegas for some training on YouTube and some other things. We had the audio channel. We had the microphone channels and so it's a unit that if you invest in it, you can start simple but you also know that it can scale with you and you can use it for kind of different creative applications. If you haven't seen the business-minded content creator series that we did here on the channel with Peter Voog, it was a really cool series about growing as an entrepreneur, about getting more business-minded as content creators, thinking about how we can produce more income, build our confidence and we actually did a little session where I just played over Bluetooth some beats on my phone while Peter was just kind of sharing some inspiration over those tracks and so we recorded using this unit those episodes but then we were also able to kind of do like a little surprise for him where I just said, hey man, can you just share some motivation and some inspiration with us by using the Bluetooth, playing some beats on my phone and letting him just share some wisdom over some hip hop beats.

Speaker 3: You can have excuses or results, you can't have both. Choose wisely.

Speaker 1: The other cool thing about this unit is that it requires little to no audio experience but it does have quite a bit of features that you can use to mix. So when I hit channel one right here, I can go directly into my microphone. What's awesome is that it has preset modes. The Rode PodMic that I'm using is built to work directly with this so you could switch it to that or other pre-mixed mics. If you have a Rode broadcaster or podcaster or even things like an RE20 or a condenser or dynamic mic of just in general, it's got preset modes for that. So it's really just plug and play allowing you to pick those modes. You also can adjust the gain levels here. In addition right here, of course, phantom power if you need that. You can apply different vocal effects and get into your voice tone right here, the strength of the voice right there. And so you can play with this and mix it all on headphones and then you can go into advanced and you can turn on a compressor and a de-esser, put ducking if you want, high pass filter, nose gate. You also have this aural exciter with this AFIX. That's what it sounds like as you're hearing right now. To me, it's a little, it's kinda cool and might be something you want to use but again, it's gonna allow you to mix it for your mic itself and really dial in your settings. And so you could do that per channel and the user interface is super great, right? I just hit number one to get into each individual mic to adjust those settings. And one maybe drawback is for super sound pros, and I would say this is probably one out of 1,000 people, it might not have enough features for most people. But I don't think Rode was ever targeting this at the highest end guy that needs a rack of sound gear and needs every nuance of sound recording. The point is to make this as simple as possible so you can sit down, plug in your microphones, make it sound great and press record and get your podcast out there, get your video podcast out there. And so I think that this is really the ultimate setup for your average creator. We can mix our smartphone channel, our USB channel and our Bluetooth channel here with presets and levels. And then of course we can go in and program all of our sound pads and upload those. You can get a laptop plugged in, use software and drag and drop your MP3 or whatever file format files that could be your sound effects or your intro music. And so very versatile and super cool. Finally, the Rodecaster comes in at $599 here in the US. And if you wanna check out prices on all of the gear that we're talking about in this video, check them out in the YouTube description below, as well as a kit summarizing our whole setup at kit.co. So all of that will be in the YouTube description. But next up is the PodMic. That's what you're hearing right now. And this microphone comes in for $99 and was really designed to be used with the Rodecaster. Now, of course, you could use it in other applications as well. It's a pretty dead simple mic. It just has the XLR plug in the back. We plug the cable right into the Rodecaster and you're good to go. And again, it has a preset setting designed to work with the PodMic. And so very user-friendly to just plug and play and get to work. One of the reasons why I love this microphone is because it's a dynamic microphone. Now, quick education if you're new to microphones in general, there's dynamic mics and there's condenser mics. Condenser mics usually are better for picking up instruments and even better for picking up the nuances of your voice. But condenser microphones are so sensitive that if you don't have a sound-treated room, if you don't really have the right setup, they actually can almost be worse because they pick up too much noise. What's crazy is when you actually look at popular mics like the Blue Snowball or the Blue Yeti, those are actually condenser mics. And those are less than ideal, in my opinion, if you, again, don't have some sound treating or really have dampening where you're recording. Now, we're recording this in a pretty echo-y living room with no sound dampening on the table here, tile floors, kind of echo in the room. And so you tell me in the comments, how do you think this sounds? Audio coming straight from the pod mic, off of the Rodecaster. But what's great about this mic is it really does minimize background noise because it is dynamic. And most of the time we shoot in rooms that are not sound-treated. So for most of us, you got a home office that's not sound-treated, you just got a bedroom, you got somewhere where there's echo. I think that this is a great solution for that. It's also optimized for speech applications. Not that you couldn't use this to record yourself playing guitar or doing some music covers or things like that, but it's a podcast, it's meant for conversation, it's meant for voice. And so super solid mic. You could, of course, add some kind of a pop filter, whether like a mic shield or another pop filter in front of it, but we found that we haven't needed that. It's really robust, all-metal construction. It's pretty heavy for how small this guy is, but it's not a big deal in the sense that this is not a unit that you're gonna take on the road with you, in my opinion. In our case, we do throw it in a backpack so we can set it up, but you will need to sit down, plug it in, plug it into the wall. And so when we're on the go or doing interviews at conferences, we actually use like a different setup than this. And the fact that it's designed to work with the RODECaster makes it kind of a no-brainer for setting up and getting started with a pro podcast. Now, there's a few other things we have to talk about, like the accessories that we use for our podcast, and at the end of the video, I'm gonna be talking about that budget setup, so definitely stick around for that. But if you've been getting value out of this video, can you smash the like button? And question of the day, do you listen to podcasts? What are some of your favorite podcasts? And are you thinking about starting one, and if so, what is your podcast going to be about? Let me know in the comments section below. So as far as the accessories that we use for this setup, this is a Rode Microphones DS1 tabletop desktop stand. This thing comes in from $30 from Rode. I don't think that you need to get this because you could pick up like a Lyx Pro desktop microphone stand for about $17 on Amazon, and if you wanna check out current prices, we'll list this out in the description. But again, pretty simple, straightforward, nice tabletop stand as far as what we're using. You also could grab, and will need to grab, a couple Amazon Basics XLR male to female microphone cables. There's a lot of different XLR companies that make great cables, but just make sure you read the reviews thoroughly and make sure they're solid. For six feet up to 50 feet, that's gonna cost you between seven and $15 to get an Amazon Basics XLR cable. Great rated, and so you gotta be able to plug in your Rode mics. They do not come with a cable. And then we're using these Shure SRH440 headphones. Professional studio headphones for $100. Not super cheap, not super expensive, but a solid set of headphones. We do have a couple pairs of these, four actually, so that when we do like a four-person setup, everybody can be locked in with their headphones. And I would recommend, you do probably want over-ears and don't just wanna be moderating with some like earbuds or something so that you really can get some isolation. And here are the nuances of the audio so you can dial in your setups so that everything sounds right. But here's the thing, when you total everything that I just described up with two Rode Pod mics and all the accessories that you need, you're gonna be looking at about $1,000 investment in US dollars at the time of recording this video. And if you wanna start a podcast or even a video podcast, by no means do you need to invest that much money. And so really quick, I just wanna give you some budget alternative options, even if you have only $60 to start your podcast. The first recommendation that I have for you is called the Samsung Q2U. Now, this is just a little dynamic microphone that has an XLR input on the back and a USB input on the back, plus a headphone monitoring input on it. And it comes with the cable, with a little stand, so it's all in one and it comes in at around $60 here in the US. You can actually plug that microphone just into your laptop and you're good to go. And you could be recording a podcast. You could set up your M50 or some other camera and you're good to go. Now you're recording a video podcast. And so it definitely doesn't have to break the bank to get started podcasting. That's a dynamic microphone, really cuts out noise. And so it's ideal if you are just shooting at some kind of a home studio or if you're trying to podcast at an event or something and you're in kind of a noisy area, that microphone will really cut out background noise. Audio-Technica has a few different versions that a lot of people love that range from around $75 to around 100 or a little bit more that are kind of the same idea. Sort of an all-in-one. Versatile because you can start with plugging in USB, but if you want that premium XLR audio quality, those microphones can also scale with you as well. In fact, we interviewed our friend Erica Mandy who has a news podcast over on Video Influencers. And she was talking about the fact that she has built her podcast into a six-figure business using one of those Audio-Technica mics. Basically, approximately a $100 microphone. So if you're looking to get started tapping into the power of podcasting, you can get started for just a few dollars and really have high-quality content that makes a difference in the lives of the listener. But here's the thing, Erica Mandy's podcast is a solo show. So having one of those Audio-Technica or Samsung microphones just plugged into your laptop, talking directly into it is perfect in that case. But what if you want to have more than one person on the podcast? Well, one of the more budget options we'd recommend and definitely more portable is picking up a portable audio recorder like the Zoom H6n or even the Zoom H5n. What these are is a couple portable audio recorders that have XLR inputs in them. And so with a couple XLR cables and what we used was the Shure SM58 microphones, $100 each. And recently, Omar and I went to Social Media Marketing World and this is how we recorded some episodes for the Think Marketing Podcast. What is it you use today to create your content?

Speaker 2: I mean, I really just use this.

Speaker 1: This setup came in at around $600 total that we were using. If you went with the Zoom H5n, it'd be even a little bit cheaper. And you don't necessarily have to even use a $100 handheld microphones. However, those are some classics, workhorses, durable, sound amazing. And because they're dynamic microphones, sometimes a session would get out and there'd be crazy noise around us, but they cut out all that noise so long as you are talking close, right up into that dynamic microphone. So those are some other options and Omar actually has gone in depth with some of these alternative setups. So if you wanna check out other videos in our video podcasting and podcasting series, you can just click or tap the YouTube card to see those videos. And for more tips on podcasting, as well as the best gear for all budgets, just click or tap the screen to check out our playlist with those videos. And if you haven't subscribed to the Think Marketing Podcast and wanna check out one of those episodes to see this setup in action, just click or tap the screen to see that. Smash like if you got value out of this video and we will see you in the next one. Peace.