Ready to Podcast

So yesterday morning I went to my storage space and pulled some old audio equipment out of there, including a mixer, four microphones and the cabling to go along with them. I came back to the house and wired it all up and started looking on the Internet for software that people are using to put podcasts together. I figured I could always fall back on my old copy of Cakewalk or, in a worst-case scenario, the Sound Recorder utility that comes with Windows. But I found something that looks pretty cool called Audacity. It's open source and it's free, so I downloaded and configured it on my laptop. The rig I have really couldn't be simpler - I run four mics to a Mackie 1202VLZ palmtop mixer, and then the tape outs from the mixer run right into the audio input jack on my laptop.

I tested everything for levels and picked an appropriate recording format and we're off to the races. Later on, some of my industry buds are coming over and I've asked them to set aside a little bit of time to do a trial run of a podcast. I'm hoping to see whether or not four industry experts can talk about issues in online marketing for half an hour and still manage to keep things interesting.

At lunch, I'm running down to Radio Shack to get a cheap device that will let me pipe in a phone call so that the four of us can dial out to other people we might want to get involved in the conversation. Hopefully, I can get that running over lunchtime and have it available tonight.

Odds are, assuming everything works well, that I can edit the podcast tonight (add music intros, make sure everybody's levels are okay, etc.) and post it here in the morning. Stay tuned.