Good Life Project - Our Podcast Setup: In the Studio and On the Road

Episode Date: October 27, 2016

Order your copy of Jonathan Fields’ new book, How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and Practical Wisdom, today! It’s available at booksellers everywhere. And, you can download the first chapter and invest in your copy now. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What is our podcasting setup? That’s one the most popular questions we get. So, we figured we’d […]The post Our Podcast Setup: In the Studio and On the Road appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what if you could take the wisdom from years of conversations like this, distill it into a single short and sweet operating manual that gave you something to do every day in order to move from where you are to living a lit up life. That's what I've created with my new book, How to Live a Good Life, appropriately titled I hope. It's really, it's an operating manual that draws from literally thousands of hours of research, hundreds, actually maybe even thousands now of hours of learning and sitting at the feet of astonishing teachers and traveling the world to create something simple, a beautiful, simple model

and something to do every single day for you to make a really big difference in your lives. If you want to check it out, go to goodlifeproject.com slash book. You can read the first chapter completely for free. And then it is available for purchase at booksellers all over the place. You can find a link in the show notes as well. On to our show. Hey, it's Jonathan here with The Good Life Project Riff. I thought I'd do something a little bit different and a little bit fun, hopefully, for you today. I've learned that a lot of our listening audience are either podcasters or they're really, they're, let's call them podcast curious. Where does it actually take? What do I do? What do I use for the podcast?

Some of you have even noticed that we've been shifting around equipment because you can hear differences in my voice, in the way that we record, in the room sounds. So I thought I'd just take a few minutes today because one of the huge questions that I'm asked over and over and over and over is what do you use? What gear do you use? What is your setup like? We actually do a couple of different things depending where we are. Right now, I'm recording in a home studio. It's a small room about six and a half feet by 14 feet. We have sound boards on the walls. That doesn't sound

proof it. As you guys know, you hear the sounds from the city bleeding through. We do some sound proofing, but it's impossible to stop things like sirens or things like that in New York City. What it does is it flattens the sound. So what you hear is kind of like this radio where there's not a lot of echo. My mouth is sitting about a third, maybe a quarter to a third of an inch from the face of this particular microphone. Now the microphone that I'm using right now, and I'm actually going to switch to a different microphone for those who are curious, this is our go-to microphone. These are our primary broadcast microphones. We actually haven't been using them for the last few months because we've been moving around,

but we're finally getting back to them. This is a microphone that's made by a company called Shure, S-H-U-R-E. And by the way, we'll put all of these things in the show notes so you don't have to write anything down with links to everything. It's called the Shure SM, like Mary, 7B. This is a microphone that you see in a lot of radio studios. You also see it in professional recording studios. It's a mic that has sort of in the industry been known as the voice of God mic, because it's got a really warm kind of mellow tone to it. It's not really crisp, but it's got a really warm, rounded sound to it. So a lot of people like that. Rumor has it too, this is also the same microphone that Michael Jackson used to record Thriller. So we take this, and we've experimented with all sorts

of different things to plug this microphone into over the years, from computers to amplifiers to all sorts of doodads. And what I've really come down to is a way simpler setup. There's a tiny little recording and mixing device. It's called the Zoom H6. You can put four microphones directly into it. These are called XLR microphones. They take a lot of power. So to power the microphone you're hearing, you actually just can't plug it into something. You have to plug it into a special device like this and either have a separate source of amplification or something called phantom power, which juices up the microphone so you

can hear me okay. And that's what this has. So right now you're listening to me speaking on a Shure SM7B that is running into a Zoom H6. And it's being supported on something called a swing arm, not on a desk. It's literally kind of hovering out in front of me. And I can move it away so you hear it kind of off in the distance now. I just swung it out. And then I can move it in really up close like this for the whole, the voice of God sound.

Not that I have the voice that you would think would be like that movie voice. But that particular boom, we've looked at different swing arms. There are a lot of really cheap ones. We use one from a company called Heil, H-E-I-L, because it's super sturdy and kind of like indestructible. So that's our basic setup. And then we use Sony headphones. They are not fancy pants headphones. They're also not expensive. They're ones that basically studios all use. And the reason that they use them instead of really fancy high-end ones is because we're not looking for microphones or for headphones that have really deep bass or really high treble.

We're looking for what we call a flat response. We want to hear the truest representation of what's coming through the mic as possible so that we know how we need to edit when we actually go into editing after this. Now I'm going to do something. Also on my head at the same time is an Audio-Technica headset mic that has headphones and a little mic mounted right to the headset. If you guys have seen me in some recent Skype video interviews, you all have seen me wearing it. It looks like a little pilot headset. My buddy Lewis Howes uses these on his show as well, so you'll see him and his

guests using these. Now I'm going to move things right now. I'm going to turn down the sound on this mic and turn up the sound on the Audio-Technica headset. So here we go. I'll keep talking as I turn it down. Here we go. So now we're back on with the Audio-Technica. Now, you can hear already, it's a very different sound. It's very crisp, it's a little bit tinny, and it's a little bit high-end. You can also probably hear that it doesn't isolate my, what we call the sibilance, sibilance and the pops. In fact, if I have the mic a little bit close to my mouth, what you'll hear, so I just brought it pretty close, when I say words like paint and pipe or peruse, you'll hear that pushing against it,

and it sounds a little bit funny. So we pull it away to avoid that. It makes it a little bit better, but it also makes the sound a little bit tinny. Now, it away to avoid that. It makes it a little bit better, but it also makes the sound a little bit tinny. Now, it's still a really great mic, and the beauty is that it's all self-contained. You can literally just wrap it up. You have a headset with a great microphone. You can throw it in your backpack and just plug it all in with one thing. So this mic is super portable. It's not unusual for me to travel with two of these and my Zoom H6 as a super convenient travel setup for podcasts. So if I'm going to a convention or to a meeting or something like that, even if I don't know if I have something set up, I'll often throw this in my bag just because if

I meet somebody I think would be really interesting. It's in my pack. The whole setup is only a couple of pounds and it's there and ready to go. The Zoom, by the way, you can plug it in, but it's also battery powered and it'll give you a pretty substantial chunk of time to actually record. So that's my setup. And again, we're going to have, I'll include links to all of this. You know, there's no swing arm needed when I'm on this Audio-Techno mic because it's literally sitting on my head as a headset. So I'll do one last switch here so that you can just, again, hear the difference between this mic, right? So this is the Audio-Technica. This is the headset mic.

This is also significantly less expensive. My recollection is that retail on this is somewhere around $200. Retail on the Shure SM7B is probably closer to $400 just for the microphone. And then you need to buy a stand and headphones on top of that. So your whole setup for that, for ours with our stand and our headphones is probably about $550 or something like that compared to $200. So something about $200. So let's do that final switcheroo. So I'm on the Audio-Technica now. I'm going to actually, oh, this should be kind of fun. I'm going to turn up the Shure SMB. This is actually kind of interesting, okay? Now I'm on the Audio-Technica. Listen to what happens to the low, warm tones of my voice as I turn up

the Shure SM7B, and I'm now speaking through both of them simultaneously. So now you hear me, right? Now you start to hear the fuller, warmer tones, and now I'm turning down, turning down. Good. So now we are on the Shure SM7B. Much less tinny, much less crisp, but much warmer, a much warmer, rounder tone. It's a matter of preference. I prefer the warmer, rounder tone. I just like, it feels like we're just sitting really close and chatting. But both are great mics for different purposes. And so that's the podcast setup. Hope you found that valuable. If you have questions that you want to ask me about my setup as well, we've tried so many different things over the years and experimented with different software,

running through the computer and into the computer, different microphones. I have a decent familiarity with all these different things. I'm happy to share. Just hit me up on Instagram or on Facebook or wherever it is. You guys know where to find me. I'm pretty much at Jonathan Fields or at Good Life Project everywhere. Hope you found that useful. As always, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.