Tech and tools for your podcast

I was wondering what tech and tools you use for your podcast.

The Testing Peers are pretty new to the game and as such we haven’t yet had the chance to invest more into tech and tools. We are using our own day-to-day headsets, recording over Zoom and editing in Audacity.

We plan on getting some better mics in the future.

What tech and tools do you use?

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I’ve seen Anchor pop up a few times in discussions like this. I’ve no personal experience using it but listen to podcasts that do and am curious to explore it more.

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I use Zencastr. It’s a hit hit and miss at times and the free version is limited to how long you can record.

I’ve had instances where the local copy hasn’t uploaded to the server but in terms of using a tool to get a feel for recording, it’s quite good.

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For remote interviews, ask the other party to record themselves on their own phone and send you the file, the audio should be so much better than Zoom, it’s a common tool reporters use. I would suggest stick with using Audacity and buy myself a H1 zoom, or if you have more cash, the H2 or H4 zoom recorder is really very sweet device for podcasts recorded in noisy environments like cafes. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KXV2NWW/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_boSfFb0FYZA7F A dedicated recording device is better than your phone mainly because it removes distraction and is more reliable if you use the device often and get familiar with remembering to charge the battery etc. Often you need 2 microphones, and this fills that role very well.

Anchor sounds nice, but it’s not really that hard to build your own RSS file, host it wherever you please at very low cost and take complete control of how your feed looks. It took me 2 days (of waiting time) to get a podcast registered on 3 different platforms, and about a week of XML hacking to get Facebook integration (It pulls/steals episode artwork directly from a facebook page, so simply.) Nothing stops you using apps like Anchor to get started though, so it’s a great way to start. They also do the SEO for you, which is the really hard stuff initially.

I’m not a podcaster, this was for a weekend-warrior project, which I hope to push up on github once I can strip out passwords, summon the courage, and to share the podcast itself, which is just hosted on a vanilla web host.

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For the Quality Sense podcast, we use Zoom for recording conversations, audacity for editing the audio, and we host on Soundcloud. We also use rev.com to then get a transcript of each episode.

I think that’s the whole stack… if I’m not forgetting anything! :rofl:

We also use Trello to manage our pipeline, from inviting people to the podcast, scheduling dates, post-editing, etc.

In the future we might get higher quality recording equipment and mics, but it’s hard when we have to do everything remote these days!

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I really like the idea of looking to make the podcast more accessible by transcribing the whole thing.

Where would you host the transcription? In the show notes, or on your website?

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In the show notes in soundcloud, we link to a corresponding blog post. And, instead of sharing the soundcloud link on social media, we try to share the blog post link, so people know it’s there. Here’s an example: https://abstracta.us/blog/podcast/performance-testing-explained-simple/

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I have been inspired to look into doing the transcription thing for our podcast and have made a start.

I found https://podcast-accessibility.com/why/ which was a good place to go when we were discussing accessibility for our podcast.

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Great resource! It’s so important to take this into account.

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Do you use the laptop webcam or a dedicated one for these interviews?

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We do use that, but have not yet done anything with the video. Maybe in next seasons we will make youtube videos as well!

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That device is good but it takes a lot of fine tuning to get right. I kept on picking up background conversational noise even when using lapels with it.
Or I might just not be playing nicely with it :joy:

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