Posted by The_Ratfiles » Sat May 27, 2017 7:50 pm
Ok, here is how we do it at The Ratfiles Podcast, and it works as well as any studio could hope for. We have our recording studio/room fairly soundproofed. Using Behringer mics (XLR), we join the twin microphones with an XLR 'Y-cable' and then run them into a top-end laptop's USB input (using Ubuntu 14.04...works best, for some unknown reason, better than 16.04) and record using Audacity 2.1.2.
Our end result is a very nice, clean quality recording of two hosts sitting in a room 3-feet apart, without ANY reverb or cross-talk (although, we do sometimes try to talk over each other, that's etiquette, not bad recording properties). Clean-up is easy in post-processing. The only 'downside' is that since we only have one audio track (one per session, instead of per-mic, per-person), we have to get the gain fairly synchronized between the mics before we start recording - and luckily (or unluckily) we do this by mouth-to-microphone distance, which is fairly easy to do using this specific 8500 model Behringer microphone. I can get us within say, 2-3 db's of matching gain by pre-show sound-checks...and then if I need to 'tweak' post-production, I can simply go into effects, do a 'noise reduction', then some 'on timeline' gains or reductions if I have any peaks or spikes.
Now, knowing this, go check out our podcast and see what you think.
theratfiles.buzzsprout.com
theratfiles.com (homepage)
for the sake of a couple hundred dollars in mics, cables, and a decent 3.5ghz laptop with 8gb RAM and Audacity. I'm telling you, the real magic is in the Ubuntu/Linux, not the other gear...I can't get this same quality with my Windows-based server, and it is running a quad-core Intel chip and Win7Pro...it just doesn't sound the same in the final MP3 file.