Open Channels FM Founder’s Podcast Tech Stack

BobWP:
Hey BobWP here. And it’s a week of Black Friday followed by Cyber Monday. Yes, this is the day before the holiday in the US and here I am by myself sharing something with you. And I did in episode 699, talk about how I was no longer going to be doing these. And let’s just say in a nutshell, I’ve changed my mind on that. And I’m not going to get into all of that, but just figure, you know, I had a few people actually ask me if I could keep doing updates on the site because they like to know what’s going on via the podcast. And then of course, I have a few ideas here and there that I’d like to drop in. So let’s call it that again, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Do check out our sponsors, WooCommerce.com, goDaddy.com and OmniSend.com they’re all having great sales going on this time, so check them out. And yeah, have a good time shopping. And for all my peeps out there that are selling products and services, best of luck this year round on Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

But let’s get back into what I really want to talk about. And I thought it might be something useful to share here on this podcast. A while back I had created my tech stack and I published that over on BobWP.com got a lot of response from it because I really did spend a lot of time putting in not only a list of all the gear, software, everything there, but I put in a bit of a comment each time on each specific piece. So again, a lot of good feedback and I thought maybe it might be fun to share with you at least a podcasting stack we have here at Open Channels FM and maybe elaborate just on a few things. So I think the best way to do this is get right into it without having a lot of babbling about me being here by myself or not.

So the gear, of course we always have what we think of first when we’re podcasting. And that is a microphone. There are so many great microphones out there. You don’t have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars. That may be your goal as you get into it more. But for me, yeah, I use one of the upper end ones, Shure microphone SM7B. I’ve used this for several years. I also did use microphones that were, I don’t know, around $100, €100. And they work fine for years and years and years. So that’s the one I use. I also have Some hanging around here. I probably have more tech stored than I have that I actually use. I do have some. Oh I think they’re called pod mics, Rode Pod mics and I have one of those on a microphone arm that’s my backup mic. It’s kind of just floating up there and I’ve never really used them much and I do have another one of those stored as well as I have some Sennheiser hand microphones. I have two of those.

I used to take them to conferences. They’re XLR so they’re not really the easiest thing to travel around with because you have to have a small interface which was what I used. And I still have the Zoom Pod Track P4 interface and for its time it worked great. But with everything that’s out there now as far as portability and microphones, there’s really no reason unless you really want to set up something at and use higher quality mics like this Rode Wireless go to mics and transmitter. I use app now for on the go easy to use. There’s several different kinds of microphones out there, several different brands that are really quality at this. So that is my go to because it’s easy to carry around. So I often just bring it to events when I go to an event, even if I don’t have anything planned because I can whip those out and if need be.

Now I talked about interfaces and that is because I primarily used XLR microphones. Now if you’re using a microphone that plugs in USB you can tune out for a couple minutes here. But I’ve always used those kind of microphones and thus I’ve had various kind of interfaces. Think my first one was the Scarlet. It’s a called the Scarlet 2i2 audio interface. The job just great for many years and then I moved to the Rode. Let’s see the Rodecaster Pro and then I went to the Rodecaster Duo. Now I kind of got stuck on those because I was used to those. And the odd thing about it is they’re very nice. They look really cool, they have all these lights on them and. And there’s, you know, has quite a few options and really it’s most useful if you’re going to be podcasting. You know, if you actually have a physical studio and you want to have another person sitting there with you or you want to have up to maybe four people sitting there with you and I’m going to be getting something else. What I found is it really has too much stuff. I mean there’s so many settings that you know, if something goes sideways or something gets off, it seems like it takes forever to get back and you have to set default settings and do it again and it’s more or less become a nightmare. So I’m just waiting. In fact, it should be delivered here in a day or two for my Wave XLR from Elgato. It’s a much simpler interface and for me these days, simple is always better.

So that is what I’ll be using in a matter of just a few days. Now, as far as a camera to do video, I haven’t done a lot of that. I did buy these Sony ZV1 vlog camera and I’ve used it very little and there are again a lot of options out there. I feel that if you’re getting into the video part of things, talk to somebody that really has done a lot of video kind of things. That’s your best bet. And I can’t give you a lot of advice on that. And I don’t have a lot of equipment around that. I do have an Elgato camera that I use when I need to do it, but again, since most of the episodes here are audio only, I don’t even use that camera much. In my podcast stack, I also have Elgato key lights. Hey, it’s great when you do audio only. I can turn those on and be in bright lights. But those are again, something I got more when I was doing some video. Really great lights.

And also the Elgato prompter, I got that where it’s a small prompter that you put over there. You know, you can get a teleprompter on it. It also why I actually got it was that it’s that direct eye, you’re looking right at the camera. So if you’re on video, which I’m not a lot, but if you are, it’s really nice. Now the thing that kind of has gone awry for me is even for meetings I’m not using it as much. In fact, I look over at it and it’s rather dusty is that it’s such a teeny tiny screen and I’m looking at these little faces and I’m trying to read something on there. And it’s not the best for that. And I found myself spending half my time in meetings where I was using that, glancing over at my bigger screen for I could actually see what I’m talking about versus trying to see it on that tiny screen. So again, depending on your needs, they’re great. Mine is gathering dust I do have a stream deck, another Elgato brand, if I use that a little bit for podcasting. And that was basically shortcuts to open and close things. So nothing really a needed piece of tech for your podcast stack.

Now a lot of gear I’ve talked about is on my desk, a lot more of it is in my closet and I think I could probably do a flea market of just podcasting gear, but that’s another thought altogether. Now, as far as production, all that stuff, recording, all the software, all that good stuff that happens with podcasting, I’m just going to mention a few things. Riverside and Descript, Riverside fm. This is where both of these I’ve used to record. I actually, in the old days used to record using GarageBand. Now we have all these great podcasting platforms and video platforms. I’ve used a script for some time and then I added Riverside because although I learned how to do all the editing in this script and had that down, it was. Well, it wasn’t. The recordings weren’t quite working as well and I was getting cut off a lot and they acquired Squad cast and anyway, I haven’t used it for some time, that part of it, but it was very frustrating. So I tried Riverside FM and I found the stability of recording and the quality of recording was much better. So I was actually using both of those, but have since kind of weaned myself off the script and learning more how to use Riverside for post production.

I also use this other one that is a service called Auphonic and what it does is it levels out your audio, but it’s essentially it’s, you know, when you’re talking to somebody or you’re talking to two or three people or five or six or whatever you’re talking to, sometimes somebody’s a little bit lower and you’re trying to get them to turn it up and somebody may go down and they go up. And anyway, there’s all of that. What this does is it’s@auphonic.com is basically you upload your final, final file. It compresses it really nicely and you can do some. A little bit more in depth settings. But it’s great at leveling out your content. If one of your guests or one of your hosts is a little bit lower, it really boosts it up while making it still sound good. So it’s something. That’s what it does. It. I mean, I don’t want to say it’s the only thing it does, but it’s the one thing that it does that I Love. And yeah, if you ever want to just try it out on a file, I think they have a free, you know, know like one hour or something in and it actually shows you how it’s leveled out in the wavelength. So it, it’s pretty impressive. And I’ve, I’ve actually used it for years because it’s just the best in audio leveling.

Then there is, of course I have to use some kind of AI. I’ve done stuff for show notes and all the different things you put in. And I don’t really feel like I’m creating content, you know, using just AI. I’m actually repurposing content. So you can have a it do, like I said, show notes, it could do your takeaways, it can do all those things. There’s a lot of different ones out there and you can kind of puzzle them all together and maybe create some kind of workflow. But there’s this one called Cast Magic and is specifically made for audio and, and it’s really amazing. So first of all, it does transcripts, so does Riverside fm. So the descriptors rev. They all do them kind of at a different level. You know, as far as accuracy, Castmagic has probably been one of the best I’ve ever had. But that’s not all it does. It will basically allow you to create like a. Can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a workflow with all these different prompts. Some of them are already built specifically for audio and then there’s ones you can create yourself, custom prompts. And when you upload the file, it creates the transcript and then also shoots out all this stuff in prompts. And it’s absolutely amazing. It’s a little expensive, but the time you save is incredible because it’s just one place you do it and you can get it to write, you know, follow up posts, shares, whatever LinkedIn newsletter shares. Just you can use it to basically create any kind of content for either sharing or in your show notes or even maybe a follow up blog post like we do. And there’s so much out there now that you can find using AI. So much stuff built in. But this one has just been excellent. Now I’m not going to get into all the, you know, plugins I use on my site and everything, but I will mention seriously simple podcasting. It is plugin by Castos. I do host my podcast on Castos and it’s a plugin that brings in your player and connects you up to everything. And anyway, it’s another thing I’ve used literally for years and years over several different podcasts.

Other things that I use within the stack that aren’t just for podcasting that I might just mention I use for scheduling. I use Savvy Cal, I’ve used Calendly, I’ve used this, I’ve used that. Calendars are the bane of my existence and how we have our channel set up with various hosts and different times and all this stuff. There is not one single calendar program that works perfectly and I found that Savvy Cal just gets as close as I can get it. So I’ve been using that for some time. And like I said, Calendly will work. It really depends on the format of your podcast and if it’s you with guests doing several of them, you can use about any calendar program.

So that is the gist of what I’m using right now. I’m sure I may have forgotten some, but I’m going to put all those links in the show notes just for you. Have them if you heard me say something and you’re more interested in that, you know, if you have a question about any of this stuff, feel free to leave it in the comments on the episode post. So yeah, so that’s kind of the stuff I might bring you here and there. And I hope this gives you some idea. It’s a rabbit hole. You can go down on all these kinds of things, both hardware and software, and feel free to ever reach out to me and ask me more about it. So that is it for today. Again, thanks to our sponsors, Woo GoDaddy and Omnisend. And until the next time.