4th Gen. Focusrite Scarlett Series Interfaces – Solo, 2i2 and 4i4
October 19, 2023
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There ARE recording services (see below) that make this question obsolete, but first…
In a way, there are two types of podcast guests and different ways to handle each one:
1. The guest who hosts his/her own podcast show. If a guest happens to host his/her own podcast, and therefor already has a decent microphone and the ability to record themselves locally, it’s usually not an inconvenience to ask them to record themselves locally and send you the file later (via Dropbox, etc.). I do this.
2. The average person who never records audio on their computer. 99% of non-podcasters do not know how to record themselves locally, and if you try to walk them through downloading and installing software, etc., you will spend lots of time feeling incredibly frustrated. I never do this.
*Thankfully there are services like Squadcast, Zencastr and Riverside – they record each of your guests locally on their computer without them knowing it! After the recording session you download everyone’s individual file. In terms of audio quality, this is by far the best way to connect and record remote guests.
Do you have any thoughts to continue this conversation in the comments below?
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6 Responses
I waited years for a reliable, high-quality, automated “multi-ender” service like Squadcast, Zencastr, and Riverside. Now that we have those, I couldn’t be happier. Well, almost. We still struggle at times with the guest’s microphone and (perhaps most important) their mic technique. But at least we don’t have to teach guests how to record.
And I imagine services like zencaster also record your own track locally. Is that good quality enough to use in your project or should you still record your own track separately with your own DAW?
Hi Pascal! Yes, I did mention Zencastr in the post as an example of a platform that records all participants locally without them knowing it — but to your main question: Yes, the quality of services like Zencastr, Squadcast and Riverside, etc. are definitely good enough to use in production. They all provide very high quality audio recordings. ***So for guests who are not audio savvy, I would just use these services and not ask the guest to record themselves locally. ***But, if the guest _IS_ audio savvy, yes I would ask them to record themselves locally BECAUSE it’s always wise to record 1 or 2 backups recordings 😉
Thank you Chris!!!
Pascal: I’d think the track of you from the service is just as good as the track you might record of yourself locally. But depending on your setup, if you record that extra copy you may be asking one computer to record the same audio twice at the same time. From a computer resources standpoint, I’m not a big fan of that. So I record the “backup” copy into a MixPre digital audio recorder. That backup has me on one track, and all the other participants on the other. I actually use that backup track of me – why download another file from Riverside? The participant’s backup is Internet quality and they are all combined on the one track. 99.9% of the time all I use that for is to sync the downloaded Riverside tracks with my local track of me. But on a couple of occasions, I’ve had to dip into the participant backup track.
Thank you. That is very helpful.