I will agree that with the average delivery format and listening platform, you can easily go overkill. I am hoping for the day soon that podcasts are delivered in a lossless format. There is no worse sound to my ears than the sound of a low-bitrate mp3.

The advantages of better gear however, regardless of delivery format, can be huge still. Nothing beats having a good room to edit and mix in. Working in from there, high quality speakers to make sound judgements on are paramount. Maybe it’s not so important for podcasts, but I have also found that using a high quality D/A converter like a Benchmark DAC-1 can reveal a lot of stuff in your mix that you would otherwise not hear.

Asides from simply being able to make better judgements, on the front end and in the field higher quality gear simply holds up better generally. Obviously there’s a few poorly made things that are still expensive, but in general it will hold up better and take a beating. The argument could of course be made that you’d simply buy two of the cheaper item for less than the expensive one costs and save but I really dislike doing it that way. You end up chasing your tail quite often in finding out what is broken.

All of that being said, for podcasting, music, and film… you can get some great results from inexpensive gear. I just feel that as a professional you can get even higher quality results from higher quality gear. I personally like to know what op-amps are in my gear (if any), so maybe I’m a little picky.

I think that the standard for Podcasts is simply not there yet. We have been looking it at from a perspective of a low standard that radio set for us. Overcompressed, over eq’d, and really lacking any quality. Still, not all podcasts exceed this. Oftentimes being noisy and having various other problems. Once we get past the point that radio is or was at… we still have a lot more room to grow qualitywise.

My goal is to be able to sit down in my studio, and imagine that the speakers or people being interviewed are right there standing in front of me when I close my eyes.

One thing I really like about the iRiver/Giant Squid combo is that the handling noise is really not an issue. Don’t go rubbing the recorder on stuff or compulsively pet it while doing an interview, and it should be fine.

Adam

I’m impressed with and inspired by your site. My question is: when using the iriver how to you prevent “hand noise” while holding the recorder? Do you put the recorder on the table between you and the interviewee?

Thanks for a great site,
Tom

Through my day job, I have access to some pretty rad gear to use on my own projects, but could just as easily use any old DV camera, and in fact I use about 32% of the capabilities that the camera provides. (Most notably and egregiously misused are the sound capabilities.)

I think the most important thing with any gear is that you are comfortable with it. The second most important thing is to go just go out and do it, and don’t let the cost of the newest, fastest, shiniest thing keep you out of the game.