What You Need for a 4-Person Podcast

What gear do you need for a four person podcast? You can find this resource available on our website, corporatestreams.com, free of charge.

Overview

Depending on your podcast, you may not need internet, right? So if you're only recording and you're not going live, you can go ahead and skip that internet section. I will mention that this is also in priority order. So internet, audio, lighting, camera. You should probably choose your things in that order. I know a lot of people like to focus on the camera and they think that that's the most important thing, but obviously with podcasts, it's all about the audio and we wanna have high quality audio as well. 

Internet

The reason why internet is at the top, because if you're live streaming and your connection sucks, you're not gonna have a very good recording, you're not gonna have a very good session, and things are just gonna drop out. So we start with internet and we work our way down. So the note here is that you should always use wired connections for the best results.

Wi-Fi is very convenient. A lot of people use Wi-Fi, but really it's not the best practice. You should plug in your computer to your router via an ethernet cable. And that's gonna give you the most reliable connection for live streaming. I've linked in this document a 25ft ethernet cable, depending on the distance between you and your router, you might need a shorter one or a longer one. So you'll have to figure that one out for yourself. If you're using a modern laptop, sometimes they don't have ethernet ports built into the device itself, and you'll have to buy a adapter like USB-C adapter. So I linked that as well. 

Audio

All right, moving to audio. We have three tiers of good, better, and best. There are two parts of audio. You have the microphone and the recorder. For your good, you have the microphone of a ZDM1 and a PodTrack P4 recorder. So that's a pretty good deal to have four microphones and a recorder for only $425. Your better category, we move up to the 512’s and a Mackie recorder. This also is a pack. And then the top level is your SM7B with a RODECaster.

The question you're gonna ultimately have is what's the difference between the lowest one and the highest one and something in between? Well, frankly, the money you spend on technology can pay off in more than one way. Yes, there's gonna be a quality difference between the lowest level and the highest level. Not everybody's gonna be able to hear that quality difference unless they've got high quality headphones. What you're really probably gonna notice is the build quality between a cheaper microphone and a more expensive microphone. The cheaper ones aren't gonna last as long. They're made out of plastic. And the components in them are not really designed to last as long. 

Now, can you get away with a cheaper mic? Absolutely. But what you can't get around is physics. So you can see in my YouTube videos that the microphone remains pretty close to my mouth. It's about a fist or maybe three inches from my mouth. And those physics will supersede the quality of the mic. So even if you had a $3,000 mic, a $50,000 mic, whatever you wanna call it, and you have that at 15ft away, It's not gonna sound as good as a $10 mic a few inches from the source. That's why you'll see on most major podcasts that they have the microphone very close to their mouth because there's physics involved. And it's basically exponentially worse the further away you get the mic from the source. So that's my big tip that you should keep in mind about audio quality.

Lighting

Moving to lighting, if you're doing video with lighting, like I said earlier, a lot of people focus on the camera, but it's actually just as if not more important to focus on good lighting. So we have good, better, best as well. Now, depending on your setup, you'll probably be mounting these on a desk so you can look at the different hardware for a desk mount if you need that. A few basics about lighting, you usually have a key, a fill, and a backlight. For four people, it's gonna be kind of tough to backlight each individual person. So if you just have a key light or your main light and a fill light, which fills in your shadows, you can get away with that. 

Now, cheaper LEDs will not look as good on camera, but I picked out some decent ones that you might use. And then if you're like me and you like RGB background lighting, right? Something with a little bit of color, then you'll wanna pick those out as well. 

Camera

All right, now that we talked about lighting, let's move on to everybody's favorite, the camera. Starting simple, we have the Insta360 Link. This is a great portable, affordable camera for the good category. Moving up to better and best, we're using Blackmagic cameras. We have the Pocket 4K. And for your better category, I've actually added a second camera so you will have two of these in your mix, a 16 millimeter lens, which allows you to get a wider shot. And then we have a 56 millimeter, which gives you the tighter. Another thing you might consider is live streaming your four person podcast. 

So I've included an ATEM Pro ISO. So what is this? Well, it's a device that helps you switch between cameras. That way you can live cut and live stream between the wide and the tight. Now I will say with a closeup camera, right? That second camera, you probably need somebody, an assistant to help move that camera to the person that's talking, but you can always cut back to that wide shot as needed. And then of course, with the best setup, I went ahead and put five cameras. Now that's kind of interesting if you have four guests and five cameras, but what does that mean? Well, it means that each individual person has their own closeup and we still have that wide shot to capture everybody talking. That way you can cut to the person as needed and that's something that you can easily do. 

So that means you're gonna be buying four of the 50 millimeter lenses and one 20 millimeter lens if you would like to have that best setup. We also have the ATEM Extreme ISO. This one will give you an extra output. So if you want to show your image on TVs or other displays for an in-person audience, you can do that as well. 

Other

In the other category, we have a few options here. The first are cable ties. So this will help keep your cables organized and neat. It's definitely a must for me and I definitely encourage you to have those as well. We also have an Amazon Echo. Now with the Echo, you can also buy some smart switches and then you could put your lighting and different gear on those smart switches to turn them on and off. Of course, there are a few things that won't work with smart switches that you'll just have to manually press record or turn on and off. Now you can also record with your ATEMs. So I set up links for a one terabyte SSD and some extra HDMI cables to connect all those cameras to that ATEM. 

good, better and best

The main thing to note is that in the good category, this is all around a single camera. It will meet minimum requirements, but honestly, when you have four people, it's best to cut and show each person's face because human communication is largely body language. So somebody's reactions and smiles and facial expressions help show what their emotions are or how they really feel about a certain topic or subject. Even though I do have the good category listed, if you have the resources and you're able to, it's usually better to have multiple cameras to cut between. 

The better setup does have two cameras, which allows you to have a wide shot and a tight shot. Remember that you'll need an assistant to help manage that camera and point at the right person at the right time. 

And then of course, our best setup has five cameras, which will let you cut to a wide shot and then four closeups of each individual person. 

cost

All right, the number everybody's been waiting for, what does this cost? What is this gonna cost me? The good setup is around $1,077. The better setup is around $6,002. And the best setup, I know, a little pricey, but is $18,575. Now this is an investment in what you're doing. And I wouldn't say jump in right away and spend $18,575 on your equipment. I would encourage you to start with some of the lower packages and build your way up, build your audience, and then over time, you can upgrade your kit to the next one up.

Thank you!