How to record guests in different locations for your Podcast

Summary: There are solutions at every budget level for remote recording in podcasts. At the low budget end, there can be issues cropping up such as sound quality and audio drift. Professional connections such as ISDN undoubtedly provide the best results: pristine studio to studio real time audio recording. But this can be cost-prohibitive for many. Now, many mid-range solutions have entered the market. Read on to discover which solution best fits your needs.

The only limit to your creativity today is your imagination. And time zones! It is definitely possible to record multiple guests in various locations around the world for your podcast. Below you find three different methods to connect multiple podcast guests, each in a different international location. These solutions are listed in order of complexity, cost, and quality (lowest to highest). Recording locations can be pretty much anywhere, so long as the guests, host and engineer can access a stable internet connection.

Video meeting software (e.g Zoom, Skype)

If the same guests and host are featured in every episode, it could be worthwhile making small investments into home recording solutions, so that each contributor can send reasonably clean audio using a USB podcasting microphone, headphones and a computer.

A rudimentary setup would be for the engineer or engineer/host to host a video call using Google Meet, Skype, Zoom, or any free popular video meeting platform. Then using audio routing and recording software such as Soundflower or Audio Hijack, the engineer/host can capture the audio from the guests and has the option to record their own voice at a good quality. There are limitations to this method. For example, the guests will be recorded onto a single audio track, so editing and mixing guests individually will not be possible in post-production. The sound signals from video calls are, as we all know, erratic and can be very poor sometimes.

An improvement on this would be for each speaker to record their own voice locally (on their own computer) at the same time they are on the video call, then send over their files to the engineer to assemble and edit later. The engineer can use a recording of the entire video call to synchronise the received higher quality files. Warning: sometimes there is a problem due to the phenomenon of audio drift, whereby different recording devices have slight different internal clocks and the result is that files are slower or faster than each other, making it difficult to assemble the files in postproduction.

Remote Podcast Recording Platforms

More professional but still consumer-friendly versions of the above setup are now appearing on the market, whereby a podcast engineer can connect host and all guests remotely using web software such as Riverside.FM, Squadcast, and Anchor. Whilst these appear very similar to video meeting software, the difference is that the audio from host and guests is uploaded in realtime to the web server.

This does come at a price, though. Subscription fees vary from platform to platform and also depending on which additional features you choose, such as video capture as well as audio capture.

Recording Studios, hardwire ISDN connections or internet based variations

The "best", but most costly and complex solution, is that some or all guests visit a recording studio or radio station and connect via ISDN, Source Connect or ipDTL.

Studios, and radio stations have a hard line installed for pristine audio connections, called ISDN. The engineers at these stations set everything up with professional recording equipment, meaning the host and guests just need to deliver their performance well on the day in the studio.

In recent times more cost effective solutions like Source Connect and ipDTL have appeared, which work over the internet and require less infrastructure. Professional speakers and narrators sometimes even have their own accounts and setup with these connections at home.

An engineer/producer, either at a studio (or remotely) can then record all the various signals coming in from international locations, and even live mix/broadcast them.

Conclusion

Advances in technology mean that audio engineering setups which were once only possible in high budget tv and radio productions are in reach of podcasters. Which setup you choose depends greatly on your technical capabilities and your budget. Most independent podcasters would likely start with the first scenario and as they become more serious and professional adopt the later methods.

At Adventurous Media we are familiar with all technologies and can provide remote international podcasting recording services or work with you to set you up to your needs. For more information contact Michael Reaney at michael@adventurous.media.