2020: How To Set Up A Mixer for A Podcast | Mix Minus Mixer Setup

hey Michael O'Neill here from the solopreneur hour and today I'm going to show you how to set up a mixer for mix - to optimize your podcast so I'm very often asked do I need a mixer to have a podcast and the first answer is no absolutely not you can pick up an audio-technica ATR 2100 microphone for 69 bucks on Amazon plug it right into your computer and you're good to go you can also get any number of interfaces that a microphone can plug into that can also then plug into your computer you can put a couple microphones into them or put your computer into it and you're good to go but there are a couple of clear advantages to using a mixer number one you have full control over the sound that's going in to your podcast and that's cool number two and I think paramount to almost anything else is sometimes you're going to interview people that don't have a microphone and when that happens you are in trouble because they're gonna be speaking directly into a computer of some sort that never sounds good it sounds tinny there's no mid range there's no bass the cool thing about having a mixer is you can turn the tin enos down by turning down the treble you could turn up the mid-range which will be their voice and you can turn the bass up as well which will be the presence of their voice so I love that as an idea for when people don't have a microphone on the other end but you see here that I have what looks to be a very complicated pile of gear sitting on my table and to some that can be a little daunting but right now I'm gonna set this up just like you would set it up for your podcast so it takes all the guesswork out of it before I do that I have to explain the concept of mix - this is something that confuses everybody including me and I was in the audio world for a long time as a drummer so let's start with the word mix okay this is the mixer so any sounds that come into it are going to be the mix alright that's step one we have two distinct sounds that need to come into this mixer the first sound is my voice as I'm the podcast toast so my voice needs to get into this mixer the second thing is my guests voice which needs to come from the computer so those two things need to go into the mix in this case and I'll get into this in more detail in a second in this case my voice is going to go into channel 1 and their voice is going to go into channel 2 that takes care of all the sounds that need to be going into the mixer but now I need sound to go out of the mixer and back to my guest who's on the computer now I don't want their voice also going back to them I just want my voice going back to them so I want to give them the mix - their voice and I'll get into all of that in a second let me give you a quick tour of the mixer so this thing with a lot of knobs is a an audio mixer this has a lot of different ways to connect to it on top we have what are called XLR connections and those are these funny-looking cables that look like this they have three prongs on the inside and they have three prongs on the male part as well and they connect to the underside of what you would consider a professional microphone that's a non USB microphone I should note if you have a USB microphone you can't do what we're about to do so you have to get yourself a regular microphone I will give you a tour of the gear in a second so first step is XLR cables the second step is line cables so let's say you're playing a guitar and you wanted to plug your guitar into the mix you would use a cable like this or I could have some sort of microphone preprocessor like I use one called a dbx 286s and that gives me a very radio like broadcast sound I plug an XLR cable my microphone into that processor then the processor connects to the mixer through this cable neither here nor there for this but I wanted to give you the tour nonetheless the next knob we have is a gain knob and really when you think about the volume of a channel and I should also note that these are the channels vertically so this is channel 1 channel 2 channel 3 channel 4 okay when I want to adjust the volume on my mixer I want you to think of this black again knob and yours might be a different color on your mixer but think of this is small movements make big adjustments whereas the white knob at the bottom large movements make small adjustments so what we want to do is get in the ballpark with this black knob up top get it mostly dialed in and then use this white knob at the bottom for micro adjustments okay so we've got gain here the next three knobs are EQ or equalization so I've got the ability to change the high notes the mid-range notes and the base notes and when you hook this thing up and literally just plug your microphone in and start talking into your mic I want you to turn these knobs to see what it sounds like as you turn the treble all the way down and then all the way up and hear how harsh your voice gets turn the mid-range up and down and hear how loud your voice gets turn the bass all the way up and all the way down feel how thin or how much presence your voice gets as you turn these knobs the next lever or the next knob rather on this one is called an FX send sometimes known as an auxilary send this is very important to us and I'll tell you why in a few minutes but that's this one and then pan and that one changes it from left side to right side or right in the middle finally we have your level and that is like I said for more micro adjustments to this to the sound in the each Channel what I'm going for is I want to put my voice into channel 1 I want to put my guests voice into channel 2 I'm not worrying about channel 3 or 4 this one even has channel 7 8 5 & 6 11 and 12 I don't need to worry about any of those right now it's just channel 1 and channel 2 so technically you could get away with a 2 channel mixer provided it has and you can find these on Craigslist it needs to have an auxilary send or an FX send and that's this red knob that we're worried about let me try to explain that right now because it is the most complicated piece of entire process do you remember what I said before I want to get both voices into this mixer but I only want to send one voice back to the computer the reason why is because otherwise you hear you guys have probably heard this before you hear an echo loop like you'll someone will start talking and you hear an echo a millisecond later hello hello hello hello that's a loop that we don't want to have we want to eliminate that loop and that's what this setup is going to do let's assume we have our voices into the mixer right now now I need to send something back to the computer well I'm gonna do that with this FX send channel so what I'm saying here is you probably heard this like on a Bandstand where the drummer's like hey can I get more keyboards can I get more vocals that means that the the sound engineer is giving him just what he wants or she what he or she wants in the mix and that is what we're going to do right now if we look towards the top of our mixer dead center there's something that says FX send that's what that's saying is I'm gonna take anything that's in these red channels and I'm going to I'm going to send it wherever you want I like this first set my mixers up so everything is straight up and down so every one of these knobs is straight up and down what I'm saying here with these red knobs is right now if I connect this FX end to my computer all the sounds that are on these red knobs are going to go to my computer right I want my voice but not my guests voice to go through so what I do with this is I keep my voice which is the red knob in channel 1 straight up and down I take my guest voice and I turn it all the way to the left or all the way off so now on that FX end channel only my voice is going back to the computer so their voice is coming to my mixer my voice is coming to my mixer but only their voice is going back to the computer so they're in the mix - their voice does that make sense I know it's kind of weird kind of complicated I'm gonna try to simplify that as much like possibly can so let's set your mixer up and let's get some of these cables connected to show you what's what I'm gonna give you a quick tour of all the gear that's sitting here right now we got a mixer we have various microphones but one I recommend you get and by the way all of the stuff that I'm talking about if you go to kit.com slash solo our ki t comm i'll put it right here in the screen dot slash solo our i have a thing called podcasting kit portable and studio in one great sounding kit that's all of this stuff so it's literally like you buy one thing you get all the stuff you need for our professional sounding podcast you can piecemeal it all you want but I'm just giving you an easy place to buy it so few various microphones this is the shore sm58 this is available for like 50 bucks on Craigslist you see this on the bandstand or the stage of almost any music venue you've ever been to they have a pile of these microphones because they're mostly bulletproof they are dynamic a dynamic mic like if you have a blue mic blue Yeti or whatever use that as the doorstop that it is because you need a dynamic mic the problem with like a blue Yeti microphone is that you can hear a mouse fart in the next County when you've got this thing hooked up dynamic mics are very different dynamic mics if you're not speaking right into the diaphragm your I mean I'm talking it needs to be tickling your whiskers or ladies if you don't have whiskers just tickling your lip if you're not right on this microphone you can barely hear any outside sound that's called rejection and that's what we want on a podcast because we have kids and we have dogs we have garbage trucks so we have loud environments so it's awesome when a microphone doesn't pick up all of that stuff and that's what a dynamic microphone does a condenser microphone will pick up everything and needs a very quiet room to operate it now these are three separate microphones again the shure sm58 is cool many of you have heard of the heil PR 40 this is a professional broadcast microphone it's also great if you're a drummer for your kick drum it's a really good microphone for that and this thing which looks like this is on a shock mount and what that means is sometimes if you're on a regular mic stand like this one and this is just sitting on your table and I bumped the table that sound goes right into the microphone so you can hear that bump with a shock mount this is literally levitating on this rubber mount I don't know if you guys can see that but this isn't actually attached to anything if I shake it this way you don't hear any of that come through the microphone it absorbs the shock of that sound which is super cool so this is the high lpr 40 with a shock mount you can get a shock mount for just about any microphone in fact on my podcast kit I have a shock mount for this sm58 and again you can get these on Craigslist for like 50 bucks buy two of them you're gonna be fine they'll last forever even if something should happen to them down the road these things are easily repairable by thousands of shops around the world so I think really the best investment you can make it's a great microphone it's dynamic it rejects most of the sound it's pretty bulletproof I mean it's metal it's part of the kit they're 100 bucks brand-new and very worthy investment now if you're a hile fan this is the PR 35 which is very similar to the PR 40 but in mobile form so I've been using these microphones for gosh probably four years now and they've been around the world with me it's a beautiful fantastic sounding mic I would say it comes at a lot more of a premium it's almost three times more expensive as the Shore sm58 but it is a beautiful microphone so that's microphones we need something to record our podcast on and what I always tell people is I believe in Aerosmith and I believe in the Foo Fighters I don't believe in recording too software a couple years ago as I was doing the Hines Ward show we were at the Superbowl we were there during media day and there's 250 different radio stations from all over the world and I walked into that place with an open mind and said whatever they're using and however they're recording the show because these are the pros these are the people that do this for a living they get one chance to interview these celebrities for 10 15 minutes and then they're out I'm gonna do what they do so I walked around and I really studied who was using what and how they were using it and I will tell you that 97% of the time they were using a regular microphone into a mixer into a recorder either a zoom h6 or h5 or one of the tascam recorders there was like three percent that we're recording directly into a computer and the reason why is because well there's two reasons why in our case number one if something should happen to your zoom or your internet or your skype in the middle of recording you'll lose the recording it just dies which stinks because you've had an awesome recording up until then whereas with a hard recorder if something happens in your whole computer shuts down remember you're on a microphone into a mixer into a recorder your voice is still being recorded now your guest might go away but I can't tell you how many times that I've been able to come while my skype started back up or while my guest came back on and the audience was none the wiser because I was just covering saying you know that was a really interesting point you know guys and I would just talk to my audience for a minute or two guests would come back and I said you know to reiterate on that and then bring the guests back into it now that's a pretty Pro move but they had no idea that the Skype went down or the internet went down on the the listeners end so I am in that's a B they are almost bulletproof I'm telling you having recorded over 1,500 episodes I've never lost an episode before I take that back I lost one episode before that's because I didn't put new batteries in my recorder that lesson was learned once and it never i've got brand-new batteries all the time whenever i record a new show i put new batteries in but this is the zoom h6 if there was such a thing as a holy grail for podcasters i think this is it for a number of reasons number one it is a great reporter so I can plug I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna plug my mixer right into this recorder and it's gonna record my podcast number two if I'm mobile and I want to go interview somebody at a hotel I've got these dynamic mics which means that it be allowed Lobby and all of that sound well most of it 90% of it is rejected so I can sit across from a guest plug my microphones right into this and get a quality like a studio quality recording just from these devices right in third if I'm traveling and I'm being interviewed on somebody else's show I can plug a USB cable right from here into my computer and have a USB interface so if they want to interview me I can give them a professional microphone sound on the other end so all of that from this one device and by the way part four if I don't if I want to record a concert a microphone can plug into the end of this thing I can mount it on a mic stand and it will record the entire concert while I'm there I've never done that but you can totally do it with this you could also do it like for speaking gigs or at a conference or something like that where you're trying to actually capture the audio of the conference so to me the Holy Grail that's the hard recorder that's this is a zoom h6 they also have an h5 they have an h4 they have I think a z8 or h8 or something like that which is a big a channel one this to me is the one this zoom h6 is the one that's got a color LCD and it's awesome so and finally a pair of headphones which you need to monitor your sound and this is these are I believe the m-40 now these are the ath m20x by Audio Technica if you spent a little more money you spend a hundred fifty bucks and get the m50x they're actually audiophile grade studio headphones so if you want to really like up your audio game and listen to it like while you're on the plane and listen to amazing headphones like way better than your Bose or your beats you can do double duty and just get the m50x audio Technica's are about 150 bucks they are for no man doll alright let's get into connecting all of this craziness first and foremost I got to talk to you about modern computers years ago computer manufacturers decided to combine the microphone port and the headphone port into one Ingle eighth inch or 3.5 millimeter Jack that's a problem for us because we need to get audio in and audio out of the computer so that's where this cool device called a Griffin I mic comes in now this is a USB plug on one end but on the other end it has an in and an out let me show you that it's got in and out so this effectively gives us a microphone in and a headphone out let's assume that this is gonna plug into your laptop okay again all this stuff is at solo our comm yeah kit comm slash solo or rather let's assume we're gonna plug this thing into the computer and that's going to be how we're gonna get the sound in and out of your computer okay so this is our this is like our little computer hub our little USB hub next let's connect a microphone to our mixer so step one microphone two mixer so I'm gonna pick up my XLR cable and my microphone there's a little tab on the bottom of the cable and a little notch on the mic so you just align that sucker up and snap it in and now we're connected I'm going to take the male end which has the three prongs and plug that right into channel one of my mixer now if I'm plugged in and I start speaking I could start seeing this little LED strip light up which means I'm getting audio into my computer which is great i should mention on this one i tend to put the slider this slider on this xenix 1202 FX mixer I think I typically put it around 10 but you can put it right at zero if you want to that's fine alright so now my audio is going into this mixer now we need to get the computer audio into the mixer into channel 2 as we discussed before to do that we have this hose a' cmp 159 and this is a TRS to dual quarter-inch stereo here's what that means it means that on the one end we have two ooh stripes on this little 8 inch or 3.5 millimeter jack and on the other end we have effectively mono we've got a left and a right on the end in a quarter inch this is a little weird I can't get into the technical details of it but here's what we're gonna do we're gonna plug this guy into the out of our Griffin I'm Ike or the out of your computer if you have a Mac Mini this that Mac Mini has an in and an out which is great which is why I use a Mac Mini for my podcast this goes to the out of the Griffin I'm Mike and I'm actually just going to plug the black cable or the left side of these quarter it's jacks into channels 2 of the mixer this one you can tape up or if you happen to have a line in I could do it right here if I wanted to I could do a left and right so I could do left and black right and plug them both in the problem is is then I don't have any way to adjust the EQ and I want to be able to adjust the EQ so without getting super techie about it just plug the black one or the gray one depending on whatever color it is but whatever the left side for you is plug that into the line-in of channel 2 you could take this thing up with some electrical tape or whatever you want to do but you don't need this right side anymore I now have audio from my computer into my mixer cool right next let's get the audio from the mixer back into the computer so we talked about FX send before this quarter-inch cable is going to go right into where it says FX or on your mixer auxilary aux send so it's either gonna say FX send or augs send and that goes right there with the remaining eighth inch Jack that's going to plop right into the in of your griffin I mic or the end of your computer to complete the mix - setup I just have to go to channel 1 and make sure that my FX send is turned up in this case mine is at 0 it's straight up and down and my FX end - is all the way down so it's effectively all the way off and I don't know if I can show you that I'm all connected but it is right here that's all the way off and that one is straight up and down which means it's all the way on I'm effectively I'm not recording anything yet but I am connected like I'm recording so they will hear me I will hear them there will be no feedback loop all will be well in the universe next I got to record this stuff I got to get it into my recorder somehow so what I typically do for that and there's multiple ways to do all of these things but what I like to do is I have a right and left quarter-inch these are just this is a stereo pair of cables which means there's a right and a left at both mono and then I have main out I'm actually gonna main out the left side goes left the right side goes right and here's what's cool about the zoom recorder I can connect the left side - let's say channel one snaps in you got to make sure you push it in all the way in the right side to channel two so now once I hit these two buttons one and two I'm gonna record anything that is coming out of that main mix into channel 1 and channel 2 here's a little hot trick for you if you want to get separation of channels meaning if you want your guests to be on one track and you want to be on another track and your mixer doesn't allow that you can sort of fudge it and do it manually and how you do that is if your mixer has a pan meaning can you pan something to the left and something to the right you can pan your voice all the way to the left pan their voice all the way to the right so what's gonna happen here on this mixer is the left side channel will go on channel 1 the right side channel will go to channel 2 and you'll have complete separation of your mix what once it's in your editing software which is super cool the other part of the reason I love to set things up like this is that you have to do very little post-production what that means is once you get it into your podcast editing software your audio levels are going to be perfect gonna sound great in your ears and your post-production is going to be cut down by like 95% that's why the gear is awesome I now have audio going from my main into the zoom and for the zoom by the way if you happen to have this h6 I tend to keep the knobs turned around like for between 4 & 5 typically is where I have mine it doesn't matter which of the two which of the four you use just remember that when you turn it on that you have to click these buttons to make sure you activate the channels on the zoom so you've got LR which would correspond to the microphone that I don't have up here but then you have one two three four and we've got one two three four on the zoom so make sure that like if you're connected two three and four that you click the three and four buttons and they're red they're activated and then you turn your you know your your knobs here to the right spot you got to make sure you do that otherwise you'll be you'll be hosed but what we're looking for is on the zoom as you're speaking you'll see the the sound every time you talk you'll see a bar go up and down you want that thing to go to minus six that's sort of the sweet spot and you'll know what I mean once you turn it on but you want that thing to be hitting around minus six and once it's there it's at the perfect level for your audio editing software we only have one more thing to connect we've got our voice into channel one we've got their voice into channel two we've got our voice going back to the computer through that FX end channel we have the main outs going to the zoom I've got channel three and four selected my zoom is at around between four and five I'm peaking at about minus six as I'm speaking into the microphone we only have one more thing to do which is headphones so your first inclination might be to plug the headphones right here into the headphone port on the mixer new new new new new new new new new new the reason why we don't do that is because we want to be hearing exactly what that SD card is hearing so you always plug your head phones into the end of the chain how far can you go so I'm gonna plug my headphone right here into the zoom headphone port so as I'm speaking I'm hearing exactly what happens once the microphone goes into the mixer out of the mixer into the main mix into the zoom and what that SD card is actually hearing sometimes you'll hear it great in your mixer but you'll get to the zoom and go wait why don't I hear it well well that's probably because your knobs are not turned up in the right spot these knobs are super sensitive as well so make sure that you listen to the end of the chain at all times at that point you put your headphones on all right I'm ready to go I'm gonna hit record hey guys bla bla bla bla show is on I'm finished with the show I hit stop I pull my SD card out stick it into my computer drag that WAV file or that mp3 file into my audio editing software it sounds amazing because I've done all the heavy lifting with my mixer and with my zoom so my export process which I'll probably handle in another video is so quick I edit my show in about five minutes and export it for those of you that spend hours and hours and hours editing your show get yourself a setup with a mixer and you will be much faster in post-production so thanks for watching please remember to subscribe to the channel any questions you have about to set up feel free to hit me up in the comments I'm happy to answer all of them as quickly as I possibly can until then keep making great podcast and we'll see you next time

Channel: The Solopreneur Hour Podcast with Michael O'Neal

Views: 280,218

Keywords: How to podcast, podcast setup, content marketing, podcast tutorial, podcast, audio interface, how to host a podcast, smart passive income, microphone, audio technica, audacity, joe rogan, pat flynn, mix minus, mixer, recording, podcast recording, podcasting tutorial, podcasting setup, podcast microphone, podcast microphone review, microphone unboxing

Id: 0u3K0GyrXP4

Length: 28min 25sec (1705 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 19 2018