Tools of podcasting, well at least what I use

Jeroen Leenarts: Hi, and welcome to the 39th episode of my podcast. My name is Leenarts. And I've been developing iOS apps for over nine years. And today again, I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to talk about tools that I've been using while podcasting. And I'll just go over the things that I use for podcasting, and get give you a little bit of insight in why I'm using these tools. And in the show notes, everything is linked up, do note, there are three links in there that I have affiliated with. And I will just mention them right at the beginning. So that's an affiliate link for Buzzsprout, Riverside, and agenda, all the other links in my podcast, show notes, they are unaffiliated, and you can just click on them. And unfortunately, there will be no kickback to me, but the affiliated bonds, if you if you use one of those services, if you start using it after clicking my link, then there will be a small kickback to me, just so you know. So let's just start at the top of my list. There's quite a list of software that I'm actually using while creating my podcast. And the most important one is Hindenburg Journalist Pro. It's it's a specific audio editor that is tailored to spoken content, audio, and all the tooling and all the features that are in there are fully focused on creating the content that I have to create, that I like to create. So for instance, podcasts, but there's also people that use this software for radio broadcasts and other forms of spoken content. Apparently, there's also a version of their software that is fully tailored to creating audio books. But that's not my thing. I use Hindenburg Journalist Pro, because it's an easy workflow. It's compatible with my environment. And it has direct publishing to the platforms that I'm using while creating my content. So I highly recommend it. It's a bit of an investment. But it's one of the investments that I did right at the start when beginning podcasting, and I have never regretted using this specific tool. There are other free options or other paid options available. But yeah, on my selection, I went with Hindenburg Journalist pro because it had like the feature set that is important to me. So that's multitrack editing, some voice sweetening some audio sweetening, noise reduction all in the package. And from the reviews that I read all the filtering and tooling that was available in Hindenburg Journalist Pro is top notch. Of course, if you create a podcast, you also need episode artwork. And for that, I use Pixelmator Pro, why PIXMA Pro, while it's relatively affordable, image editor that is fully featured and everything that I need. And it's a native Mac app, and you really can tell that it is created by people that love the Mac. And it's just an awesome tool all around. And next to that I also use some online services or software. First of all, is my podcast hosting, which is Buzzsprout podcast hosting, the link for this one is affiliated. And why do I use Buzzsprout? Yeah, it's, it's it's convenient. They provide a lot of support. And they're not the cheapest. But yeah, it was so easy to get on board. And I haven't had a need or something that I wanted to go elsewhere. And yeah, so far, so good. And I expect to stick around with Buzzsprout for a while, do check them out if you are looking into starting a podcast because they have great tools available. As you know, a lot of the content on my podcast is actual interviews with other people. And I've used that remotely before I switched to riverside.fm. And the reason that I prefer to use like an online platform for my interview recordings, is that I want to have the barrier of participation for my guests as low as possible. Also, I want to make sure that the recording quality that I get is of the highest quality, within reason. So I don't have to have like really top notch audio. But I do want to make sure that I am able to capture the WAV format files from each of my guests. And the advantage of using an online platform like Riversides is that you actually have a video link with the person that you're talking to. Also, the audio is recorded locally by the browser of each participant. And this is done in the background uploaded to the platform. And but also they have like a backup if something goes wrong with the local recording. They also have the video and audio available of the session as it was like transmitted or mirrored through their servers. So if everything fails, I always will have like the the recording and on the quality that I had when I was actually doing the interview. In my browser at that moment, I do want to have like the local recordings, because the quality is such, the quality is so much higher that compared to the stream version of the audio reading. So yeah, that's riverside.fm recently switched the name. And yeah, the experience with them is great. Some of you might have actually already seen my riversides.fm studio, because some of my Monday recordings are recorded, live and online. And one of the cool things of riff side of the family is that you can also stream your session, as is to online video platform. So you can send it to YouTube, Facebook, video and some other platforms. Another piece of software that I have an affiliate link on that I've mentioned before on Twitter is his agenda, date, focus notetaking. Because each piece of content that I create, takes time to, to put together, I have to get like, guests, and I have to make sure that the day are scheduled. And I have to make sure that all my notes are like together on a date. So basically, first I create the notes on the date that I actually have to interview with the person. And then I put all my stuff in there. And once this recording is done, I change the date on the note to the data that I actually want to publish this episode. So that I have automatically a work list of all my episodes in the order that this edit is most acute. So the data that is closest, and that's not done yet, is the first note that becomes visible in this tool to me, so that it can actually work on the thing that is most important to work on at that time. And it also creates a nice backlog based on these dates, when these events are actually fast. And it's actually good to scroll back through all the things that I did over the over the last few months. So agenda.com It's really great stuff. It's actually an Apple design award winner, check their app out. It's, it's available on the on the Mac, the iPhone, and iPad, and it's all syncs together. And I really love their products. And I hope to get one of their creators as a guest on the podcast, actually. So who knows. To actually schedule, all the participants are on my, on my podcast to actually use Calendly. So quite simple, free free tier accounts, people can can can submit on my agenda, if I have like an agreement with them that they want to be on the podcast so that I can just send them a link and they can choose a time and date that is suitable to them. And that's also suitable to me because I opened up these openings in my agenda so that I can actually schedule themselves. It really takes a lot of hassle out of the whole scheduling across time zones for me. So yeah, that's pretty much most of the software. Of course, I'm using a MacBook or MacBook and one with Mac OS latest version. But that's yeah, that's that's all that's pretty much given. And some of the other things that I really want to talk about is just because I really liked him. His is my trackball and my keyboard and my screen. Amidon will dock I actually use Kensington expert, trackball mouse. It's one of the biggest drag balls that you can actually find it's a five centimeter diameter trackball, and yeah, I've started using it. And I must say that since I started using it there, my arms feel a lot less tired when doing a lot of mousing. And quite recently, I bought a new mechanical keyboard I have been using Mateus my 10 mechanical keyboards, but a notes that are required loud when doing recordings. And the drawback was that this was like Audible in my session. So sometimes, so I went with an IQ next led by Cherry MX Brown switches. So if you're a keyboard nerd, you know exactly what these switches are. So they're tactile, but they're not really loud. And yeah, I'd really like to the 80s retro look of this keyboards just have look at the stuff that's a company based in China. Yeah, but it's it's a great alternative if you want to, if you're in the market for keyboards also almost bought one of the key cron low profile keyboards, I think it was the k three. But in the end, I did choose the Ikonics led because of Yeah, because I really like the look of it. And in my experience for me personally, I like to have a keyboard that has been more bulky, and that forces me to not put my wrists on my desktop. So let's that's the input peripherals. To connect all of this, I'm using an Otherworld computing Thunderbolt for doc. And it's the best thing that I put on my desk in in the last year except for my MacBook. And why is it so convenient? I can just put My MacBook down, plug one cable and everything is connected and start working. And it's working really fast because if I have my SSD connects to my turnable dock and I need to use it, I just get full, almost full speeds, at least quick enough for me for my tastes. And it just works great. So to have all this stuff available and to to work with it, I'm actually using an LG 27 inch ul 850 W screens and that's a 27 inch 4k Ultra HD IPS LED monitor. So it's not one of these big huge curvy things because I had some restraints on on my desk per size. So I had to of course get a monitor that is like suitable for the situation. And that just having a 27 inch screen compared to a 13 inch MacBook screen, it's a lot of real estate. And especially when doing the audio editing, it really helps that I can just stretch out my, my audio lines quite wide. So um, let's see. Yeah, then there's like the recording hardware. Of course, I have a microphone, headphones and an audio interface. So what what I use for headphones in Audio Technica HTH M 50x. So that's a studio headphone as a closed back, headphone, and I really liked the flat profile of the audio. It's a bit it's a bit Basie to my taste. But I do notice that the reference quality that I get in the audio from this headphones is is good enough for what I need to do. I have it attached to an audience evil four, dual USB interface. So it's a USB C interface that I can attach two microphones to through an I think it's called SDR you know, these three feet, bulky cables that you can use with microphones. And yeah, I went with that. I went with an audio interface because I could choose between having something that is like a little bit more future proof, or gets an SDR USB combo Microsoft microphone. And yeah, it's, yeah, of course, it's probably a bit of my nerd strike that that went ahead and took the boy at the best of me. So I spent a little bit on this interface. It's like in the 100, Euro $100 range. And I must say that the audio is great, and the background noise is really low. So that's one of the reasons that I picked this one because that writing very good reviews on the audio quality and the the level of background noise that was within this device. And then for the microphone, I have a Samsung Q seven vocal microphone, it's not the most expensive microphone that I bought at the sorry, that is available. But I went with the Q seven because it's it's a dynamic microphone. So I have to really be in front of the microphone to be able to, to detect my audio. And why do I want to have this. I mean, I mean, in a home situation in my home office, and there's a street nearby and I don't want to pick up too much of this background noise and don't want to have too much of these room echoes going into the microphone. And then having having a dynamic microphone, and not a condenser microphone is great. Opportunity is a great choice. You hear a lot of people going with these Yeti microphones. And if you're getting into audio for Voice Recording, I'd recommend staying clear of these blue Yeti microphones. They're great, but they're so sensitive, they pick up so much background noise and that's because they're there condenser microphones instead of dynamic microphones, it has a wider pickup in the audible spectrum. But if you if you focus on focal recordings then what I understood from everything that I read it's much better to get a dynamic microphone because it's much more forgiving in the environment that you have in a home situation so I think that's the end of my list of course have some stands and some cables to attach everything together and then went with any crazy cables. I just got like the Amazon Basics or something similar to attach everything together. I did spend a little bit on my cable between the microphone and my interface, but that's just because I want to have a sturdy cable that was like still like 10 euros not too bad. 1010 euros for single cable. In my mind. That's crazy expensive already. And everything else. Yeah, because it's digital. It just needs to be connected to work. And so why spend like crazy amounts of money on gold plated things and everything. So yeah, that's it really. If you want to have a look at all the things that I mentioned, have a look at my show notes. I have everything linked there. And yeah I do hope that you check out the clearly marked affiliated links because they really helped me out. Also putting a review on Apple podcasts or just looking into the other option. For instance, my lead developer book, everything is great. And just getting feedback on Twitter is already the best thing that you can do. So thanks for time and talk to you again next time.