Podcasting Hacks

Podcast from Your Car

Podcasting from a car can be fun and interesting for your listeners, but it can be unsafe and potentially illegal. Learn how to do it safely, cheaply, and legally.

With today’s recording technology, you can podcast from anywhere. MP3 recorders are even built into cell phones and watches. This makes it possible to take your listeners along with you as you drive around town.

To get quality sound in a car, first you need to understand what you want. Do you want to concentrate the sound on your voice? Or do you want to pick up everyone in the car to capture the whole experience?

It also depends on who is going to control the microphone. Is it the person who is driving, or a passenger? If it’s a passenger, he can use almost any microphone he wants. However, I recommend one such as the Shure SM58 [Hack #13] , which has excellent noise rejection to block out road and engine noise.

If you are the driver and the podcaster, things become more interesting. You need a solution that keeps your focus on driving safely, while getting the sound you want. Here are three different approaches.

Mounted Shotgun Microphone

For a podcast with a strong singular voice presence, I tried several approaches and found that the best solution involved a shotgun microphone mounted just above the dashboard.

I took two cable holders with adhesive backs and put them on the center of the console, as you can see in Figure 10-1. Those cable holders held in place an Audio-Technica 837 short shotgun microphone. ...