BurnsFamily Blog

I’m collecting ideas on the best mics and/or mic-headsets new podcasters should consider. There’s a lot of opinion out there. Most of it rather dated so it’s hard to tell if these reviewers ended up sticking with their recommendations in the long-term.

Ultimately it comes down to auditioning them to see which one(s) will work best for my voice, but after scouring the net there are only a handful of choices that keep popping up to the top.

I really like how Leo Laporte’s voice sounds in his podcasts, which have a fair amount of processing to make his voice “punch”, but he couldn’t have done it without a decent mic at the front of the chain.

For remote guests the TWIT’s gear page recommends the Plantronics DSP-500 (no longer available from Amazon), and I’ve seen other references to the Plantronics DSP-400. Those seem like good choices for our Skype guests. Being USB, I don’t know how well they’d integrate into my recording studio setup which uses XLR inputs, and their quality won’t be up to par with a studio-quality mic which is important for my primary mic.