Heil PR-40: perhaps the ultimate Podcasting mic

One of my favorite podcasts is TWIT: "This Week in Tech", which is a weekly broadcast hosted by Leo Laporte. I have been very impressed with the audio quality of the show, which is comparable to FM broadcast quality--even more impressive is the fact that they do many of their recordings over Skype!

I remembered during one of the TWIT broadcasts that they had discussed a new microphone that there were using: the Heil PR40, and I decided to check it out. This is a professional quality microphone, but at an amateur price: $325 suggested list (OK, so a *serious* amateur!).

Since we are about to embark on a series of podcasts of our own at Proxima, I have insisted that we invest in a decent set of equipment, including microphones and a mixer. Fortunately, the price of this type of gear has dropped quite a bit over the past few years, so I think we can get set up to produce a decent podcast for less than $1000, including all of the various pieces of software that we'll need.

The biggest challenge is going to be around convincing the people that will be on our podcasts that they need to use a decent mic setup; while shipping PR40s to everyone is not a reality, we could purchase some inexpensive ($40) USB headsets for people to use.

I will be sure to document my experiences as a first-time podcast producer in the space in the coming weeks and months. I'm really looking forward to it!