When the panic of 2020 set in and shut down all of our projects and we decided to launch this podcast on zoom we had to figure out quick how to get the best sound quality out of it. My first instinct was to grab my trusty iRig.™ and use my IPhone. It worked great, but if you’ve ever done recording you know it really helps if the headphones monitor the microphone, and the iRig ™ does not. The second drawback is it requires a 9 volt battery and sound loss occurs as the battery drains, and if you adjust the gain to compensate for that when you change the battery it will overdrive sound unless you remember to back it down. I use this thing all the time and I love it, but for this purpose I don’t recommend it.

 That moved me to an old pc and the yeti. The yeti is another already owned and already loved piece of equipment, and is still my first choice for audio recording, it has a mute button, 3 coil patterns and the headphones monitor the mic. However camera equipment, and computers are really expensive, and if your gonna record a podcast on zoom, you might as well have decent video. I was excited to find a usb and power supply adapter for IOS devices which could connect usb microphones to use in garage band, and for that purpose it works great, but for zoom calls the audio was a little unbalanced and could overdrive. One other thing I would like to mention about the yeti is because it’s a heavy desk mic it keeps you in one place. I don’t know if that’s a pro or a con, but I wanted to mention it.

 I started seeing these TikTok videos with these itty bitty microphones and great sound quality, and I thought they looked really cool so I went looking for them and found them for less than $10 on amazon so I snatched one up and I love it, however I did find cheaper ones that turned out to be garbage, so get the one I recommend if you go this route the headphones do not monitor the mic, but it works just as well as any lavalier mic and better than most built in earbud mic. is great on the go, or in the hospital, or reporting live from a shooting outside of your house

 If shootings are uncommon in your neighborhood, or you still want to monitor the microphone level then hang on because I’ve purchased more shit! 

 I’ll often search Amazon for clearance or off brand deals, and use a key word like “podcast”, and my most recent search turned up this:

 Now this thing started out a little confusing because the inputs are micro usb and come with the basic TRRS adapter. The charger is also micro usb, however I am tickled that I can finally monitor my microphone in the headphones and use a mobile device to connect to the zoom meetings. It has a lot more features than I was actually looking for like an echo, sound fx, pitch changer. Don’t get me wrong this thing is made with the cheapest parts available by people at gun point, but it serves my purposes perfectly so I’ll turn a blind eye to human rights violations so I can hang out with my friends on Wednesday,

Well Guys, This was basically a list of all of the audio connections that I have used over the 2+ years of podcasting, and next week I will talk about the video aspect of the podcast but be sure to follow those links if you’re gonna try any of these mics out for yourself, and be sure to listen to the show.