This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom. Learn how to grow your network and net worth. Hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt and welcome to Digital Podcaster. You made it. In this episode, I'm gonna go over my equipment picks for quality in-person interviews. So I didn't talk about it on this podcast yet, but if you're signed up for my newsletter, You would have already heard this and what I'm gonna do is start a podcast to the talent I just moved to an in-person podcast where I'll be interviewing local businesses and entrepreneurs to share their story on the podcast and Share it with the community now. I primarily do Virtual interviews here on digital podcaster these interviews that I'll be doing locally won't be featured on digital podcaster This will be on a separate podcast, but I am sharing my journey on the newsletter and in this Podcast because I want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what I'm thinking about as I'm making it Because I think you'll be able to pick away some gems around my thought process and should be pretty useful for you I hope if you want to get all the links that I talk about Because I'm gonna be covering a lot of items in this episode You can go to Dylan Schmidt comm slash blog and just look for the blog titled my equipment picks for quality in-person interviews and then inside there is a Link to an Amazon page that has all of the products There's 15 or more products that you can see the exact products that I'm referring to I went through and added them in I also added the quantity of items that you would need if you were copying this same type of setup that I'm doing. Now you don't need you know all the same gear that I have but I think it's helpful and you know it's gonna produce a really high quality podcast I know that and I've used all this gear I either already own it or I purchased it for this upcoming podcast that I'll be doing. A little bit of a disclaimer here I'm gonna be doing just me and somebody else I got to put some type of boundaries around the podcast I I don't really want to do multiple people. I don't want to like as far as like more than two I should say. I don't want to do three or more people on the podcast. I just want to do me and the founder. And so that's really clear to me. This makes it easier in terms of like talking about things. And so yeah, that's kind of my boundaries here. So this is for two people, a two person interview. So let's walk through it. So we're going to break it into two sections. be the audio section and the video section. First up is the audio section. So I'll be using the Zoom H6 6-track portable recorder which has 4 XLR inputs. I'll only be using 2 of them but could do more in the future if I want to do more. And what I love about the Zoom H6 is it has a really easy to read display. A lot of these portable recorders have like black and white screens and it's just not very super clear if you're looking at it if you're recording or not. I only need one of these which is cool but I really like the zoom H6 because it's just easy to look at and go like yeah I'm recording versus everything's the same color. I'm like yeah I am recording right and so I just want to be able to glance over at it and just see a red light in that I'm recording and it's super clear and there's no mistakes. I also like because it shows the levels of your audio that that's also super clear. So for me, a big reason with going with the Zoom H6 is that it's just again, the display is super clear. And so I can see if anything's getting into the yellow or red if I'm peaking, I'll be able to hear that obviously. But that visual safety and simplicity of the display on the Zoom H6 is what I really like about it. And to capture that, because if you just recorded to that, it really wouldn't work because you need a memory card. So I'm going to be using the SanDisk ultra 64 gigabyte memory card that I'll be putting in there because it's just audio on the zoom H six. I don't need a absolutely like hundreds of gigabytes, 64 gigabytes should be plenty. And then on the zoom H six, there is a spot for the wired earbuds. So I or headphones, so I will be plugging what I always use as the sure S E four 25 pro wired earbuds. And they're in ear earbuds that are really discreet. So I'll plug those into the zoom H six so that I can monitor it. The guest won't have any headphones or earbuds or anything like that. I don't think they need them and it will look a little bit better on camera if they don't, in my opinion, the aesthetic that I'm going for, so I'm not worried about them hearing it. I can also direct them if they're talking to the microphone too far away or too close or something like that. And so I'll just listen to it on my end and I'm not worried about them being able to hear themselves because we'll be close to each other. Then for the actual microphones we'll be using, I'm going with the Shure MV7X, which is an XLR only output. And it's just like the regular Shure MV7. The regular Shure MV7 does both USB and XLR and runs around $249.99 on average for the MV7. Sometimes you can get it a little bit cheaper during holidays or Black Friday, things like that. But the Shure MV7X is similar except it doesn't connect via USB so it doesn't have little lights on it. But it sounds great, it looks great, and I don't need USB because I'm going to be connecting via XLR cables to the Zoom H6. So it doesn't really matter to me about the USB. I don't really use USB microphones because I don't have any need for them. I do connect, like for this podcast setup, I have a Shure SM7B that's plugged into a Rodecaster Duo. And that Rodecaster Duo goes via USB to my computer, but the Shure SM7B microphone I'm talking into right now goes via XLR to the Rodecaster Duo. So, you know, the Shure SM7B is not a USB microphone, but I can connect via USB via the Rodecaster Duo. I believe I could do the same if I really wanted to with the Zoom H6, but I'm not going to be doing that. I'll just record it into the Zoom H6. I'll save it to the memory card and then I'll take that memory card and plug it into my computer and then drag the audio files from the memory card to my computer and then do all the editing that way. So the Shure MV7 is a little bit similar to the Shure SM7B like I'm talking into now, except it's a little bit smaller and it sounds great. And it's around $179 which is great. So I save about $70 per microphone and it's all I really need there. And I know that it will last me for years and it's going to sound fantastic. I did go at first with the road pod mic, which I've not really used. Although I purchased, I just never really used it. I got it for testing. And then when I tested it here in my office, all it took was about a minute and I was like, yep, now I'm gonna go with the surest, uh, the sure MV7. X the XLR only one, because there's something about the highs and it just sounds very, it doesn't sound very good for my voice. And I really liked the look of the road pod mic, but I just, I've never been that into the sound. I don't think it sounds very warm. And for podcasting, I don't know. It just sounds a little harsh to me and I've owned the shirt and be seven for a while and I know it sounds great. So. You know, I'm just going with that. I didn't go with the shirt as some seven B because I didn't want to worry about cloud lifters, all these other things. And I think the Shure MV7 does just a good enough and great enough job, I should say, that I'll be happy with that. And the Shure MV7X is only about $79. It's $80 more than the Rode PodMic is. So I just felt like, you know what, I'll just spend $80 more on that and we'll go with the MV7X and be happy. I know I will be, but I don't want to think about, you know, will I really like the Rode PodMic? I want to use microphones that look good on camera too, because I'm going to local businesses and I want to make a great impression. This will be one of the first and possibly more interactions I have with these companies. I just want to use gear that I'm proud of and that I know that just works. And I know the road pod mic would work. I just, again, I'm not like a huge fan of the sound. Then for the XLR cables, I'm going with a, I don't know exactly how to say it's like like LYX Pro, like Licks Pro. But what I like about these and I've used them for years is their colored XLR cables. Nothing crazy but if you've seen my videos you know that I love colorful objects and so it adds just a little bit of branding kind of flair to it. So I'll be using, they have blue XLR cables that I'll be using that I'll be plugging into the Shure MV7X's and then on the other end of that XLR cable that we plugged into the Zoom H6. For tripods I'm going with the Gator Frameworks short-weighted bass microphone stand and this is a solid, solid desktop microphone stand. This isn't one that you would set on the floor and then rise up and then talk into. This is one that you would put your microphone on and you would set it on a desk and then and it has an arm that kind of extends out. I think they look great and they're just versatile and you can not worry about having to lean in. You can sit comfortably and have the microphone come to you versus feeling like you have to lean into the microphone because naturally too with guests that aren't used to talking into microphones, they're gonna just kind of after a couple minutes, they're gonna assume their natural sitting position. So I would rather they just stay in their natural sitting position and then I kind of move the microphone closer to their mouth versus, Hey, can you lean back in? Can you lean in? And one of the ways I'll do that is by using this Gator frameworks, desktop microphone stand. Now, I don't exactly know what the setup will be because I'll be recording these podcast episodes inside their businesses. So not everyone is going to have a desk for us to sit at, uh, in a perfect world they would. So I might have to use the Gator Frameworks tripod mic stand that's much taller. And that might be the only option when a desk isn't available. So I'm going to kind of play with that and see which one I'll go with as far as tripods go. But it's just like the desktop one, except it's got these legs that reach out further and it just goes up taller. So if we were just sitting in some chairs, it's much easier to do that way. Now that pretty much concludes the audio portion of things. We covered the recorder, memory, headphones that I'll be wearing, microphone, XLR cables, and tripods. Next is going to be some videos. So we are going to make this an audio focused podcast and it's going to sound great, but then we're also going to do some videos so that we could chop up. The clips for social media and then get some exposure for the businesses and the podcast and the conversations that way. So for the cameras for this podcast, I'll be using the Sony a7c full frame mirrorless camera. And that's what I use at my desk as well. Same camera. So I'll be using that one. It looks fantastic. I have a lens on that one. It's the Sigma 16 millimeter 1.4 lens. And that is a sharp lens. What's great about this lens too is in the camera, the whole setup is the low lighting situation. I don't exactly know what the lighting setup will be at these places, but with both cameras I'll be using, I'll be able to make sure that I don't have to worry a lot about it. It also has human eye focus tracking, so I don't have to worry about going in and out of focus. I can just set it and forget it. Something I didn't mention, which is pretty big, but I don't also necessarily recommend it for everybody is I'll just be running the setup by myself. I'm so used to doing all this stuff. I could literally just press a couple of buttons and get it going pretty easy. It's almost just easier for me to set it up. And I can see when I'm recording because the camera, uh, both cameras will have a little indicator light and the flip around screen. So I'll just, you know, hit it up and the audio again, that's the main focus. So I'm not worried about, you know, Oh, this wasn't cropped directly. Also, I'm recording in 4K so I can zoom in a little bit. So I'll have flexibility afterwards, but I'm not really worried about that. I'm worried just about getting good audio. And then this video is going to be sharp. It's going to be way sharper than most people could possibly capture without having quality gear like this. So that first camera was the Sony a7C and then the second camera will be my Sony ZV-E1 which is a newer camera from Sony. That's a full frame interchangeable lens mirrorless camera and the lens for that one will be the Sony FE 20mm 1.8G full frame lens. That's a awesome awesome sharp lens and you know a lot of this some of this gear is like pricey. This lens is pricier than just that lens cost almost as much as the two microphones I think in the zoom recorder. So just to give you like an idea of some of the prices, it's kind of all over the place, but I use this gear also in my regular business and this is this is a business for me. So that's why I invest in quality gear. Those cameras will be sitting on the Manfrotto Manfrotto BeFree advanced camera tripod, two of those. And what my thought process is, I'll have to kind of see what the, how close we are together, but I'll probably just have one camera on one person and then when the other camera on the other person, just spotlighting each person and then editing together afterwards, kind of going the direction there. If we're sitting close enough, I might just use one camera to capture both. And then one is like a backup type thing. To be honest with you too, speaking of backups, I might even just have my phone out recording just like a voice backup voice thing because Adobe podcast has like this free podcast enhancer thing, this AI thing now that like, it's so good that I'm like, I might as well just use that. And if like absolutely everything failed, I would have this like decent thing that I I might be able to run through AI and it sounds okay. Not ideal by any means. The phone is not going to sound better than all this stuff, but like, you know, just as a absolutely last ditch effort. I don't know that I'll actually do that, but it was a thought I had. So then I'll also be using the SanDisk 128 gigabyte, uh, extreme pro memory cards. I'm gonna have three of these. I'm going to have one in each camera and then one for backup. Something about the zoom H six recorder I didn't mention is I'll have one in the zoom, but also have one for backup because memory cards, it's a good idea to have a backup. And then for lighting, I don't know exactly how to say this name, but it's like bowling, bowling something. It's these led lights I have that are for cameras and it's a small rechargeable light, but it gets really bright and they're, they're light. They're super portable and I think they'll work good. So I'm going to try out those the first couple of interviews, at least the first interview and see how it goes. I feel pretty good about it. You can change the lighting temperature quite a bit on there. And then I'll use the loom cube adjustable five foot light stand tripods just because they're super light and portable and the lights are so light that I can just put them right on top of the tripod and not have to worry about a bunch of bulk. They're like really kind of discreet because I'm already going to have a little bit of gear here. So I just want to make it really quick and easy to set up. And that's what I'll use there. So that was 15 products right there. And that's basically what I'll be using for these interviews. I have a different setup for home, which I think I've talked about in past episodes, I might need to do a future update episode on that, but that's what I'll be using. And I know that this will produce a good quality interview and the. Images will be sharp. The sound will be sharp. I'll have a lot of flexibility afterwards to, you know, equalize someone's voice. If something sounded a little bit off, if there was a little bit of disruption in the background, I won't have to worry too much about that because I'll be using these dynamic, sure. MV7X microphones. Also when I'm recording to the Zoom H6, there'll be separate tracks. So I don't have to worry about, you know, everything being on one. I'm just going to have a lot of flexibility, which is what I want, because I don't know the exact environment I'm going into when I'm recording these podcasts and I don't want to rely everything on like one track, one memory card, if it doesn't work out, I'm losing the whole interview. So by having the equipment in this way, I'm setting myself up for a success later on afterwards when I go home and then I go to edit it. So that's what I'll be using. If you like this, please let me know again, if you want the full, like direct links to everything I mentioned in this, just go to Dylan Schmidt.com slash blog and then look for the blog titled My Equipment Picks for Quality In-Person Interviews. Thank you so much for joining me. I will catch you in the next one.