How to Record a Podcast with Guests

Solo-podcasting isn’t all that difficult. A simple USB microphone or an XLR microphone-plus-audio-interface set-up alone gets you pretty far. Throw in a pair of headphones and some recording-and-editing software and you’re practically all set. However, things get a lot more complicated the second you invite one or more guests to your podcasts. Luckily, with the help of this blog, you should be able to build a set-up that can accommodate them – whether they’re in the same room or calling in via Skype or Zoom!

Multiple Guests in the Same Room
All Circling the Same Microphone
To Each Their Own Mike
Recording Online Interviews with Multiple Guests
Recording System Audio on a Mac
Recording System Audio on a Windows PC
See Also

Multiple Guests in the Same Room

Here, you’ve got two options:

All Circled Around the Same Microphone

So, it’s certainly possible to group up and sit around a microphone. The only thing is that this usually puts quite a bit of distance between the microphone and the people speaking so, in order to ensure the recording is loud enough, you’d probably have to up the gain. Since more gain leads to more noise and unwanted reverb, this set-up isn’t exactly ideal and provides no control over the volume level of the different voices.

To Each Their Own Mike

It’s best to give each speaker their own microphone, which is what virtually all podcasters do. To keep your microphones clean, you can use disposable microphone covers.
An audio interface with a sufficient amount of microphone inputs is crucial.
It’s also worth considering giving each guest their own pair of headphones for the duration of the podcast. A couple of solid sets of over-ear headphones come fairly cheap these days and allow everyone on the show to communicate clearly as well as in a more orderly fashion. Again, you can opt to use disposable covers here.
Most audio interfaces only have one headphone output. This problem can be solved using a headphone amplifier, which splits and routes the audio input to multiple headphone outputs.

For more information, check out our How To Make a Pro-Grade Podcast on a Budget blog.
How to Record a Podcast with Guests

Recording Online Interviews with Multiple Guests

To talk to people who don’t live around the block, there’s Skype, Zoom, Teams or one of the countless other VOIP tools you can use. The question here is: how do you get the audio of your calls to your DAW or recording software? Normally, DAW software lets you select hardware inputs only, meaning real sound sources like your computer’s built-in microphone or the mic input of your interface. A relatively expensive solution to this problem is a high-end interface. Models from manufacturers such as RME and Antelope Audio are usually loaded with extensive routing options, enabling users to send the system output of your computer (in other words, your Zoom/YouTube/Spotify output) to your DAW. The cheaper solution would be to use a special app that ‘unlocks’ the option to select the audio output of your computer in your DAW. More on these apps is coming up next.

Recording System Audio Using a Mac

For Mac users, there’s Loopback by Rogue Amoeba. This app lets you create a virtual audio interface and, while it isn’t the cheapest one out there, it’s nonetheless a seriously solid investment if you’re ambitious about making podcasts, not to mention that good hardware simply deserves software to match. Using Loopback, you could, for example, assign channel 1 to the microphone plugged into your interface, assign channel 2 to Zoom/Teams, and assign channel 3+4 to Spotify/iTunes before selecting the ‘virtual interface’ in your DAW to record the channels to individual tracks – it’s that simple.

Recording System Audio Using a Windows PC

Windows users have the option to use VB VoiceMeeter combined with VB AudioCable. While Loopback is a virtual interface, VoiceMeeter is a kind of virtual mixer equipped with hardware inputs that can be coupled with the inputs of your audio interface. In addition, there are software inputs for the sound from apps like Zoom and Spotify. Besides inputs, VoiceMeeter also offers various outputs for hardware and software-based sound sources. Here, the hardware outputs can be used to send a mix of audio sources to a pair of headphones or speakers, while the virtual outputs can be selected in your DAW. This way, you can record your microphone, Zoom and Spotify audio to separate tracks. Extremely popular among gamers, VoiceMeeter is also widely used for live-streaming due its mixer-style lay-out.

Already thinking about people you want to host on your podcast? Awesome! If you have any questions, shoot!