We recently launched the Open Sourcing Mental Health Podcast via our YouTube channel. (RSS/iTunes coming soon!) We recorded the first two episodes on site at PHP conferences with borrowed gear from our awesome friends PHP Roundtable and NomadPHP.com. Since we visit a good number of conferences every year we decided to buy our own gear to mirror the very portable set ups used by our friends.
We blatantly and shamelessly bought the same gear (or as close as we could get) as our friend Cal Evans and we wanted to share what we're using with you.
The Case
We started off with a Pelican 1500 case to house everything in a very protective environment that we could ship if need be. I also wanted the most obnoxious color I could easily find so I went with the bright orange. It's our own nuclear football! There may be some sticker shock here, but keep in mind this is a water tight case. They're not cheap.
The Microphones
We went with Shure SM58 microphones because they are the gold standard in the vocal world. We're not recording pop songs but we want to record at the highest quality we can reasonably get without buying a recording studio. We paid a little extra to get the XLR cables with the microphones so it was one less thing we had to remember to purchase. The come with a neat little carrying case as well.
The Device
The Zoom H5 is a battle tested device by many podcasters and has proven to be an easy to use workhorse. We have two microphones on the top of the device and we can also record from two of the XLR inputs on the bottom of the device. The H5 supports multitrack recording as well as working as a multitrack interface for common audio applications. The only downside is it will only support a maximum SD card side of 32 GB, not the 64 GB card we bought.
Odds and Ends
We still have some odds and ends to buy: small desktop mic stands, mic flag holders, and a smaller SD Card since the 64 GB card we bought is too big for the H5.