With the pandemic hitting in the middle of the school year, many of us college students were forced to leave campus and press pause on the majority of the projects we were working on. I am currently a journalism student at Arizona State University, and have a fairly successful sports podcast with a few of my friends. When COVID-19 began, my podcast was not allowed to record in the school’s studios anymore due to all of the new restrictions. We were left with two options: simply stopping the podcast until we had access to equipment, letting the momentum that we had built over this past year die, or finding somewhere else to record.
Obviously we wanted to go with the second option, but no other studios were open to let us record either. We decided that since I had space in my apartment for some audio equipment, I would buy the materials that we needed and continue the podcast from there. There were a few issues with this plan, the first being that while I may know how to work with audio equipment, I certainly had no idea how to configure or build a whole podcasting setup. Additionally, we were on a time crunch; We put out an episode every week and had already missed one due to being kicked out of our normal recording space.
I did what anyone looking for information would do and I went to Google, but I ended up more confused than ever. There are so many different types of audio equipment and uses for them, that I did not know whatI needed to simply record my podcast. I needed a microphone that could pick up four people speaking without much interference, as well as something that was able to transfer the recordings to my computer with ease. I knew I did not need as fancy of a setup as the one that my school had for us, but I needed something that could get the job done for a while.
I began looking into companies that could help me set up a podcast studio and ran into AV HERO. They definitely were my saving grace! I was able to get into contact with a HERO in my area within an hour and they were able to come to my place and see what we needed to get done. After surveying the space, they helped me choose the right equipment for my needs. Within the next two days, after everything arrived, they set it all up and taught us how to use it. We were able to continue our podcast with only a one week gap and we did not lose any subscribers or listeners. AV HERO stepped up and saved the day!
