Still, there are several ways to set up a podcast recording “studio,” from using nothing more than a computer with a microphone to having high-end microphones, preamps, digital recorders, and the like in a sound-dampened room.

For serious podcasters, the list of necessary equipment is as follows:
        •        Microphone
        •        Preamp
        •        Digital recorder (or computer)
        •        Headphones
        •        Sound-editing software
This section examines the equipment you need to get up and running (software is covered a little later on). I need to point out that many devices that can make podcasting easier or higher quality, but I cannot cover every one of them in this book. Instead, I examine several key pieces of equipment in each category.

Microphones

Arguably the most important device in the creation of a podcast, the microphone stands between your voice and the podcast file. As such, it behooves you to ensure that the quality of the recording is as good as it can be based on your budget and expectations.

Two main types of microphones are used for podcasting: condenser microphones and dynamic microphones.

Condenser microphones use a capacitor to capture sound. This works when the pressure from the sound changes the space between the thin membranes in the capacitor. The advantage of a condenser microphone is that it has a very broad frequency response; the down side is that it requires a source of power (like a battery) to charge the capacitor so that it can work.

Note
Condenser microphones require external power to function. This power often comes from a preamp device and is referred to as phantom power .
Dynamic microphones work by measuring the movement of a wire coil around a magnetic field as the sound waves agitate the wire. The advantages of a dynamic microphone are that it is cheaper to make than a condenser microphone and can be miniaturized more easily.

Pop Filter MPF-6 6-inch Microphone Pop Filter
Cost: Range $15-$25.
​

One of the major problems for first-time podcasters is that any time they say the letter P, it comes across as a popping sound. This sound is created when the exhaled air used to form the P hits the microphone, temporarily overwhelming it. Unfortunately, this sound is not something that you can remove or doctor with editing software; once it’s recorded, it’s there forever. Not to worry, however. If podcasting is becoming a major part of your life, there are two relatively simple solutions:

7701B Tripod Boom Microphone Stand
Cost” $20

​

MXL 990 Condenser Microphone with Shock Mount
Cost: $70 each

Alesis 8 channel USB Mixer​
Should cost between $100-$200 used.

​

4 Channel Compressor/Limiter ACL4
Cost: $150

​

Editrol R-1 High-End Digital Recorder
Cost $299

Edirol R-09 High-End Digital Recorder
Cost: $150

or

iRiver IFP-795 Digital MP3 Recorder
Cost: $100 used

Because the iRiver comes with software that allows easy connectivity to PCs or Macs, its USB 2.0 connection makes connection and export of recorded files a breeze. The device supports recording bit rates between 8 Kbps and 320 Kbps in WMA, MP3, and OGG music formats.

or

Olympus LS-10 Portable Digital Recorder
Cost: $249

This is my personal favorite. It has line in inputs as well as very good built in microphones. Good quality with plenty of recording time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiMuj85ngEo&feature=player_embedded

“Knight and Day” aspires to the light charm of a romantic action comedy like “Charade” or “Romancing the Stone,” but would come closer if it dialed down the relentless action. The romance part goes without saying after a Meet Cute contrived in an airport, and the comedy seems to generate naturally between Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. But why do so many summer movies find it obligatory to inflict us with CGI overkill? I’d sorta rather see Diaz and Cruise in action scenes on a human scale, rather than have it rubbed in that for long stretches, they’re essentially replaced by animation.
The movie is entertaining, but could have been better. The director is James Mangold, whose previous two films were “Walk the Line” and “3:10 to Yuma.” I have a hunch there was an early draft of Patrick O’Neill’s script that was more in the Cary Grant rom-com tradition and then somebody decided the effects had to be jacked up. From the ads, you could get the notion this is a Michael Bay film.
There’s never been a particularly crisp line between intense, SUPER-AWESOME Tom Cruise and the characters he plays. In Knight and Day, Cruise’s age-old cool curdles into motormouthed neediness. Approaching 50, he suddenly seems desperate for our love. The love Roy Miller’s angling for is that of June Havens, a plucky cipher played by Cameron Diaz who Roy runs into—literally!!—in the Wichita airport. He’s handsome enough, she’s apparently on the prowl, and their flight to Boston is filled with torrid flirting and enemy agents. One unconvincingly filmed plane crash later, the two are on the run, with the explosions, gunplay, and spycraft provoking an awakening in June’s soul. The plot, such as it is, revolves around the hunt for a precocious scientist (Paul Dano) who has invented a perpetual-energy battery. In the end, you may wonder if the makers of this hyperactive, joyless thriller didn’t stumble upon a perpetual-energy battery themselves—and not for the good: Knight and Day keeps going, and going, and going.

Verdict: Worth Seeing.

When I first heard of Shyamalan taking on this project I admit my first thoughts were that there would be too many special effects for a director of his ilk. Well my first thought was bore out as it is clear from the first frame of this film that he couldn’t handle the special effects. Even the 3D is added after the fact to top this 2D movie.

The 3D is so badly added to the film that all it appears to do is darken an already darkly lit movie. Even if you’re a 3D fan I don’t see how you could like this afterthought 3D. The second mistake, if you can count them this way, is the changing of this animated idea into a live action movie. I think this is a huge mistake. The animation of the Nickelodeon TV series drew on the bright colors and “clear line” style of such masters as Miyazaki, and was a pleasure to observe. It’s in the very nature of animation to make absurd visual sights more plausible. Since “Airbender” involves the human manipulation of the forces of air, earth, water and fire, there is hardly an event that can be rendered plausibly in live action. That said, its special effects are atrocious. The first time the waterbender Katara summons a globe of water, which then splashes (offscreen) on her brother Sokka, he doesn’t even get wet.  Firebenders’ flames don’t seem to really burn, and so on.

As “The Last Airbender” bores and alienates its audiences, consider the opportunities missed here. (1) This material should have become an A-list animated film. (2) It was a blunder jumping aboard the 3D bandwagon with phony 3D retro-fitted to a 2D film. (3) If it had to be live action, better special effects artists should have been found. It’s not as if films like “2012” and “Knowing” didn’t contain “real life” illusions as spectacular as anything called for in “The Last Airbender.”

This stinks. 


Why is Eclipse, or for that matter any of the Twilight films, so successful? Eclipse delivers the greatest pleasure when it deals out pain to its stars. None of this cast can act their way out of a paper bag but they can glisten and tremble with the best of them. Having stashed his beloved Bella (Kristen Stewart) in a mountaintop tent for safekeeping as a battle rages below, Edward must watch her shiver in the cold and then—and then!— must allow shirtless, smoldering Jacob to slide into her sleeping bag to warm her up. “I am hotter than you,” Jacob smirks, and Edward winces in near physical pain, and the audience screams. Oh God, they scream, and you can hardly blame them, so perfectly self-aware is the scene. For those who aren’t already devotees—why bother? Dispensing entirely with context and exposition, Eclipse identifies itself early as a fetish object. The movie is bookended by scenes of Edward and Bella making out in a meadow; its silly explanatory flashbacks are so short that no one who hasn’t studied the books will make head or tail of them; it contains not one but two proposal scenes, each drawn out to delicious length. The ramshackle quality that Catherine Hardwicke brought to the first movie in the series is mostly gone. Eclipse is all business. It serves the fans, yes, but it serves the brand even better.

JUST SO SO…

Why is Eclipse, or for that matter any of the Twilight films, so successful? Eclipse delivers the greatest pleasure when it deals out pain to its stars. None of this cast can act their way out of a paper bag but they can glisten and tremble with the best of them. Having stashed his beloved Bella (Kristen Stewart) in a mountaintop tent for safekeeping as a battle rages below, Edward must watch her shiver in the cold and then—and then!— must allow shirtless, smoldering Jacob to slide into her sleeping bag to warm her up. “I am hotter than you,” Jacob smirks, and Edward winces in near physical pain, and the audience screams. Oh God, they scream, and you can hardly blame them, so perfectly self-aware is the scene. For those who aren’t already devotees—why bother? Dispensing entirely with context and exposition, Eclipse identifies itself early as a fetish object. The movie is bookended by scenes of Edward and Bella making out in a meadow; its silly explanatory flashbacks are so short that no one who hasn’t studied the books will make head or tail of them; it contains not one but two proposal scenes, each drawn out to delicious length. The ramshackle quality that Catherine Hardwicke brought to the first movie in the series is mostly gone. Eclipse is all business. It serves the fans, yes, but it serves the brand even better.

JUST SO SO…

The Blind Side, Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
African-American teenager Michael Oher has been in and out of the foster care system throughout his difficult childhood. When suburban mom Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose children are Michael’s schoolmates, discovers him living on the streets, he gains a home with the Tuohy family and receives the stability and encouragement he needs to develop his talents as a football player.

District 9, Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham.
The arrival of an enormous disabled spaceship over Johannesburg, South Africa, has led to the establishment of a refugee camp on the city’s outskirts for the ship’s starving, stranded aliens. Leading an attempt to relocate its inhabitants to a more remote location is security expert Wikus van de Merwe, whose lack of knowledge about the visitors will undergo a dramatic change when he becomes infected with an alien substance.

An Education, Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey
When Jenny, a 16-year-old English schoolgirl, finds herself the object of a calculated seduction by a charming older man, she is by turns wary, flattered, and disarmed by his interest. As their relationship develops, Jenny is drawn deeper into a sophisticated world of wealth and style that may be too good to be true.

The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro
As the war in Iraq continues, Staff Sgt. William James carries out one of the most dangerous of all military assignments: bomb defusing. While James thrives on the job’s risks, the head of his support team, Sgt. JT Sanborn, becomes increasingly worried by what he feels is a growing recklessness in James’s behavior.

Inglourious Basterds, Lawrence Bender.
Shosanna, a resourceful young movie theater owner fighting to stay one step ahead of the Nazis in occupied France, plots her revenge on the man responsible for her family’s death, the flamboyant Col. Hans Landa. Her plan soon draws the attention of Lt. Aldo Raine, who leads a group of Jewish soldiers known as the Basterds in a savage campaign behind enemy lines.

Precious, Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness.
Sixteen-year-old Precious Jones is overweight, nearly illiterate, and the victim of horrific physical and verbal abuse at the hands of her mother and father. Facing a seemingly hopeless future, Precious transfers to a new school, where a dedicated teacher and fellow classmates offer the unhappy young girl a chance for a new life.

A Serious Man, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
In a series of escalating personal catastrophes, physics professor Larry Gopnik finds himself facing an unfaithful wife, ungrateful children, a troubled brother-in-law and poison pen letters at work. But Gopnik is a fundamentally decent man, and he tries, with increasing despair, to respond rationally and fairly to trials befitting a modern-day Job.

Up, Jonas Rivera.
Carl Fredricksen, a gruff, lonely old man, thwarts an attempt to force him out of his home by launching it into the air with hundreds of helium balloons. As he sets his sights on South America, however, Carl discovers he has an inadvertent stowaway: a Boy Scout named Russell who was trapped on his front porch.

Up in the Air, Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman.
Ryan Bingham is a corporate downsizer who spends his days in hotels, airports, and airplanes as he travels around the country laying off other companies’ workers with polished finesse. His pursuit of a life without emotional connections is called into question, however, by his interactions with two women, one a sophisticated fellow traveler and the other an inexperienced young colleague.

http://likethedickens.com/gregtreadway/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/quantamproject.rtf