How We Make Our Podcast

I had an email from one of our evilrabbit regulars last week asking what sort of kit is needed to put an episode of the podcast together, so I thought I'd scribble down a few lines to show you what equipment I've used over the last couple of years.

Well, the first few mixes contained tracks from my vinyl collection and were compiled using my trusted old friends, the Technics SL1200's and a Numark 1001 mixer.

I was recording the mixes live into my pc using an application called AudioGrabber. For those who remember the early podcasts back in 2006, you'll remember the recording quality wasn't that brilliant, so I really wanted to find a better way to get the tunes into a digital format.

Whilst scouring the net, I came across a piece of kit called the Hercules DJ Control, which is a MIDI mixer that came packaged with a piece of software called Virtual DJ.


This was a really useful tool, that allowed me to spend time recording my vinyl into an mp3 format to a really high quality, then combining tracks that I'd downloaded from Beatport, MOS, 3Beat, etc. The audio quality of the podcasts increased dramatically (I'll let you judge whether the content improved as well!).



Using the Virtual DJ software meant that compiling mixes on a regular basis was a far less painful experience than vinyl mixing, but it was still a bit of a hassle if you weren't particularly happy with an individual track to track mix and had to go back and re-edit it (yes, we all make the odd mistake!).

Welcome to the stage, Ableton. A truly awesome piece of software that makes podcasting an absolute joy. Ableton allows you to create sets by dragging and dropping tracks into a sequencer, where you can then add your own effects to the mix.


Is it cheating? Yes, probably...but Ableton allows you to do so much more to a mix than you could ever wish to achieve using conventional mixing techniques...and as long as you guys are happy with the end product, then who cares?!

I put these mixes together using an Apple iMac which seems to be the perfect companion for Ableton...it certainly doesn't crash as much as my old Windows XP machine! When I'm happy with a mix, I upload them to my webhost which is currently Lycos. Although they're not the cheapest out there, I've got to say that I haven't had any trouble with them in the past.


...and that's about it. If you've got any questions about podcasting, mixing or using Ableton, please feel free to drop me a line at info@evilrabbit.co.uk