10 Broadcasting Equipment Essentials

So, you want to be on the air, over the interwebs, eh?  If you have been reading these blog entries, we mention bits and pieces of what you need to make it all come together, without breaking the bank.  Let's take a look at 10 things you need.

First things first and obviously most important, you need a pc or mac, with internet and if you want to do more than just play music, or streaming, and want to do the whole DJ bit, you will need some sort of microphone.

I have a simple headset microphone setup for myself, I just feel more comfortable with it.  If you so desire, a simple usb plug in microphone will work too, just make sure it is decent quality so your audience can understand you.  

If you want some separate headphones a good choice would be something like this from Beyerdynamic in the left, or a reasonable combo headset and mic like i use..

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Next recommendation is a mixer, although to be honest, i do not use one and havent noticed any major issues.  The mixer is to take the input from various items like a mic, a turntable, etc, and give you some control over at making the output of these various items more balanced for your audience.  Again, maybe once you are really going hot and heavy with your show after some time, it may be worth looking at for your next purchase.

Next in line is a broadcasting deck, which is just a glorified mixer, but again, it adds to your ability to produce a higher quality sound of your broadcast.  Once again, from my opinion, this is a non essential unless you are really going full bore into radio broadcasting, but i just wanted to throw it out there for you.

If you do decide on a mixer or a deck, or both, the sound improvement will really only take place if you update your microphone, the standard at many radio stations is the Electro Voice RE320, it's a bit pricier than the usual, but if you have laid out cash for mixers and decks, you are ready for this one mic as well.
Even consider getting a boom arm to connect the mic to, and that arm connects to your desk where you are broadcasting from, as well as a pop filter to keep you from, as they say, 'Popping your P's'.  You can see the one below comes with such a filter already attached.   And really one last item(s) would be some sort of sound proofing material, not just to keep things down so to speak, but to again, have your listeners hear what you want them to hear, and not background noise bleeding into your show.
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