Almost everyone of my radio and audio-oriented friends recommended the starter podcast packages offered by BSW at www.bswusa.com. After looking at them I was pretty impressed that you could get an entire package for less than $500 and would recommend that other podcasters who have no equipment look at them.

I, however, was in a different position. Both Rich and I already had microphones and software. So I decided to ask around and research mixers. I wound up with a Yamaha MW10. It has 10 inputs, including four ultra-low-noise mic preamps. Since we only need two microphone inputs and one CD player input, it was a good choice at about $200. It came with Cubase LE software which looked pretty good, but which I won’t use because we will be using Fast Edit and Audition. I was assured by several people that this mixer would produce quality sound and it does. I really thought I would have some slight humming or cracking that I would have to remove from the finished audio, but in all my tests, the mixer performed without any excess noise….one more step in the right direction.