The first thing you need to purchase in order to get a professional microphone (something we’ll go over in the next article) into your PC or Mac is an audio interface.

We have three great choices to get your microphone sounding great and ready to record.

At the high end is the PreSonus FireStudio (FireWire) and at $699, it isn’t for your beginner podcaster. We would generally recommend this to someone who records a roundtable podcast with 6 or more people talking. It even has inserts for inserting a compressor or gate (again, we’ll go over this in another article) before it hits your recording workstation.

The middle end is the one we use almost on a daily basis, the AudioFire 4 from Echo Audio. At $300 it’s a great choice for experienced podcasters who want to kick it up a notch and get two microphones via FireWire into your computer.

The low end is the M-Audio Fast Track USB which, as it’s name implies, is a USB audio interface that takes 1 XLR input (one microphone), and is great for the solo podcaster who is just starting in the world of podcasting. For $99, you can’t go wrong with the Fast Track USB.

Thanks to PreSonus and Echo Audio for providing us with the equipment that we mentioned in this article. Coming next, microphones that make you sound the very best.

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