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My new podcast - Microphone setup + reflections

2018-09-11 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 16:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Money and investing, Goals, purpose and life design, Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, Lesson from a book

Unboxing a Zoom H5 recorder, Rode Procaster microphones and studio arms for his new podcast Intercourse, Ali explains that he started it to film interviews with friends, judges gear as an investment by his 10% rule, keeps no expectations of numbers, and follows "document, don't create" and Austin Kleon's test of helping at least one person.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The new podcast Intercourse and why he documents behind the scenes

  • ★★★ Ali is starting a new podcast, for now called Intercourse with the website intercourse.fm, and is vaguely thinking of renaming it after several people said they were not fans of the name. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali enjoys watching the behind the scenes of YouTubers, podcasters and authors, because seeing how they got started shows that anyone could do it with no special gifts, only a willingness to learn and adapt. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Unboxing the Zoom H5, Rode Procasters, studio arms, shock mounts and pop shields

  • ★★ Ali bought the Zoom H5 audio recorder for the podcast in the Amazon Prime Day sale a few weeks earlier; it takes multiple XLR inputs. — 00:01:27 · Amazon
  • ★★ The inspiration for Ali's podcast setup is Matt D'Avella's podcast The Ground Up Show. — 00:01:27 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★ Ali calls the MasterClass videos amazing but a multi-million-dollar operation, while Matt D'Avella's podcast is a one-man operation that looks very good. (overstated) — 00:02:17 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★ Ali, who says he knows little about audio, has learned from YouTube videos that the Zoom H5's preamps are good and give a good amount of gain. (hedged) — 00:02:17
  • ★★ Ali explains that a good gain-adding device boosts a microphone's volume without background hiss, while boosting the volume on a laptop afterwards gives so much hiss that the audio is unusable. — 00:02:48
  • ★★ After long research, Ali chose Rode Procaster microphones as a good sweet spot between price and quality over the Shure SM7B, which Matt D'Avella and many pro podcasters use but which was a bit expensive. — 00:03:18 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★ Ali says the Rode Procaster, with its metal body, feels like a premium product. — 00:03:47

00:04:41 — Why he started the podcast: interviews with friends

  • ★ With the microphone on its boom arm, Ali finds his camera's autofocus may pick the microphone instead of his face, so he must use manual focus or find a way around it. — 00:04:41
  • ★★ Ali's earlier collaborations, with Ibz Mo, Matticus, Parth and others, used a standard two-people-on-a-sofa format; liking to push production value and inspired by Matt D'Avella's style, he wanted more. — 00:05:21 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★★ The main reason Ali created the podcast Intercourse is to facilitate interviews between him and his friends. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali does not plan the podcast Intercourse as a regular show: he will record it whenever a friend comes over or he visits a friend with something to say. — 00:05:50

00:06:19 — Does gear matter: two schools of thought

  • ★★ Ali's podcast equipment cost at least a few hundred pounds, about £500 to £600 by his estimate. (hedged) — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Ali sets out one school of thought on gear: it does not really matter, because content is far more important once audio reaches a baseline level, and audio quality matters far more than video quality. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Matt D'Avella (quoted): Matt D'Avella said early on that among so many podcasts, his could stand out, as he was a filmmaker, through really good production value: good audio, good video, nice filming and colour grading. — 00:06:48 · Matt D'Avella

00:07:23 — The 10% rule and gear as an investment

  • ★★★ Ali agrees that content is the most important thing and that gear to an extent does not matter, but he views buying gear as investing in himself. — 00:07:23

  • ★★★ Ali keeps in mind what he calls the 10% rule, which he thinks others may have come up with too: an investment is generally considered good if it yields 10% a year. — 00:07:23

    “what I call the 10% rule”

  • ★★ Ali says a 10% yield is now almost impossible in the south of England: by his rough calculations, the landlords of houses his family and a friend rent get 1% to 3%. — 00:08:25

  • ★★ Ali says the S&P 500 has returned about 10% a year on average over the last 30 years, depending on who you ask, or around 7% to 9% depending on the assumptions. (hedged) — 00:08:55
  • ★★★ Before spending on equipment, Ali asks whether it will yield 10%: whether, having spent say £1,000 on audio gear, he will make that money back within ten years. — 00:08:55
  • ★★★ Ali has spent at least about £5,000, if not more, on camera and microphone equipment over the last few years. — 00:09:31
  • ★★★ Ali says he has pretty much made back all his camera and microphone spending after about a year of YouTube, from ad revenue and brand deals. — 00:09:53
  • ★★ Ali also runs a side business of courses for medicine applicants, SixMed, and people have come to it from his YouTube videos. — 00:09:53 · 6med
  • ★★ Ali says it almost does not matter how much he spends on video and podcast gear, since a handful of medicine applicants who like his content and sign up for SixMed's courses or question bank pays it back. (overstated) — 00:10:14 · 6med

00:10:36 — No goals in numbers, no expectations

  • ★★ Ali views his gear as an investment that will yield more than 10%, so he does not feel bad buying fairly expensive camera gear; he expects to make the money back within ten years, a bet that has worked every time so far. (hedged) — 00:10:36
  • ★★★ Ali likes not having goals in terms of numbers and not having expectations of how things will work out; he has very low expectations for his podcast. — 00:11:07
  • ★★ Jason Fried (quoted): On The Tim Ferriss Show, Basecamp founder Jason Fried says he does not like to have goals or expectations. — 00:11:07 · The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali calls having few expectations good practice according to stoicism and fully agrees with not having many expectations in life at all. — 00:11:07 · stoicism
  • ★★ On the podcast Ali wants to ask his friends about their morning routines, their favourite quotes and the methods they use for productivity, a structured conversation he says friends would not have outside a podcast. — 00:11:36
  • ★★ In the worst case, with no one listening to the podcast or watching the videos, Ali still gets to have these conversations with his friends, which he says is absolutely worth the about £600 he paid for the equipment. — 00:12:05

00:12:25 — Document, don't create: piano and filming the process

  • ★★ After just over a year on YouTube, Ali gets many messages asking how he first learned video editing or for editing tips. — 00:12:30
  • ★★★ Ali only learned to play the piano about three years earlier and really wishes he had filmed himself learning, to show the progression. — 00:12:30
  • ★★★ Ali thinks that filming yourself from when you first start until people think you are good is a really good way to inspire people and to teach them how to reach that level. — 00:13:00
  • ★★ Ali says he will be working on videos about his method of learning the piano, mostly by following YouTube videos, playing chords and singing along. — 00:13:23
  • ★★ Gary Vaynerchuk (quoted): Gary Vaynerchuk's idea "document, don't create": a content creator should document the process of doing things rather than think they have to create content. — 00:13:52 · Gary Vaynerchuk, show your work
  • ★★★ Ali has taken on board the mantra "document, don't create": he enjoys documenting the process, it is fun to look back on, and he is glad he made his first vlogs from his medical elective. — 00:14:19 · show your work

00:14:48 — Show Your Work: will it help at least one person

  • ★★ Ali wrote about Austin Kleon's Show Your Work on his blog when he first started it in January 2016, as his New Year's resolution. — 00:14:48 · aliabdaal.com, show your work
  • ★★ Austin Kleon (quoted): Against the feeling that no one will care about what you make, Austin Kleon advises asking whether it will help at least one person in some way; in most cases the answer is yes. — 00:15:18
  • ★★★ Ali sets the bar that what you make should help at least one person: even a GCSE student's video on revising physics will be useful to someone, and he tries to meet that bar himself. — 00:15:18 · show your work
  • ★★ Ali makes this video for himself of a few months earlier, who would have liked to see someone starting a podcast show their setup and explain the rationale behind it. — 00:16:06

00:16:33 — Sign-off and a call for podcast name ideas

  • ★★ Ali calls Intercourse a bit of a rogue name and asks viewers to send other names for the podcast in the comments or on Instagram. — 00:16:41 · Instagram

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked what he uses to edit audio, the channel answers a combination of Auphonic and Logic. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 10% rule · Intercourse · Rode Procaster · show your work · Zoom H5

Also: People: Austin Kleon · Gary Vaynerchuk · Ibz Mo · Jason Fried · Matt D'Avella · Matticus · Parth G · Tim Ferriss

Projects: aliabdaal.com

Works: Show Your Work! · The Ground Up Show · The Tim Ferriss Show

Organizations: 6med · Amazon · Basecamp · Instagram · MasterClass

Concepts: stoicism

Places: England

Products: Rode PSA1 · Rode PSM1 · Rode VideoMic Pro Plus · S&P 500 · Shure SM7B

Only in the description or credits: Auphonic · Logic Pro · Tech Tuesdays

Also centred on Intercourse: The confidence to speak up in class - A podcast experiment

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