What’s more important—perfect gear or actually having something to say?
There’s a whole online culture built around pretending podcasting is about gear. Endless posts. Gear roundups. YouTube breakdowns of which audio interface “punches above its weight.” People debating mic brands like it matters. It’s all noise.
Here’s what you need to start a podcast: a microphone and the guts to record something.
That’s it.
You don’t need a Rodecaster Pro Duo mk. VII XR with liquid-cooled preamps and a tactical RGB kill switch. You don’t need headphones calibrated by monks. You don’t need a £400 microphone suspended in a shock mount that looks like it belongs in a Marvel film. You don’t need a pop filter blessed by some content creator with a neon-lit background and a wall full of empty game boxes. You don’t need three inputs, sound pads, a gain booster, or a mixer that glows in the dark.
You need a mic. You need something to say. And you need the guts to say it out loud.
The obsession with gear is just a very tidy way to avoid the real work. You can tweak levels all you want. You can spend hours adjusting EQ curves or testing compressors. None of that helps if you’ve got nothing interesting to say. A fancy setup doesn’t carry a bad show. It just makes it easier to hear how bad it is.
We’re starting Grumpy Old Gamer with basic kit. A few decent USB mics. Free software. A shared folder. That’s enough. The content matters more than the chain. Audio needs to be clear and listenable, yes. No one’s saying it should sound like you’re trapped in a metal bin under a motorway. But clarity isn’t the same thing as polish. And polish doesn’t fix bland.
Most listeners don’t care what mic you use. They’re not checking your signal path. They’re not wondering if you’re recording into a cloud lifter or a brick wall. They care if you’ve got a point. They care if the episode gives them something to think about. Or laugh at. Or argue with. If it does, they’re in. If it doesn’t, the gear won’t save you.
The gear hype also scares people off. Makes them think they need to spend hundreds just to have a voice. So they wait. They keep watching setup videos and tweaking shopping carts. Meanwhile, someone else records something half as clean and twice as honest, and it lands. Because content beats kit.
There’s a reason most podcasts don’t get past ten episodes. It’s not the gear. It’s the effort. You can buy all the right hardware and still have nothing worth recording. You can spend two grand on a setup and still fumble every intro. The barrier is consistency, not equipment.
And the truth is, the more time you waste worrying about sound treatment and plug-ins, the less time you’re spending on the part that actually matters: having something to say and finding a way to say it.
This isn’t a rant against good audio. We clean ours up. We edit. We make it solid. But we don’t pretend it’s what makes the show. What makes it is people who show up, speak clearly, and give a shit. That’s what people respond to. That’s what they come back for.
Buy a mic. Plug it in. Hit record. Speak. Fix the worst of it. Publish. Do it again.
Everything else is background noise.
If you’ve got something to say, what exactly are you waiting for?
