Room Escape Artist

A few people have asked what equipment we use to record Reality Escape Pod.

We aren’t secretive about this kind of thing, but it hadn’t occurred to me that other people might want to know until they started asking, so here it is. Our rig rundown:

A Note 

I want to be clear that the rig that I am going to describe is what Peih-Gee and I record with. Our guests record with whatever they have at home, and we work with them to make it sound as great as possible.

I’ll also add that in the early seasons of Reality Escape Pod, we were running on Blue Yeti microphones:

The Yeti is fine, and it is certainly a lot better than what you’ll find on most earbuds, gaming headsets, or built-ins. In my opinion, there are a couple of problems with the Yeti:

1. It picks up a lot more ambient noise than most people want.
2. Everyone wants to speak into the top of it, because it looks like you should, but you should be speaking into the front of it. This is just sort of a hilarious UX issue with the mic’s design and a wonderful lesson in implied usage.
3. I think that people expect to sound better on the Yeti than they do. That was certainly my experience… and once we swapped it out, the quality jump was immediately noticeable.

So after a few seasons, we switched to this rig:

Recording Equipment

• Microphone: Shure SM58 – We bought them with a built in on/ off switch, but I wouldn’t bother… the switch has caused more confusion than benefit.
• Pre-Amp: Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen USB – This is a simple pre-amp that is intuitive and easy to use (just don’t turn on the 48 volt toggle with this equipment, you will be sad.)
• Cable: Monoprice XLR Male to XLR Female Cable – 3 Feet – There is nothing special about this cable, but it’s fine. Just order the shortest cable that you can comfortably use.
• Pop-Filter: Stedman PS101 – Ironically, this is probably the fanciest component in the entire rig, and it’s because pop filters are really important. Most of them are trash with saggy goosenecks. This one is 💪.
• Arm: InnoGear Microphone Arm Stand – This arm happens to be the one that I bought… and it’s fine. I can’t reasonably justify buying a better one, and I can’t really recommend buying a better arm unless you really do need to move it regularly. However, if someone got me a better arm as a gift, I wouldn’t be upset about it.
• Sound Baffling: a yard of felt – I’ve thrown a yard of felt on top of my table to absorb some sound. It’s cheap and great.

This isn’t the fanciest equipment that money can buy, but it’s very well min-maxed for cost to quality, and I think that you can hear that in Reality Escape Pod.

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