Hello and welcome to the first episode of Micro Matt, a new podcast by me, Matt Lankford.

And in this podcast I wanted to do something a little bit different.

So what it’s gonna be is every couple of weeks I’m gonna try to release a new episode.

They’re gonna be limited to about five to six minutes each.

That’s it.

Really digestible.

In most cases be a single topic.

Nothing deep, nothing profound.

Just kind of what’s happening in tech or life or parenting or travel.

Really there’s no topic that I’m trying to center on.

Just what interests me.

So if you want to listen to something like that, if you want to subscribe, I encourage you to jump on board and we’ll see where this thing goes.

Now to start things off, since this is the first episode, I thought I would document exactly how I got here.

Exactly what equipment I’m using and why I wanted to tackle something like this.

And let’s start with that last question first.

Why did I want to do this?

Really I just wanted another outlet for some creativity.

I wanted to try my hand at it.

See how it worked.

I wanted to experiment.

Do things a little bit differently.

Nothing more than that.

I haven’t you know recruited sponsors.

I haven’t set a goal of making millions off of it or anything like that.

It’s just a another outlet for me to get content out that I like, that I enjoy and hopefully it connects with some of you.

Now what I’m going to talk about today is mostly the the equipment that I decided to go with to start this.

Now I didn’t want to have a huge investment upfront because who knows how this is gonna go.

So I just kind of worked with a lot of what I had.

Use some budget advice and and read some articles and stuff that suggested things for beginners on podcasting and that’s where I ended up with what I have.

So let’s go through it.

First I’m powering everything with a MacBook Air.

I have a 15 inch M2 that I really love.

I love the size.

I love the weight.

I’m a bigger guy 6'3".

So you know it fits in my lap well.

I don’t swallow it up if I’m using it sitting in a in a chair or in bed or anything like that.

It fits me well.

I like it.

I haven’t upgraded to the M3 and I doubt I will because this thing is doing everything I need it to and more.

I’m probably not even using it near its full capability.

It’s not a base model.

I did have some upgrades put into it but I’m very happy with that.

Now as far as audio input I’m using an Audio-Technica ATR 2100X USB microphone.

Now I’m not an audio expert by any means but I did do a lot of research.

I looked at what some of the big podcasters use.

I looked like at what some of the beginner podcasters use and pretty much there’s two or three microphones that I think everyone suggests and this is one of them.

I decided to go with it because it was available.

I could get it quickly and pretty much everyone that rated it said it it hits way above its price point.

So I went with then again it’s the Audio-Technica ATR 2100X USB.

Now I have it plugged in via USB into my computer.

You can plug it in using an XLR interface and that probably gets you a little bit of better quality but I wanted to keep things simple so it’s USB-C straight into the computer.

Now I have the microphone on a Rode PSA-1 boom arm that I actually had laying around for another project so I didn’t have to invest in that.

It’s probably a little overkill for a podcast like this but it’s nice to have and it works well.

I have no complaints with it whatsoever.

As far as headphones this is probably one thing I need to do a little more research and dive into but I’m using some kind of I guess they’re off-brand I’m not familiar with the brand Moondrop in-ears.

I don’t really even know how I ended up with these but they work well and for what they are and I’m not even sure how much I paid for them I think they were just like 15 or 20 bucks if I remember right but I could be wrong on that so we’ll see about that.

Beyond that I have an Elgato Stream Deck that I use for other things and I kind of program some of the buttons to be podcast specific.

I have a you know a mute mic button a cough button type of situation a way to toggle outputs between speakers and headphones and a timer so that I can keep track of how long each episodes going.

I don’t know how much I’ll use that but it’s nice to have these buttons right of your hand.

I think some people use them to launch different sounds or like as a soundboard type app.

I haven’t set that up yet but maybe in the future.

I don’t see using too many sounds on this particular podcast.

Software-wise I’m recording using Audio Hijack and I plan to edit in Fission basically because it’s a one track episode I’m not having guests or anything like that.

Now I’m open to suggestions on the software but so far I’m happy with the test runs I’ve done.

I’m happy with what it’s looking like so far so for now that’s what I’m starting with Audio Hijack and Fission.

Now this podcast episodes almost over that’s right I’m trying to keep it to under five minutes.

All the products all the software I just talked about I’ll have links in the notes you can click around.

Please offer suggestions you can email me at hi and mattlinkford.com and I encourage you to subscribe.

Who knows where this podcast will go maybe it’ll be fun maybe it’ll fizzle out.

I’m not looking for sponsors I’m just looking for a way to communicate so I encourage you subscribe get on this journey with me and we’ll see where it takes us.

Thanks again.