Side-chaining is when you use the dynamic levels of one source to control the compression of your signal. For podcasting ducking might be the typical use for side-chaining. But you can also use it with a compressor and an EQ to create a de-esser, or with a gate and create the opposite effect of ducking, i.e., letting sound through when the signal is sounding.
While there are more types of microphones, the three useful for podcasting are dynamic, condenser and ribbon microphones.
Condenser microphones have been used for all kinds of applications for a long time, and quality varies a lot. They require some sort of power source, like phantom power. Dynamic microphones are often more directional than condensers (which can use different pickup patterns). Dynamics are also often more robust. They are the most common microphone for live use, but are used in studios as well. Ribbon microphones almost seemed to disappear for a while but have seen increased usage the last years. They typically use a figure-eight pickup pattern, meaning that they pick up both at the front and the back.
A gate is typically the same thing as an expander, but set to a such high ratio (I.E. high compression) that it doesn’t let anything past the set threshold. In other words, it is almost to the gate, what the limiter is to the compressor. Gates are perhaps most often used as a noise gate, that is, to remove unwanted noise from recordings.
An expander is in a way the opposite of a compressor. While a compressor uses the threshold setting to reduce the signal above the set value, an expander reduces the signal below the threshold value. This makes the signal more dynamic, and is thus expanded instead of compressed.
As with most audio tools, the parameters can vary between expanders. Typical controls found are ratio, threshold, knee, range and attack.
A big mixing desk have a lot of channels that you can record and/or mix through. Usually these channels have a preamp, an EQ and sometimes a dynamics section (I.E. a compressor). A channel strip is basically one channel that could’ve been pulled out of a mixer. Home recording have had a great impact on what kind of recording gear is available today. Many of us only need one or two channels to record at once, and possibly a nice compressor to even the levels as we do it. With that said, channel strips are probably more popular and common than ever before. So instead of buying a separate compressor, mic preamp and EQ, the channel strip allows you to have it all in one box.
Phantom power (or +48 V) is the description of a certain powering commonly needed for condenser microphones but are sometimes used for other equipment as well. It is common to see on both mixers and audio interfaces these days.
Before buying a condenser microphone, make sure that you have the phantom power to supply it with.
To most people noise might just be noise, but in the audio world there’s more than one type of noise. The various types are named after colors, such as white and pink. According to Wikipedia, the color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies. That is, if the sound wave pattern of “blue noise” were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be blue, and so on.
The rest of this article (with a lot of technical explanations) can be found on this Wikipedia page.
The commonly accepted colors are white, pink, blue, brown, purple and grey. Sometimes the names differ, and some wants to add other colors to the list as well.
