Production
Audio Setup Guide
The tools behind The Systems Line — from the mic to the feed. Shared openly for anyone building a narrative podcast of their own.
The signal chain
Capture
Primary mic
Shure SM7B — broadcast cardioid, the industry standard for clean voice.
Backup / field
RØDE NT-USB for remote and travel recording.
Processing
dbx 286s preamp + processor for gating and compression at the source.
Monitoring
Studio
Sony MDR-7506 — flat, honest, unchanged for thirty years.
Edit check
AirPods Max and a cheap car speaker — because that's how most people listen.
Edit & Mix
DAW
Reaper — fast, scriptable, and obsessively configurable.
Cleanup
iZotope RX for noise removal, mouth de-click, and spectral repair.
Mastering
Auphonic for loudness normalization to -16 LUFS.
AI Narration
Voice
AI text-to-speech pipeline for the show's consistent editorial voice.
Research
LLM-assisted research, drafted and verified by a human editor.
Scripting
AI-assisted outlines; every script is written and fact-checked by hand.
Hosting & Distribution
Audio hosting
Direct file hosting with an auto-generated RSS 2.0 + iTunes feed.
Distribution
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and any client via RSS.
Web
Built on Base44 — the site you're reading right now.
Writing & Notes
Drafts
Markdown for outlines; rich-text for final show notes.
Research log
A spreadsheet synced live from the production pipeline.
The Approach
"The gear serves the story, not the other way around. A clean signal and a clear script beat any plugin on the shelf."