Podcast headphone monitoring

Question

I am setting up a medium podcast studio for 4 person recording, and I am wondering about the headphone monitoring.

Is it ok to just attach a headphone amplifier and put the mix in the earphones or will it be distracting to hear your own voice as high as the rest of the group?

Ideally I would route a subgroup to each of the phones, so you could do the mix yourself, but that seems unpheasable for such a project...

What do you think?

Setup: 4 Røde NT1A Recording 4 tracks on Tascam DR-70D 4 Yamaha HPH100 headphones Presonus HP 60 Headphone mixer (for future expansion)

Answer 1

It’s not distracting at all. It’s often not necessary. The only real reason to use headphones for a conversation or interview is if you want other audio to be heard by the talent but not picked up by the microphones.

A basic headphone amp will work fine, but it should have separate volume controls for each person. Even with the same model headphone, different people will prefer different listening levels.

Answer 2

I would say that it is only weird at first to hear yourself but you get used to it. The only reason it would be a problem is if there were a long latency between when they speak and when they hear themselves. But I would strongly suggest you buy a small mixing console so you can have a "program mix" and a "monitor mix" separate from each other.