Opening Oxford's First Podcast Studio

Oxford's first Podcast Studio is finally open! We've already recorded some great conversations with some great people!

The idea to open Oxford's first Podcast Studio came about back in January 2021. I'd spoken to a couple clients about podcasting and there was a lot of interest, but also a lot of questions.

Would podcasting help our business? How do we do it? Where would we do it?

The answer to the first question was "yes, podcasting will help your business" but the answer to the other questions was more difficult. If we were to provide podcasting as a service, I'd want to ensure the audio was not just high-quality, but the highest of quality.

That was when I decided that if Story Ninety-Four was to introduce podcasting as a service, we would have to open a Podcast Studio too.

A Studio where our clients, and their guests, can comfortably record their episodes in the knowledge that we'd be taking care of everything else, from recording, to editing, hosting, and distribution; and that the audio quality would be gold standard.

Podcasting is a booming industry, with 15 million weekly listeners of podcasts in the UK alone.

With the decision made, it was time to start looking for a suitable location.

After viewing multiple potential spaces, we decided to open the Podcast Studio on the Oxford Business Park in Oxford House.

The next step was taking an empty shell of a space, and turning it into a Podcast Studio.

This involved several Ikea trips and Amazon deliveries of furniture, microphones, and a never ending list of audio equipment.

One of the most important aspects of a Podcast Studio is it's sound treatment. To professionally treat the space, I designed and built four 42" x 24" acoustically treated sound panels to remove the reverb from the room and dampen noise from outside.

The heart of the Studio is the microphones and the recorder. We decided to go with Rode PodMics and the Rodecaster Pro as we already used Rode products, we knew they were high-quality and reliable.

The Rodecaster Pro also allows us to record the individual microphone channels independently and apply isolated processing in real-time which streamlines the editing process further down the road.

Having spent such a long time in lockdown, it’s great to bring people together in the studio, build relationships and record great conversations.

Have a listen to the Independent Oxford Podcast which we recorded in the studio.

We've also started filming episodes recorded in the studio. Check out this excerpt from The Step Change Podcast with Mike Foster.

Visit our Podcasting page if you'd like to learn more about our Podcast service, or you'd like to visit the Podcast Studio just get in touch!