Remember when Chris wrote that blog about shitty Yeti mics? That was inspired by me and my refusal to heed his advice by buying a garbage mic he warned me at length would be garbage. I returned that busted mic and basically never thought about my audio setup again–until recently, when I was, let’s say, politely informed via our podcast producers that it’s time to get big boy gear. This has been bad news for me, though very good news for Chris.
Look: despite working in a tech beat, I am aggressively not a gear guy. I don’t understand hardware and I hate to tinker. I want the simplest possible items that do what I need them to do with minimal interaction from me. Until recently, my audio setup was an Arctis Pro headset that a past Gizmodo colleague dropped on my desk one day with an unceremonious “Take this.” It comes with (Chris, look away) a little display thing with a knob that I have straight-up never understood how to use and whose manual I have long since lost, and it glows in embarrassing gamer colors, but it makes noise in my ears and transmits my voice to other people’s ears, so I love it.
But if you watch our streams and listen to our podcasts, you’ve probably realized that it’s not the best. I have long known this and felt bad about it, and Chris has been offering for months to help me improve my situation, but I kept waving him off. This was a combination of guilt at inconveniencing him and fear that his aid would begin a long and complex descent into gear hell, where each upgraded item would require additional items until I was lost in a tangle of cords and jargon.
But when critique of my setup stopped just coming from Chris and his high and justified professional standards and started coming from outside the Aftermath house, I decided it was time to relent. Chris biked over with a microphone that is basically the length of my torso, and which connects to my PC via an interface with lots of little knobs that, despite being intimidating to me because they are knobs, are pretty straightforward. He very politely set the whole thing up for me and verified that it sounded good, and I thought that was the end of it, until our weekly staff meeting revealed that my embarrassing gamer headphones were bleeding into the high-powered mic, necessitating new ones.
This is the exact cascading situation I was hoping to avoid, but Chris ignored my weeny protestations and simply mailed some IEMs to my house. When I opened the envelope I was greeted by the world’s most humiliating box, which features a detailed watercolor rendering of an anime lady. There is nothing in this world that could be less my aesthetic, except possibly having to keep editing my Slack messages about my new gear to say “IEM” instead of “headphones.”
So @papapishu.bsky.social is making me get big boy podcasting equipment and I am utterly humiliated to have received this box (though in its defense it’s a really good box!)
— Riley MacLeod (@rcmacleod.bsky.social) 2025-03-14T16:07:15.376Z
How are the–sigh–IEMs? They seem good. They plug very sensibly into my–SIGH–interface, and they sounded very good once I undertook the tedious process of convincing the various programs on my PC to use them instead of every program insisting I want sound to come out of my webcam, which is my PC’s favorite place to try to send sounds. Someone asked me why IEMs over headphones and I was thoroughly unable to answer them, though of course Chris was. My favorite part so far is that my joke Bluesky post about the box has inspired multiple people to also purchase the IEMs, which feels like a real testament to the power of a Chris Person recommendation.
The only thing I can say with confidence about the IEMs is that they come in a really great box, anime lady aside. It has super solid little compartments, and even the tiny plastic bag for its eartips is really robust and seals well. Honestly, I’d feel bad throwing the box away and want to figure out a way to repurpose it. It could be good for holding odds and ends on my bikepacking trips, though it’s a little big. I briefly reflected that it could make a nice, though very nerdy, box for an engagement ring if I were ever to propose to anyone. I recognize that my cat-like obsession with the box over the IEMs is probably the most Riley reaction to all this, but at least I have enthusiasm for some part of this situation.
Once I get a new mic stand that goes low enough for me to not need a booster seat to actually reach the mic, I bet I will sound much nicer on our podcasts than I have to this point. Chris also tried to entice me by saying I could record mandolin videos with it instead of my current bootleg setup of leaning my phone against my French press, an offer I totally fell for. Fuck you, Chris; thank you, Chris; I hope the rest of you are enjoying your new IEMs.
