7/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDGreat build quality for the price. Almost everything you need to up your podcast or Zoom call game in one box. Class compliance means plug-and-play functionality.TIREDNo high-pass filter switch on the mic. Mic is prone to picking up background noise and interference at higher-gain settings.It’s never been easier to start a podcast. Technological barriers to sharing your opinions on culture, politics, and hot sauce have never been lower, which is—in theory—a tremendous boon for the so-called “marketplace of ideas.”
Should any idiot with a hot take be allowed to broadcast their brain slop far and wide? That’s an open question society is in the midst of tackling, so we’ll set that aside for now.
From a gear perspective, the more pressing question is whether or not you need access to nepo baby cash to acquire the mics, headphones, cables, and stands to get started. And in that regard, there’s great news for the everyman who thinks the world needs to hear their inner monologue as quickly and clearly as possible: Budget podcasting gear is cheap and plentiful. And it’s all over the place in terms of quality and functionality.
A great place to start looking is legacy brands that’ve been in the game for a while, and M-Audio’s new M Track Duo Producer Pack is an all-in-one package with an audio interface, headphones, and a condenser mic, tying a bow around an affordable and approachable point of entry into the digital creator space. It won’t dazzle you with options or features, but it can turn the voice in your head into ones and zeros for a low cost and minimal effort.
The Podcast Industrial Complex
M-Audio has long been the paragon of budget recording gear that’s functional and just a click or two above embarrassing to be seen with onstage. The early iterations of its Fast Track series of audio interfaces powered countless bedroom recordings way before being a Bedroom Artist had a proper aesthetic/genre tag applied to it, and it did so for pennies compared to the big guys like Avid and Apogee, who anchored the upper-price bracket of the segment.
Reddit users claim the Fast Track Pro still works on most pre-2019 computers, which is remarkable considering those that remain are left over from the second Bush era (and easy to find for under $50 on eBay). Class compliance—which allows users to simply plug the interface into their computer and get to work without messing around with drivers—proliferated in the early 2010s, and the modern-interface market is now overrun with small sub-$200 boxes that convert an analog audio source into a digital signal that’s easy to capture in Garage Band, Reaper, or any other high-end digital audio workstation (DAW).
Cheap junk is everywhere, which makes the presence of a reliable and affordable brand like M-Audio that much more valuable for plebs who have plenty of time for pontificating but very little time for gear research.
Photograph: Pete CottellM-Audio has packaged everything this person would need in a tidy little box with its M Track Duo HD producer pack. It includes a two-channel class-compliant audio interface, an M100 condenser mic, a pair of HD41 headphones, a mic clip, a USB-C cable to connect the interface to your computer or mobile device, and an XLR cable to connect the mic to the interface—all for the low price of $200. Aside from a mic stand (we love this desk clamp boom arm stand from Innogear) and the unearned confidence necessary to speak into a mic for hours about a wide variety of esoteric topics, you need nothing else than what’s in this box to get started. Plug a few things in, fire up OBS or your favorite DAW, adjust the gain on the mic preamp, and get to work.
The interface is a lightweight box of plastic that’s about the size of a VHS tape or a self-help book you’d buy at an airport bookstore. The front panel has two combo XLR quarter-inch input jacks, both of which have separate line and instrument level impedance selectors. A 48-volt switch enables phantom power for both inputs at once, which is essential to power the included condenser mic or a Cloudlifter if you decide to go full-on PodBro and upgrade to a dynamic mic. There’s also a single quarter-inch TRS headphone jack and a three-way selector that dictates whether a direct mono, direct stereo, or USB signal feeds the dual-mono quarter-inch tip-sleeve output jacks on the back of the box.
Each channel has its own gain knob on the top of the unit, with an indicator light below that flashes white when a signal is present and red when the signal is clipping. Each preamp has 55 dB of gain on tap, which is more than enough to turn even the meekest of Teams meeting NPCs into audible, active participants. The motion of the knob is smooth and jitter-free until you hit the last 10 percent of its sweep, at which point some ambient digital noise seemingly clicks on and off as if it were triggered with a switch. This is way too much gain for any practical application due to the amount of clipping it’s likely to cause, so this is not a major concern for anyone who’s spent 30 minutes or so dialing in their levels and getting a feel for the thing.
A Mic for the Masses
The included condenser mic pairs well with the preamp in the interface. It’s a unipolar large-diaphragm condenser mic, which in normie language means the metal grate that covers the front of the mic is where you’ll want to point your voice, instead of the back. Condenser mics are much more sensitive to ambient noise than a dynamic mic, which is both an upside and a downside. A condenser mic works well a bit farther from your face than a dynamic mic, but you’ll need to boost the gain to pick up your voice at a greater distance. This picks up more background noise as well, which can lead to some embarrassing moments on Zoom calls when, say, the small flock of fowl your neighbor is illegally housing in their garage starts clucking nervously when a garbage truck rattles down the block. Luckily, Zoom has decent built-in noise suppression tools, so this was easy to address without any extra plugins or hardware.
The mic handles a standard male speaking voice quite well. I’m not fully trained on pensive NPR-speak just yet, but my standard tech-guy patter broadcast as clear as a bell with the mic 6 inches from my face, and the gain knob turned up to around 3 o’clock. The mic does not have a high-pass filter switch to roll off low-end rumble from accidental bumps into the stand or the mic itself, so you’ll need to take care to avoid fumbles that cause loud thumping noises if you prefer higher gain and a bit more distance from your mouth to the mic.
By the end of the testing period, I figured out a way to run the mic into a digital audio workstation (DAW), apply some EQ and compression, then route the output of my DAW into a free-ish audio routing application called Loopback. I then set Loopback as the audio input in Zoom, and I had sparkling, rumble-free audio with just a touch of radio-guy flair applied to the EQ curve. No one noticed, but I’ll take clear audio no one cares about versus sounding like trash and bothering everyone on the call any day of the week.
Audio Video Virtuoso
I mic’ed up a guitar amp and the gravelly, aggravated sing-shouting of the vocalist in my industrial band to see if the M100 really is the “Swiss Army Knife” M-Audio claims this inexpensive hunk of metal to be.
It captured blurry, effects-heavy guitars with a heavy dose of Big Muff-style distortion quite well for its price. The high-end sparkle of my signal's shimmer reverb (courtesy of the Meris MercuryX) got muddled on longer feedback trails, and the midrange punch of the signal was clearly hitting a ceiling when I ran it through a spectrum analyzer in real time. It’s definitely not up to snuff for the big leagues, but it’s leaps and bounds better than the current trend of mostly Pennsylvania-based shoegaze acts recording everything with their iPhone mic and writing off anyone who says it sounds like shit as a geezer.
Photograph: Pete CottellAggressive vocals with a great deal of dynamic range are not the M100’s strong suit. No one would argue that an inexpensive condenser mic is the correct tool for this job, but it was worth testing per the popular anti-Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) chestnut that says the best tool for the job is the one you already have. If you’re looking for a cheap way to mic punk vocals, just buy a used Shure SM-57 like the rest of us old rocker dudes.
The headphones are a nice cherry on top, offering above-average comfort and sound quality for the price. Aside from a slightly exaggerated low midrange that would make mixing electronic or hip-hop on these things an uphill battle, I have zero complaints after using them as my go-to cans for Zoom calls and focus sessions for a month. The dedicated “PHONES” knob on top of the interface boosts output in a predictable, gradual manner, with the 1 o’clock position functioning as the sweet spot for most calls or background music. My head is quite large, and the cans snuggled both ears firmly on the largest setting. The 10-foot cable is more than enough for stationary use, and it was pleasantly tangle-resistant when I wound it up to stash the cans in my backpack.
Research shows that 71 percent of podcasts in 2025 had a video component. Video is without a doubt the rising star in the content scene, yet a strange paradox undergirds the Great Pivot to Video: If the audio in your video sounds bad, then no one wants to watch you yammer on about serial killers or the latest season of Love Is Blind. It’s easier than ever to sink thousands into a vibey video setup that uses shiplap, neon lights, and fake plants to feign legitimacy, but you really don’t have any excuse to have bad audio when packages like the M Track Duo HD Producer Pack exist.
You get everything you need for $200, and an extra $150 or so, you can add an extra mic, XLR cable, headphones, and stands to bring your best bud into the mix. And don’t even get me started on product managers and C-suite execs at tech companies that are still hitting us with gurgly audio from TJ Maxx checkout lane–grade Bluetooth headsets at quarterly town halls and shareholder calls. To borrow the language of a bygone internet era that the PodBro wave all but extinguished: Do better! Be the change! Yes we can put an end to bad audio!
$199 $169 at Amazon$199 at Sweetwater
