TASCAM's Mixcast 4 Podcast Station is Central to Production of The Dark Side of the Cooks

Rich feature set helps deliver first-class audio production

October 2022... For those interested in the food service industry, learning tips and tricks to help improve one's culinary skills is a never-ending endeavor. This is the motivation that prompted Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta, hosts of the popular cooking podcast The Dark Side of the Cooks to help others learn from industry professionals. To bring their vision to life, they needed some audio production tools and, ultimately, their search led them to the Mixcast 4 Podcast Station with built-in Recorder / USB Audio Interface, TH-06 headphones, and TM-70 microphones from TASCAM.

Huerta and Garcia have accumulated over 35 years of experience in the food service industry and during that time, have amassed some impressive industry credits. In addition to being listed in 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, they have been featured in leading newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Garcia discussed their podcast and his experience creating it using his TASCAM equipment.

"With The Dark Side of the Cooks," Garcia reports, "we routinely interview cooks and other food service individuals about their experiences, how they got started, and we love to share some of their crazy stories. There is a tremendous amount of information to be shared because there are so many different types of food and the preparations that go into creating each and every dish. While we had a clear-cut mission for our podcast, the means of producing our content was not so obvious to us. After speaking with numerous podcasters and others who are involved in audio production, we decided to go with TASCAM—and that decision ultimately led us to the Mixcast 4."

According to Garcia, he and Huerta have been using their Mixcast 4 for almost a year. During that time, he has learned a lot about audio production and continues to be impressed with the Mixcast 4's features. "There is so much you can do with the Mixcast 4 that, for me, it's a never-ending learning process," Garcia explained. "The Mixcast 4 has eight pads that you can use for quickly accessing a wide range of sounds—and these eight pads are eight banks deep, so you can access up to 64 different sounds quickly and easily. These sounds can be anything from a drum or cymbal crash to sound effects. Your only limitation is your imagination."

The Mixcast 4's audio faders are another tool that Garcia is very fond of. "The faders are very smooth feeling, and this makes it so much easier to do professional sounding fade-ins and fade-outs," he explained. "Equally important, the Mixcast 4 lets us connect as many as four microphones and four headsets. This is critically important because we routinely have guests on our show, so this capability makes it easy for us to accommodate everyone. Together, these features make it so much easier to deliver quality audio production so that you can produce and sound like a pro."

Garcia reports that he is equally fond of their TASCAM TH-06 headphones and TM-70 microphones, "The TM-70 microphone has really worked out well for us. It is specifically designed for podcasting and audio streaming applications, and it does a terrific job of capturing a person's voice so that it sounds completely natural. Equally important, it rejects a lot of ambient noise so that you don't get distracted by them. With this mic, you can really focus on what's being said—and that's what really matters in a podcast."

"I have also been very impressed with the TH-06 headphones," he continued. "They have a clear and natural sound, so everything you record comes back sounding exactly as you would expect it to. I'd also like to point out that these headphones are very comfortable. That's more important than you might think because it enables you to focus on the content without being distracted—especially on long episodes."

As with many electronic products, questions invariably arise, so responsive and capable customer and technical support services can be crucial to keeping a project on track. Here, too, Garcia has been impressed. "TASCAM has excellent support services," he said. "Their staff includes musicians and other audio knowledgeable people, so they not only understand how the gear works, they understand what you're looking to accomplish. They have been great."

As he prepared to shift his focus back to the business of the day, Garcia offered these parting thoughts, "Our experience with TASCAM has been nothing short of amazing. We totally recommend TASCAM and the Mixcast 4 to anyone interested in starting a podcast or who is involved in music or sound. I'd like to thank all the people at TASCAM who has guided us and helped us get our podcast off the ground. It's been a wonderful experience."

To learn more the podcast activities of Elvia Huerta and Alex Garcia, visit them online at www.evilcooksla.com.