Podcasting blues

This year marks my first foray into podcast news.

I've been trying to do it on a shoestring, which basically involves the following: Free Audacity editing downloag (just google it and you're good), a roughly $50 Olympus VN2000 digital recorder that I've had since freshman year for reporting and a $10 mini jack plug to transfer interviews and narration to my computer for editing.

Surprisingly, it has been working okay - I'm at least producing something. However, the background noise and soung quality that I'm getting is frequently falling out the bottom of the boat. I could "check out" a $600 digital recorder with high quality mic, etc. from the Journalism School, but then what would I do to when I don't have that equipment (...for instance at the less well funded college paper ...)

So now I need some tips on how to make this work better. IF you have any, please share.
Here's some I have:

1. Don't record near your computer - the whirring noise WILL be picked up

2. When you're recording narration, don't breathe heavily in between sentences (maybe turn your head if you can't do that.) When your voice goes down, the mic will amplify the sound of your breathing and make you sound like an obscene phone caller

3. Background noise behind an onsite interview is generally okay, so DON'T try to compensate by shoving your mic in your subjects face. You'll tick them off and get wierd peaks in your interview

4. Don't overedit your sound. There's lots of tool in audacity for "noise removal" and "diffusing" and that's all well and good, but sometimes they make things worse. Case and point, I was doing an interview in a store that had incredibly loud, low pumping music in the background which I tried to remove to make the interview more clear and not blow the audience's eardrums out. In the end, the interview was clearer, but the program also seemed to remove all the low-range qualities of her voice making her sound unnatural