You must have good microphones. Without good ones, your podcast or stream will sound very unprofessional. It will sounds like a work zoom call, where some people just can’t be heard very well. There is a science to the sound. You must set the microphones to the user and the room. They must be tuned. You want to prevent any background noise from being picked up. You want to hear the podcaster’s lips and breath when they speak. Viewers or listeners crave this and want that personal connection. A good sigh is golden when it comes to podcasting.
The microphone needs to be configured for the proper direction (the envelope) of the wave form pickup. An omni-directional microphone will pick up everything from every direction (including others in the room) and will sound horrible. You need to set the microphones so that you ONLY hear that particular person and not the others. If you have loud talkers on your podcast, you may need to possibly lower the volume of others or try to isolate it a bit more for them so you don’t pick up the other person’s voice.
Microphones should be set to be uni-directional and turned towards the podcaster’s mouth. Sounds (no pun intended!) simple but I see this not being done with podcasters that are starting out. Remember that the audio tracks are separate and need to be crystal clear. Anything less is unprofessional.