The rise of podcasting has been followed by manufacturers producing computer sound hardware specifically aimed at podcasters.
Tascam have produced the "MiNiSTUDIO PERSONAL US-32" (and US-42) and Yamaha the "AG03" (and AG06).
https://tascam.com/us/product/us-32/top
https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/music_production/interfaces/ag_series/ag03.html
Both models have "larger" versions but I'll consider the US-32 & AG03.
Tascam US-32
The Tascam US-32 was the first of these devices I became aware of.
It looks very simple and CAN be simple to use but it is less revealing of function at first glance.
Both devices require driver/manager software and have simple and advanced ways of operation.
Essentially, the Tascam US-32 is primarily focussed on the use case of someone stereaming (perhaps a game play) and adding their talking (and some spot effects) to the output.
The computer sound outout (to the device headphones) is a mix of application sound from the computer plus effecst added into the Tascam US-32 driver triggered by the "PON" buttons.
That, plus a local mic, is returned as the sound card output and can then be (say) streamed or recorded.
There are a number of different modes that one might want to use in diffferent cases.
These require the windows settings application and are called Mode Presets.
BROADCAST is the default,
Talking is suitable for (say) Skype calls in that the computer audio isn't returned to the PC.
Quite what "Talking with PON/BGM" is intended to achieve is less obvious to me in that ony the local user hears the PON sounds
There is also a "Podcast Multi-Channel" mode that would be potentially useful when recording a podcast for later post production.
All in all, the Tascam US-32 is quite capable but not that clear (from the control surface) about what is going on.
The metering is quite usable.
Yamaha AG-03
The Yamaha AG-03 was the first of these two devices I actually bought.
It addresses the different operating modes by a switch which has one setting where the audio from the PC is mixed into the input (for streaming PC audio) and another where it isn't (for two way conversations).
As the hardware control is more obvious, the software doesn't allow routing mode selection.
Generally the Yamaha AG-03 is easy to use in most applications. My one complaint is that the monitor mute applies to both headphones and the speaker outputs.
The "metering" is very basic and I would say inadequate for many applications. Hopefully your applicationhas audio level meters.
My single extra feature request would be to have a headphone only audio stream from the PC (using ASIO) which would allow a cue feed while looping the man PC sound to a stream.
