Ecamm Call Recorder

Mac-based interviewers

Ecamm's Call Recorder is the cheap, reliable workhorse that quietly captures Zoom, FaceTime, and Skype calls without forcing your guest into a separate app. It records compressed call audio, not local lossless tracks, so don't confuse it with Riverside. Worth owning as a backup recorder.

Ecamm has been making call recorders for Mac since the era when Skype was actually the dominant video chat. The Call Recorder line still exists and still does one thing well — it sits quietly behind the call and dumps audio and video to disk on your end, no setup required on the guest side. You won't get the lossless per-track quality of Riverside or Zencastr because you're capturing the call as it comes through the network, but the upside is that anyone with a microphone and a Skype or FaceTime account can be a guest with zero software install. For news desks, journalists chasing fast turnarounds, and shows where guests refuse to install yet another app, that simplicity is gold. It's also a strong backup recorder running alongside whatever remote studio you actually publish from, because when Riverside's local recorder hiccups, the Ecamm copy is right there. The trade-off is platform — Mac only — and quality, which is whatever Skype hands the codec. If you want one tool to be your primary podcast recorder, this isn't it. As a $40 insurance policy on your interview workflow, hard to beat.