- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative. In this video, we're gonna
show you how to set up and connect the Shure
SM7B dynamic microphone with the GoXLR audio
interface for live streaming. What settings should you use? How should you set it up? How does this microphone sound with this audio interface
for live streaming? We're gonna answer all those questions and walk you through step-by-step. If you are looking for pricing and specs for anything that you see in this video, we do have links down
in the description below with current up-to-date pricing from a variety of online retailers. So if you are looking for the best price, please check those links out. And that will help you get started when you're looking to buy these things. Now for the purposes of this video today, the GoXLR is already
connected to our computer, it's already recording. So we can get straight to the setup of the Shure SM7B
microphone with the GoXLR. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna connect our XLR cable from the microphone to
the GoXLR interface. I don't recommend using a cable like this that goes XLR to headphone Jack and going into the headset
input on the GoXLR. That Pre-AP isn't as good. If you want the best results
with this microphone, you need to use the XLR input. The pre-AP setting, there is way better. It'll help your microphone sound better. So just don't even bother
with the other version. So we're gonna connect this
XLR cable from the microphone and we're gonna plug it into the GoXLR. And I'm gonna put my headphones on so I can hear what I'm doing. And we're gonna look over at the app here. We're gonna open up this
mic set up window here. We're gonna make sure
that we select dynamic. That's very important there. If you are using a Cloudlifter or another inline Pre-AP, then you will have to select
condenser from the option because that will give the
48 volts of phantom power that this Pre-AP needs. But I don't think you need
to use a Pre-AP like that with the GoXLR. I think the GoXLR has enough
gain to power the SM7B. So we're just gonna skip that
and we can select dynamic. So we can increase the gain here on the dynamic mic setting here. I like to bring it up
close to about 60 db. I find if I go over 60 that's when I start to get into trouble. You can also click into the
box here and just type 60 if you can't happen to slide it exactly. Now, what you're looking for here is you want the majority of your speaking to be in that good range
here, right in the middle. You don't want it to go to loud. Your loudest moment can go
just one or two bars into loud, but if you go past that, it will start clipping and distorting and you don't want that at all. So for me, it's 60 db, for you, just make sure that
this bar looks very similar when you're speaking naturally and that will get you the best result for the initial gain
setting for this microphone. So let's talk about the noise gate next. Now the noise gate is an effective tool for automatically muting your microphone when you're not speaking. What this does is it makes sure that when you're not speaking, you don't hear things like fan noise or humming or an air conditioner
or something like that. The downside of this is, you do hear the microphone
clicking in and out as you break that noise gate. So what you're trying to do here, if you do wanna use the noise gate, you wanna set it to a level that you comfortably
break whenever you speak. So if you're soft-spoken, you're gonna have this
turn down quite a bit, but if you're quite like
loud and boisterous, then you can be pretty aggressive with it. If you set this too aggressively, you will hear it clicking in and out. I'm gonna test that now, so you can hear it clicking
in and out as am speaking. That's not a good thing. If you hear that, that means
that it's too aggressive. So for me, I find minus 40
to be pretty comfortable. Now the attenuation is how
much that microphone is muted when the gate kicks in. So for me, that clicking in and out, like I said, is very annoying. So I'm tempted to always set
the attenuation to like 50%. That means that when
the noise gate kicks in only 50% of the background
noise is reduced, and that makes it sound a
little bit more natural. Now, like I said, don't feel like you have to use all
the tools all the time. For the purposes of this video, the noise gate drives me nuts. And since I'm just talking and
there's no background noise to hide the clicking of the
noise gate coming in and out, I'm just gonna leave it off
for the rest of the video. If you wanna use the noise gate, if you have background noise, you just wanna set the
threshold and the attenuation probably close to where I have it here. Minus 40 and 50%, I think
is a good compromise that people don't notice the noise gate but it will hide some
of that background noise from your live stream or broadcast. So I think this is a good setting, but like I said, I'm
just gonna turn it off for the rest of this video. Next, we have the EQ section. Now there's a lot of debate as to what to do with the EEQ here. A lot of people by the Shure
SM7B, because it's a great, it gives you that broadcast AM radio tone. A lot of people like that. If that's what you like and if
you're doing a talking head, like I said, like a video like this one, just leave the EQ flat and let
the microphone do its work. But I'm gonna show you some tricks that you can do to the EQ to help your voice stand
out amongst other things like music and game noise. And these are the
settings that I would use if I was live streaming
with this microphone. So what you wanna do is you wanna basically
build in a high pass filter. So I'm gonna turn 31.5 all the way down and 63 Hertz to minus two or minus three. What this does is it basically rolls in the
low end of your microphone. Now this is very, very
common in live sound and recordings as well, because you wanna make
room for competing noises from your game noise. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to make this
microphone sound more clear without taking too much
of your voice away, but we also wanna make
space for other instruments or other sounds coming
from your audio mixer. If you think of this, like a live band or a concert or something like that, you want the acoustic guitar in a very narrow frequency range, you wanna kick drum in a
very narrow frequency range. You wanna be able to hear everything based on the best frequency
range that represents them. If an acoustic guitar
has a lot of low end, it just creates a lot of mud with things like a kick
drum or the bass guitar. You wanna isolate everything slotted in so you can stand back and you can hear each
instrument separately. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make your voice stand out amongst the game noise. The next thing that we wanna do is we wanna pull the 500 Hertz down to about minus two or minus three. This is the low mid of your voice. And getting rid of that
creates more clarity and again, it makes more space for music and things like that
coming from your game noise. This is very common. Nobody's craving that 500
Hertz out of your voice, and it does clear it up and
clean it up quite a bit. Now, the next thing that we wanna do is we wanna brighten up the main clarity
frequencies of your voice. So we're gonna boost the
2K and the 4k by two here. So I'm just gonna turn this down. We just need to go plus two. That'll just help these
frequencies stand out. This is where the core intelligibility of your voice comes from. If you're a female, it's closer to 4k, if you're a male, it's
closer to 1.5K to 2.5K. We don't have a ton of
specificity with this EQ, it's only a 10 band instead
of something like a 31 band, but we can make this work for sure by boosting that 2K and 4k. The last thing we're gonna do is we're gonna roll off that 16K to something like minus four. Most dynamic audio mix for vocal, like the SM58 microphones like that. There's a sharp roll off after 10K. There's not a lot of useful frequencies coming out of your mouth at that range. And again, we're just making more room for other sounds coming
from your live stream. So at the setting like this, we basically have a high pass
filter that rolls into 125K. We took a little bit of the low mid out, we punched up the clarity a little bit, and then we rolled off
the sharp high tones of the microphone as well. So I think this does a really good job at helping your microphone stand out among other game noise and
make space for other things. You really don't want
too many sound sources or microphones or music
going for the same frequency. So this helps to clean
up your mix quite a bit and your guests online will
appreciate these settings. So I'm gonna close that. Next, let's talk about the compressor. What the compressor's job is to narrow the dynamic
range of your voice. Without a compressor, when
you rage quit and yell, you're gonna be extremely loud. And if you get immersed into the game and you get soft spoken,
people are gonna be leaning in, and they're gonna have to turn up the mix. So what you wanna do is you wanna make the
loudest parts of your voice just a little bit quieter and the quietest parts of your voice just a little bit louder. Now, if you over compress, the risk is that you
take all the emotion out. The worst thing any
sound engineer could do is over compressed Adele for example. You wanna highlight that big dynamic range because that's where emotion comes from. You don't wanna sound
like an AM radio voice unless that's what you're going for. For me, I like striking the middle ground where you sound natural, but it does make it more convenient to mix by just compressing it a little bit. So I'm gonna show you the
best settings for that. The threshold I like bringing
down to about minus 15 or so, and the ratio is best at
3.2 to one or four to one. What this means is that we brought the threshold
down from zero to minus 15. Whenever we go over minus 15, that gets compressed at
a ratio of 3.2 to one. If you over compress this, if you go six to one,
seven to one, eight to one, then it just sounds
like you hit a limiter. And once you get to minus
15, you just sound flat. There's no emotion after that. So you do want some emotion. That's why like 3.2 to one, it makes a little bit
more room, but it's still, I mean, you're compressing three to one. So it is still quite aggressive but it is more natural than going six to one,
seven to one eight to one, that type of thing. So I like these settings. Some people who recommend going a little bit more aggressive, four to one, and that's fine as well. Either of those options are good. Now we just talked about making
the loudest parts quieter. Next what we wanna do is
we wanna make sure that we bring our quietest
parts a little bit louder. So to do that, we're gonna
bring the makeup gaining. You're gonna hear me
get a little bit louder. Six or seven db is
really all that you need. So anything over minus
15 will get compressed and everything quieter will just get a little
bit more gain in there. I think this is a really good setting. It leaves a lot of room for emotion. Don't go minus 40. There's guys on YouTube that
recommend going minus 40 and then adding 20
decibels and makeup gain. That'll just make you
sound completely flat. No emotion whatsoever. It's not a good setting, it's
over compressed, it's chunky. This allows a bit more room
for your voice to breathe, more emotion and all that
will come out this way. Next we have the de-esser. This is an awesome tool. It's only available on the
GoXLR, not the GoXLR mini, but what it does is exactly
what it sounds like. It rounds out the Ss,
the Ts, the C bullets, the mouth noise, the clicking, all those grading frequencies. If you're doing a three hour live stream and people hear your mouth
clicking the whole time, that's gonna drive them absolutely insane. So I like setting this right at 50%. I'm gonna take it down
just so you can hear. For me I know it's
really bad with my voice. I'm not super well-spoken
into the microphone so de-esser really helps me. I do have a tendency to have a list. I do click with my mouth, you do hear saliva and
stuff moving around. It's not a good sound. So you can bring this up to about 50% here and that will make it a lot nicer, a lot more pleasant for your
online guests to listen to you. So this is what we have for our settings. The gate, don't go more
aggressive than minus 40. Something like minus 40,
minus 45, something like that. I like the attenuation at
somewhere between 50 and 75%. I don't like slamming it in at 100%. I like softening it up a little bit. And then for the EQ here. I'm just gonna lower
this gate a little bit. It's annoying me a little bit. I wanna be a little more conservative. For the EQ, we want that high pass filter
rolling in a low mid cut and then brighten up the core frequencies of our voice to make them stand out. The compressor is conservatively
set minus 15, 3.2 to one with makeup gain of six decibels. I think that's really good setting, consistent that most
people can copy there. And then we have the de-esser which again, just rounds
out that frequency range of the annoying frequencies and makes them more pleasant to listen to. Now, if you do have any questions about anything that we've
covered in this video, please leave a comment down
in the comment section below. We love getting feedback, we love answering follow-up questions. Again, if you are looking
for pricing or specs for anything that you see in this video, we do have links down
in the description below with current up-to-date pricing from a variety of online retailers. And if you wanna see more
videos exactly like this one for other microphones,
other audio interfaces, or other home studio equipment,
please like and subscribe. Thank you so much for watching. (upbeat music)
