How To Connect XLR Mic To Computer For Beginners

in this video we're going to show you four different ways to connect an XLR microphone into your computer it does not matter if you're using a PC or a Mac everything that we show you in this video will work well on either one we're also going to show you two ways that people think would work but they actually don't work at all we're going to explain why we're going to cover just a tiny bit of theory so you understand everything that we're showing you in this video and why we recommend the things that we do in this video if you are looking for pricing or specs we have links down in the description below to help you find the best price possible for anything that you see in this video from a variety of online retailers the first bit of theory that we need to quickly cover here is the difference between a dynamic microphone and a condenser microphone a dynamic microphone like the sh sm7b will generally have a more warm tone they're more rugged they can take it better beating but the downside of these microphones is that they need more power in order to get them to sound they're less sensitive so you need more gain or more power from your computer or whatever device you're using to power these in order to get a clean sound if you don't give this microphone enough power it will sound really hissy you'll hear all kinds of weird background noise it won't sound good in your recording the second type of microphone is a condenser microphone these generally sound more natural they have more clarity but they are more delicate they're not as rugged and the downside of these microphones is that you need an external power supply you need a device that can send 48 volts of phantom power in order to turn this microphone on you can get external power supplies but most audio interfaces and all the solutions that we're going to show you in this video do have built-in power supplies that can properly power a condenser microphone now in terms of recommended software for PC and Mac we recommend using OBS Studio this is an easy way to live stream to a variety of platforms whether it's twitch or YouTube or anything else and you can record straight on your computer using this software as well whether or not you're doing video and audio or just audio this is a great free piece of software that gives you a ton of options and gets your foot in the door and that's what we're going to be using in this video today now when you go to connect your XLR microphone into your computer the first solution that we do not recommend is this cable like this this will take the XLR output from your microphone and it converts it to an 8 in Stereo Jack to go into the microphone input on your computer this is not a great solution although it is inexpensive there's four different reasons why this will not work for you one this relies on your sound card of your computer the sound card on your computer does not have enough power to power a dynamic microphone like the sh sm7b the second reason is the sound card on your computer does not provide 48 volts of phantom power so you can't use any condenser microphones like the road nt1 that I have here third the impedance on your computer is mismatched from the impedence on your microphone so this will introduce all kinds of different static and hiss and that type of thing you might get buzzing along with the static it just sounds really bad because of the impedance mismatch between the microphone and your computer and lastly this relies on your computer to do the analog to digital conversion and typically that microphone input on your computer computer is not good at doing it with a microphone like an XLR microphone so if you can't use that cable a lot of people will be tempted to use this but we don't recommend using an XLR to USB cable adapter again these are really inexpensive they have a bunch of different problems as well generally speaking they don't have enough gain to power a dynamic microphone they don't provide 48 volts of power for a condenser microphone so there goes 95% of the microphones that you might be using you can't use with this cable and in our testing you just don't get an good enough recording the analog to digital converter in these is not good and it introduces all types of hiss and buzzing into your recording so don't go for one of these cheap XLR to USB cables now the first option that we recommend for connecting your XLR microphone to your computer is to use a small purpose-built audio interface this small device here will connect directly to your XLR output on your microphone convert it to us USB on the back and connect that to your computer plus it gives you a highquality headphone jack that allows you to do direct monitoring which means that you can listen to your microphone through the headphone jack with no latency so you're not waiting for that signal to go to the computer get processed then come back it's a better way of recording and listening to an XLR microphone with your computer in order to use this it's super simple you just connect the USB cable to your computer and you can bring your microphone close to you we're going to start with the sh sm7b here you can connect this straight to the XLR output on your microphone now if you look at OBS and the software that I'm using right now and the software that we recommend for getting started you can see that the meter there is right between minus 20 and minus 10 DB this is exactly where you want to record now if you have your headphones on and you're listening really clearly you might notice just a little bit of static this is the worst option for static that we recommend in this video although there is a little bit of static and this is the least expensive option that we recommend I still consider this to be a viable option to get a high quality recording from an XLR microphone to your computer so this will power a hard to power dynamic microphone like the Sher sm7b but does it have 48 volts of power to power the road N1 here let's try that I'm going to disconnect this from my microphone bring in the road N1 connect this then I just have to quickly go into my settings and turn on 48 volts of phantom power now I have the road ent1 connected and that's what you're listening to right now using the Sher mvx 2u small compact audio interface again if we look over at my computer here you can see that we are between min-2 and -10 compared to the sh sm7b I have a lower gain setting on the road nt1 so you should not be hearing any static or hiss or anything like that right now or through the rest the video and any of the other options that we recommend to you now if you're looking for another way for option two to connect your XLR microphone to your computer we have a standalone audio interface typically these will use USB to connect to your computer now in this video I'm using the focus rate Scarlet 2i2 it's probably the best selling audio interface of all time but if you are looking for other recommendations we have some links down in the description below now compared to the previous option a standalone audio interface gives you a ton more power you get multiple inputs you get one to four XLR inputs depending on the one that you get you also get quarter inch line level input so if you need to connect instruments or anything like that you can use that as well you get a headphone output you get a nice big monitor knob you can connect to studio monitors really this is like the brains of your audio operation it gives you a ton more power if you want to work with your audio after the fact you can use your audio software to process press and EQ and mix everything down after the fact it doesn't have any of those features built into it but this is a really good way of getting your audio into the computer so you can work with it so let's test this out quickly let's connect our dynamic microphone to the Focus right Scarlet 2i2 audio interface so of course I'm going to use an XLR cable for this I'm going to connect one end to the bottom of the Sher sm7b here and I'm going to connect the other end to the input on the back side of the Focus right Scarlet 2i2 now if we look look over at the computer here you can see that I'm peeking between Min -20 DB and minus10 DB if you have your headphones on you will notice that this sounds a lot more clean than option one that we recommended and option one sounds way better than the previous options that we recommended so this is a really good way to connect your XLR microphone to your computer now what about condenser microphones does it work with that let's quickly unplug this then we're going to plug it into our condenser microphone so I just need to set my level make sure that that phantom power button is on and if we look over at the computer now you can see that I'm peeking between that minus 20 and minus 10 level that we aim to record at with an XLR microphone into our computer so the second way using an audio interface here will work on all types of microphones give you a ton of power and a whole bunch of other power within it if you want to connect your studio monitors or headphones and multiple inputs it'll handle all of that for you you now the third option that we recommend for connecting your XLR microphone to your computer is to use an analog audio mixer that has a USB output to your computer again if you are looking for some recommendations we have a bunch of links down in the description below now in order to show you the difference between this and an audio interface let's quickly connect the Shar SM sm7b so you can see what we're doing I connect an XLR cable to the bottom of the microphone connect the other end into our audio mixer now again if we look over at our computer you can see that we are getting the gain that we want we have between minus 20 and -1 DB so we're getting the level that we need now compared to an audio interface this gives you a ton of super fun features you get a compressor which will make your quieter moments louder and your louer moments quieter so it makes it easier if you're always really inconsistent it squishes your vocal into a narrow dynamic range so you don't have to always be turning up the volume and down so you can add a little bit of compression you can easily play with the way that your voice sounds if you want more highs or less highs you can do that more mids less mids you can do that more base a lot of people like this or less Bas a lot of people like this as well but what if you want a bunch of different effects you can crank up the effects here and hear how this sounds you get a bank of 24 built-in effects there that you can play with plus you can connect a whole bunch of different devices here so you can do four different microphones if you're recording a podcast and then you can take the whole output the main mix and send that to your computer this won't allow you to multitrack and keep a clean recording of every channel but this will give you a ton of inputs a ton of stuff that you can do if you want to mix everything down and it will send that mix to your computer it also gives you the ability to use a separate Ox channel here so you can make a custom feed for a live stream or something like that while doing audio for an imperson event these things are super cool and super flexible let's test it with the road nt1 now you can see it does have phantom power here and when we look over at the computer you can see that we are recording between that minus 20 and minus10 level that we're looking for so an analog audio mixer has a ton of features and is definitely something that you should consider if any of this appeals to you now the fourth option that we recommend is a full-on digital audio mixer now in terms of preamp quality this is very similar to options 2 and three you don't get a whole lot of noticeable difference of preamp quality but what you get is a ton of other features you can do all kinds of mixing and routing you can see that there's sound pads you can have stuff save saved to you can connect to not only one computer but you can connect to two computers to record you can record to an SD card there's just a ton built into this let's quickly connect the sh sm7b just so you can hear how it sounds I connect this microphone if you go to channel one here you can see that there's a sure sm7b setting so you can select that that it automatically knows how this microphone sounds and how to make it sound better so it applies some stuff of course you can tweak any of these eight parameters for the sh sm7b if you want if you look over at our computer right now you can see that we're recording at that minus 20 to minus10 Mark which is where we want to record so it has more than enough power for a dynamic microphone like the Shar sm7b but what about the road N1 let's quickly take a look at that switch to this channel you can see that there's a road N1 preset it automatically turned on 48 volts of phantom power because it knows that that's what it needs I can adjust my volume here to make sure that I'm in that minus 20 to minus 10 mark that I need there's all types of processing built into this this really is the best of the best but of course it comes at a cost of the price so again if you are looking for current price we have links down in the description below but compared to the focus rate Scarlet 2i2 or other ones this is definitely the most expensive option that you have for connecting an XLR microphone phone to your computer okay I know this is a lot of information so let's quickly sum it all up for you we do not recommend by any means that use an audio cable that goes XLR into your microphone input on your computer also you should not be using any type of inexpensive XLR to USB cable this will not power a dynamic microphone and it doesn't have the 48 volts of phantom power that a condensor microphone needs there are only four good options you can get an inline small audio interface this will power either one of these microphones but the preamp isn't the best for a heavy microphone like the shs sm7b in terms of preamp quality and the best sound quality possible options 2 three and four all have great sounding microphone preamps the question now really is a matter of function how many inputs do you need and do you plan on editing this on your computer only if that's you then an audio interface would work for you if you want more more analog features and you want to be able to mess with a whole bunch of settings on the device itself an analog audio mixer with the USB connection is the best fit for you if you want everything in one all types of different routing a ton of inputs a ton of effects bunch of sound effects everything loaded into this machine for you then you want a digital audio mixer like the roadter Pro 2 I hope this video has been helpful if you have any questions at all please leave a comment down in the description below if if you are looking for pricing or specs again for anything you see here from a variety of online retailers please check out the links down in the description and if you want to see more videos like this in the future please like And subscribe thank you for watching

Channel: Kettner Creative

Views: 27,643

Keywords: audio interface, best way to connect xlr mic to computer, conenct xlr mic to pc, connect xlr mic, connect xlr mic to mac, connect xlr microphone to computer, connect xlr microphone to mac, connect xlr microphone to pc, how to connect xlr mic to computer, how to connect xlr mic to pc, rodecaster duo, xlr mic setup, xlr mic to computer, xlr mic to mac, xlr mic to pc

Id: sK6qY6mBIoc

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023