How to get Best Audio from Blue Yeti | How to Setup a Blue Yeti Mic

so welcome along if you are new to this channel my name is james malvony i'm an entrepreneur working with a new audio space love creative videos like this so if you're keen to get more microphone reviews tips on growing your audience tips on radio podcasting all of that kind of stuff remember to hit that subscribe button i am founder of radio.compodcast.com matchmaker.fm and cue podcast so you're also welcome to go and check those out if you like however today we're talking blue yeti now this microphone it's been around for a long time i think it's probably at least 10 years old maybe sort of 12 years old i think from what i remember it was one of the first usb powered microphones or usb power condenser microphones that i remember seeing certainly there are tons of podcasters who will recognize this microphone they slightly refined the reform factor over the original um however it's still got that kind of very distinctive look it's quite often the go-to microphone that podcasters will quite often buy when they first get into podcasting and there's certainly lots of people who have also been seen using it incorrectly as well so today i wanted to talk through how to set this up properly and also how to get the best results from it cover off some of the new features that we've got on this blue yeti x and also um give it a test so you can see how it sounds and decide if it's perhaps right for you okay so let's start off with a few basic pros and cons of the blue yeti in the terms of the positives it's quite easy to get started you can plug it in and pretty much hit record um but on the other side there are quite a few dials on switches and also there is some desktop software which is now associated with this so if you're new to podcasting you don't really understand audio there's a bit of a learning curve associated with it i would say this microphone is good in terms of improving the sound quality which means that you can use it for podcasting but also you can use it for things like streaming live or perhaps doing zoom calls or meetings or recording video content that kind of thing but on the flip side this is a condenser microphone which is a particularly sensitive type of microphone which means it gives the audio a great amount of detail for sure however if you're recording in a not perfect space if you haven't got acoustic treatment on the walls and there's a little bit of an echo kind of like the room we're in now or maybe you've got some external sound coming in from the outside traffic going past or kids playing outside of that kind of thing condenser microphones do have a habit of picking up those kind of unwanted details those unwanted noises that you've got going on whether it be echo or background noise etc so depending on your studio setup or depending on your location if you're in a quiet space and you've not got too much echo this could be perfect but if you've got any of either of those issues you might want to consider a dynamic microphone which there are plenty of and there's obviously lots of competition in terms of other manufacturers putting out dynamic microphones with similar functionality for example the shaw mb7 which i've reviewed last year again similar form factor it's plug and play you can also download software to enhance or change or tweak the sound characteristics of it but that's a dynamic microphone so it will help eliminate a lot of that background noise so another thing to think about when looking at the blue yeti it's on this stand which is designed specifically for the microphone but i would say this is kind of designed to sit and work on its stand the one thing i like about this mic versus a lot of other usb mics which have got a built-in stand is it's kind of raised up a little um a lot of usb mics are very low down to the table and you'll get quite often people sitting up high to get the best results you really need to be quite close up on it you don't really want to be sort of you can record of course you know further away but especially with condenser match you'll get a lot of that background echo the further away you are so you really want to be i'd say six inches or a hand span away from the microphone to get the best quality results because it's on a fixed stand on your table that can be quite tricky so normally i would recommend a boom arm if you're using a mic on a regular basis particularly if you're recording podcasts or lots of interviews that kind of thing i would get a boom on which you could clip to your desk or you can mount it on your table and you can literally use it to position the microphone right in front of you and obviously makes pushing out the way when you're not using it really simple um obviously with this you're kind of restricted what you could do with the default stand i believe you can take it off the stand and mount it on an arm but i think it's quite a large microphone so it might not always be easy to mount on a boom arm compared to something like the shore mb7 which is specifically designed kind of almost in the form factor to be mounted either on death stand or mounted within a boom okay so let's have a look at a basic setup for the blue yeti x i wanted to quickly talk through this kind of magic dial on the front which has got three or four different modes of operation and explain how to use it so by default you'll see we've kind of got these green lights flashing up and down and this obviously has given me an indication of the level that we're at if you want to adjust the gain which is the volume of your microphone you can simply twist this dial down or up so if you feel like you for example if i turn it right up to the top and then i see i'm kind of going into the yellow red bits at the end that's not what you want you want to avoid going to red you want it so it's really in green occasionally touching yellow if you raise your voice but you don't want to be going to red so we're going to reduce that down again it depends on your tone of voice how loud you're speaking and of course the environment you're recording it as well if you click this dial and if you press it once that will mute the microphone a lot of people have got concerns with privacy these days which is completely understandable and you perhaps don't want your microphone constantly being connected to your computer well this gives you a piece of banks will actually shut off the audio source so your computer will not be able to hear anything when the microphone is muted so we'll click it again to unmute so for now hold down the button this is my monitor volume now on the old microphone the old blue yeti we had two different dials we had one to control the gain and one control the monitor sometimes people get them confused which would mean they'd be too loud too quiet or they'd be blasting out their ears whatever so this is all just done through one dial which is quite good but it's important you obviously know the sequence of what to adjust so when you hold down this button it obviously switches it into the level of your monitor and this is basically if you've got headphones connected how loud it will come through your headphones and again this is personal preference you can dial this up and down if i hold down again this will address the balance of what's coming out of my computer versus their headphones now this kind of is a bit sounds a bit strange if especially if you're new to using a device like this effectively usb microphones are almost like a sound card so they have a usb connection yes but it means they can actually receive audio coming out of your computer going through your headphones as well as being able to actually monitor what's going on on the microphone um a typical use case of this would be if you're using say zoom to record a podcast or you're using zoom to make a call you actually want to be able to hear what the other person is saying and the way you'd set this up so you're not getting feedback coming out of your laptop speakers and going back back into the microphone is you specify the output source of zoom to bleed to be on the blue yeti so you use this to monitor the cool as well as your own voice so being able to adjust the balance between how much of the audio that you're hearing out of your computer and how much of your voice you'll be able to hear because some people don't like to be able to hear their own voice they'll only be able to want to hear what's going on say on zoom and some people like to be able to hear both is quite important so if i click and hold the button again we'll go back to the default setting all right so if i turn the microphone around on the back you'll see we've got another button here i wanted to talk you through the different settings this is what is known as the polar pickup pattern technical term i know a little bit scary what this means is basically how the microphone is configured to pick up noise around it and it will have a big impact on how your recording sounds and really what you're using the microphone for now i'm kind of a believer that actually having a microphone with multiple pickup patterns to kind of be reserved the experts and the way this product is positioned in the market is not targeted towards expert recording artists or or studio engineers it's really targets towards people who want to buy a kind of plug and play usb mic however you can control this so there are four different pickup patterns the one you need to concern yourself with i would suggest is cardioid which is the little heart shape which basically means you're picking up the field that's directly in front of the microphone and around it now this goes back to what i was saying earlier about people using this microphone in the wrong way [Music] the capsule is actually a circle which is situated in the microphone like this a lot of people when they see a microphone shaped in this way will assume that you need to speak into the end of the microphone that's incorrect you actually need to be speaking into the front of the microphone to get the best results you'll still be able to hear yourself if you're recording like this it's not going to sound as good however if you're recording like this and projecting a voice into the front of the microphone so that's how this microphone the blue yeti x has been designed to use but here's where it gets confusing some other microphones such as the shaw sm7b or the shore mv5 i mentioned earlier their end address microphone so they actually you speak into the end of them um so you need to make sure whatever mic you buy and use that you're speaking to the correct way it's not always obvious it's not always the same way but i've even seen radio interviews in studios where they've had really famous artists or famous pop stars speaking to microphones in completely the wrong way just because the mic looks slightly different so again to get the best sound recording you need to make sure that you're using your microphone correctly okay so a final point to make uh perhaps you think about buying one of these and as i mentioned to get the best results you kind of want to be quite close up on this microphone before we do a sound test i wanted to talk about this this is what is known as a pop shield or windshield this is just a piece of foam you can buy these relatively cheaply off amazon um just type in blue yeti pop shield something like that cost you a few dollars or a few pounds you put it on the top and this will effectively stop any plosives hitting the mic capsule which kind of create that nasty popping sound again this is a common mistake i see people making it becomes really really annoying it sounds really unprofessional if you could constantly hear them it doesn't look as nice agreed with something like this in front of it but it is really crucial so let's dive in and let's do some sound tests i want to show you what this microphone sounds like and also i want to show you some of the settings that you can apply with software to enhance the sound quality too okay so that covers how to set up the blue yeti and how to position it correctly in front of you now i wanted to introduce you to the desktop software which is included with this microphone um you can use this on either mac i've got installed on our macbook here or you can even install it on a windows computer as well um and what this will allow you to do is perhaps add a boost to your voice so if you think about when you listen to someone on the radio or you listen to a podcast you might have noticed that there's like an added punch or clarity to when that person is speaking this is what is known in the industry as voice processing and normally to get voice processing you need to go out and spend a lot of money on expensive boxes or a fancy mixing console that kind of thing the cool thing about the software is it's actually got it built right in so it can add things like eq and compression to your voice which will give you like an added sparkle a rounded presence to your voice here's what i mean if i enable um the blue voice processing you'll immediately notice my voice sounds a little bit louder a little bit punchy a little bit more kind of pizazzy than perhaps it did before and all it's doing now is applying a chain of effects to my voice such as as i say compression eq etc the cool thing about the blue software is it's got a variety of presets already built in and you can choose which of these presets sounds best for your voice so depending on whether you're male female perhaps you've got a slightly higher or lower voice things like that will depend on the preset that works best for you and the best thing to do is basically sit down record some examples and decide which number one you like the sound of and the one that you think complements your voice best so right now i've got the fm processing and enabled but for example i can switch this over to bass boost which is going to give me more uh presence on the lower end the bass um i could i've got two broadcast processing settings here which again will give you that kind of broadcast sound that you might be used to hearing on the radio tv this is really cool because it allows one microphone to sound almost like many different microphones um and as i say this works in real time so this will work whether you're recording a podcast if you're broadcasting live you're doing a live stream or even if you're perhaps on a zoom call and you want to get get perhaps you're doing a sales pitch or something like that and you want your voice to stand out and have that added sparkle that perhaps everyone else in the call doesn't have well this is great to do that and as i say the software is included with the microphone you just download and install it really easy to use and set up and if you know what you're doing perhaps you've got some experience with audio editing you can even go in and tweak the parameters so you can go and create a preset which is specific to you or perhaps specific to one of your guests depending on the setup on the desired sound that you have really so that's the blue yeti x great microphone i'm intrigued to know perhaps you already own a blue yeti and you're thinking about upgrading to this new version let me know in the comments below or maybe you own a different microphone you're thinking about switching let me know in the comments i'm intrigued to know what microphone setup you currently have and if this setup appeals to you or if you've got any thoughts of how this sounds please let me know in the comments thanks very much for watching this video as always i'd really appreciate a big thumbs up if you found this helpful and i look forward to speaking to you soon i'm always creating great content like this take it easy bye for now hey before you go let's connect on linkedin i'm always posting interesting content like this over on my linkedin channel and it'd be cool to hang out so go to jamesm.com connect click on linkedin send me a connection request once we're connected send me a message to say you came over from this video and i'll send you some cool things for free sound fair we'll head to jamesm.com connect and connect with me on linkedin and i'll see you over there

Channel: James Mulvany

Views: 27,540

Keywords: How to Setup a Blue Yeti Mic, Best Blue Yeti Settings, best blue yeti settings for podcast, setting up blue yeti, blue yeti mic test, how to get best audio from blue yeti, blue yeti usb microphone, blue yeti setup, blue yeti x, blue yeti, blue yeti review, setting up blue yeti x, best settings blue yeti, best settings blue yeti x, best settings for blue voice, best settings for blue yeti microphone audacity, blue yeti settings, blue yeti mic, blue yeti microphone

Id: GScdgTOgyhs

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022