What Kind of Mic Is BEST For YouTube? (All Budgets)

i think audio is one of the most important aspects of your production when it comes to creating content online and one of the best ways to get great audio is to have a good microphone in this video i want to showcase to you a huge range in the spectrum of types of microphones that are commonly used in youtube videos i want to test everything from the iphone headphones a usb microphone boom microphones to a shure sm7b all of these will be in different price ranges and i'm going to start at the cheaper end of the spectrum and then slowly move up to the more expensive stuff all along the while hopefully you will be able to determine what is best for you and your situation and your budget now before i begin i just want to showcase to you the acoustics of this room i have a couch i have carpet on the floors but the fact that i don't have a whole bunch of material on these walls it's going to be creating reflections and there's quite a bit of echo or reverb within this room so without further ado let's go ahead and hop into the first one which is recording directly onto the microphone on the camera now as you can see the camera is pretty far away from me it probably sounds pretty roomy i can't hear it from here i don't suggest anybody using the microphone on your camera unless it's a last resort obviously some sound is better than no sound now we have the rode video micro on top of the camera which i think is one of the best investments that you can get for better sound when you're using something like a mirrorless or dslr camera probably sounds better than what you were listening to before with the on-camera audio but since i'm so far away from the microphone it probably doesn't sound as good as it could as if i were in front of the camera like this now that i'm really close to this microphone on top of the camera it probably sounds so much better if you are a vlogger or somebody that is able to put the camera much closer to you you have a wide angle lens using something like the rode videomicro is a huge plus now i'm using my iphone headphones to record into the voice memos app on the iphone if you've watched any kind of tick tock video this is how people record their voiceovers they'll hold the microphone right here and talk into it and they'll be like and it sounds horrible but if you are doing something like a online podcast a zoom call people are familiar with hearing this kind of setup another version of this would be to use your air pods now if you like the idea of recording directly onto your cell phone and you don't want to use your headphones you don't want to use air pods or anything like that one of the best options to pursue is to use the rode smartlav now this is a lavalier mic or a clip-on microphone that you can clip on to your shirt like this and i have the wire tucked in underneath my button-down shirt that i've just changed into this lavalier is connected directly into the phone i just have to use the little dongle right here it goes straight into my voice memo app i can then airdrop that file directly into my computer afterwards and the really cool thing about recording directly to a smartphone like a iphone is that you can use icloud to back up your audio files so let's say if you're using something like an external device you may have an sd card go bad or something like that well if you're recording directly onto a cell phone and you can back that up automatically without even you having to think about it onto icloud it's really cool not something that you get with the more expensive microphones just something to think about also with clip-on lavalier microphones you could get into wireless packs like the sennheiser ew series there's also the rode wireless go but with those kind of microphones now you could get further away from your signal source and go directly into your camera or go into your field recorder or audio interface so there's a couple options on the lavalier front but one of my favorite things to use when i'm in front of a computer is usb slash xlr microphones the greatest thing about these kind of microphones is the fact that you can record directly into a computer or you can take the xlr output into a external recorder like i'm doing right now or into a audio interface and go into the computer if you don't want to be stuck with an on-camera microphone and you're somebody that's always at the computer maybe you're streaming or podcasting or doing online tutorials like i do this is hands down the perfect option when i travel i just take this microphone they are such a convenient tool in today's day and age of online creators now if you wanted to step up the production value of the microphone in front of you the next thing that you could do is get a condenser microphone now at this point we're going to be stepping up into the higher budget type of microphones i hope you can really tell the difference between what you were just listening to with that dynamic cardioid microphone versus this condenser microphone now don't get me wrong this is a cheap version of a large diaphragm condenser microphone but it definitely gets the job done it's the studio projects c1 this thing is sensitive like moving over here or moving over here if i get back here obviously it will sound way more boomy for something like this you could take a foam ball and maybe put that on top and now i could probably get a little bit closer so you could get that proximity effect notice how it sounds even more nasally now another big aspect to the budget here now is that we're no longer just talking about the microphone going into the computer or going into your camera we need a device that can supply phantom power to the microphone or we just need a device to convert the analog signal from your microphone into ones and zeros that a computer can read with these kind of microphones you're going to need an audio interface and the one that i specifically use at this point in time is the road caster pro now i used to use a h4n then i upgraded that to the zoom h6 and now i'd use this road caster pro because not only can it supply phantom power to my microphones it converts the signal to digital ones and zeros that a computer can read it also can record directly onto the device it's set up in a beautiful user-friendly way for you to just get to creating they have presets on there if you're not familiar with how to manipulate sound you can just go into the microphone hit a certain type of preset if you're a male or female i would highly recommend it i'll have a link to it in the description below you're gonna need an audio interface for a microphone like this and you know what also needs an audio interface and the microphone that i use the most on this channel the shure sm7b now this is the microphone that i use on basically all of my videos unless i'm testing another microphone i also use it on my podcast the passion in progress show as well as you've probably seen this microphone in 70 to 90 percent of the other podcasts that you watch hence like joe rogan uses it gary vee that reason why all those people use this microphone is because it's just a great microphone if you are somebody that does a lot of talking head stuff and you're okay with a microphone being in your shot then you're not gonna go wrong with purchasing this microphone now if you do research this microphone one of the first things that you'll probably stumble across is that people buy this microphone along with another piece of equipment which is a cloud lifter or some other device that will boost the audio signal of this microphone because this thing needs a ton of gain in order to work correctly with your audio interfaces for me i actually do use a cloud lifter in fact i have a whole video showcasing to you the differences of how this microphone sounds with and without the cloud lifter if you want to take a listen to that i'll link it here on the screen but this also leads us into one last way of recording sound for these kind of talking head videos that i haven't talked about yet and that is to use a boom microphone that i've put onto a microphone stand that's closer to me this is also a kind of microphone that you can connect directly into your camera you could also use the video micro in this same way in fact instead of getting closer to the camera like i did before i could actually just put this video micro up here and this is what it would sound like now still sticking with the idea of using a boom microphone but upping your production to something much much more professional there is the rode ntg-3 now this is obviously way more expensive than the rode video micro that we were just listening to and i really hope that you can tell the difference in the budget between this microphone and the rode ntg-3 now this is a shotgun directional microphone meaning that it's going to pick up the sound the best where the microphone is pointing i'm going to keep talking here on microphone and then i'm going to get off access and kind of come over here towards this camera i'm now perpendicular to the microphone and i'm going to keep talking as i get into the sweet spot of the microphone again hopefully you could hear the microphone rejecting my voice when i was off to the side and that's basically what you're paying for is a good way to kind of stretch and get that sound that's further away but directly in front of the microphone now there are much more expensive microphones in fact the kind of gold standard when it comes to boom microphones is the sennheiser mkh 416 just because it is a tank in the industry but i think a good alternative to the 416 because it's quite comparable to the 416 is the rode ntg-3 and if you're looking for an optimal sound as a youtuber and you do not want the microphone in frame well probably the best microphone that you want to get for these kind of productions is the rode ntg3 i think if you get something like the 416 it's an amazing microphone but if you're just doing youtube videos it may be a little overkill like something like the rode ntg-3 might be overkill hopefully you can hear the difference though if you were using something like the videomic pro plus or the video micro versus the rode ntg3 now i know there's a lot of microphones that are widely used that i did not cover in this video it was just my aim to cover as much of the spectrum as possible when it comes to the different types of microphones so you could hear what a boom microphone sounds like versus a love versus using your headphones versus going directly into the camera those kinds of things and hopefully i did a good job of that if you were curious as to what type of audio setup that you wanted to pursue and if this video did help you in those endeavors please leave me a thumbs up if this is your first time here you like what i do you can hit the subscribe button and you can check out another video and we could hang out some more you know do all the things all right until next time i hope you're out there living a life of abundance bye [Music]

Channel: Javier Mercedes

Views: 160,467

Keywords: Javier Mercedes, Testing Common Audio Setups For Youtube Talking Head Videos, which mic is best for youtube, best youtube audio setup, youtube microphone setup, what microphone should i use for youtube, What microphone should I buy for youtube, Best YouTube Microphone Setup For Talking Head Videos (all budgets), youtube audio setup, home youtube studio setup, best mic for youtube, microphone for youtube videos, boom mic, usb mic, xlr mic, lavalier microphone for iphone

Id: jApDthzDql0

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020