Which Mic Should I Choose for Zoom Presentations?

so have you ever been on a zoom call where the host's audio is so bad that it's just completely distracting and you not only can't pay attention to their lesson but you maybe tune out completely or even leave the call early because i know i have absolutely done that i think a lot of us have been there before where someone doesn't realize how bad their audio is when you are making a presentation you might have the best message in the world you might have incredible visuals but that does not matter if your audio is garbage because it's so distracting that the human brain really struggles to actually sit through that and i think most of us have experienced that sometimes even a youtube video i just i can't get through the whole thing if there's really really distracting or bad audio so it's important if you are making a presentation that you get that in check luckily there are lots of options and zoom is trying to help you out they have different software and things that they're doing to try and make that a better experience but garbage in garbage out so today we are going to talk all about what mic should i be using for my zoom calls now i've said this before and i'll say it again this is not my area of expertise but i do have personal experience that has taught me enough that i can relay that information to you so that you can make an informed decision if you are thinking about making a change and i'm going to give a tip for everyone every single one of us it's more like an assignment actually less of a tip and more of an assignment that every single person if you are participating in zoom and you have a microphone that that is for you also share my personal mic buying experience because i've had a couple of different microphones and i'll talk about the pros and cons of both because there are and really there's a trade-off involved when it comes to microphones so i'll talk about that actual trade-off and i may throw in a recent experience with some sales calls some people pitching their product to me and how their audio actually kind of ruined ruined their chances straight up not gonna lie it did not help them so i'll share all of that today as we talk about audio if you are new and you have not met me before my name is kat and i help people to create more professional and engaging online presentations and i will fully admit when i first heard the old adage that people will tolerate bad video but not bad audio i thought you know i'm not sure i really don't like bad video but bad audio as soon as you have experienced bad audio you don't want to put up with that anymore so it is true and for those of you who are joining me live in the chat i would love to hear from you what is your biggest audio zoom audio pet peeve what can't you stand and if you're watching the replay let me know in the comments what is your biggest pet peeve i know for me it's a toss-up between a really sharp sudden sound that i'm just not expecting that's really jarring or sniffles i'm just gonna put it out there there's some people with sensitive mics and they don't realize that while they think that they're sitting quietly in the background their sniffling is actually dragging all the attention towards their sniffle and that that's a pet peeve of mine as well okay so let's get into this um i'm actually going to start with the tip slash assignment i've decided to change it live that it's an assignment is i want you to listen to you on a zoom recording and usually when i say record something and zoom and listen back i typically will say do this on your own for example if you're practicing a presentation skill if you're practicing looking at the camera just throw on a zoom meeting and record yourself in this case i actually don't want you to do that i want you to listen to yourself on a zoom call recording where there are other people present and if you do not have access to one right away get one together have some other people get together on a call record it get their permission although zoom now asks says this meeting is now being recorded or if you have been part of a recorded zoom call in the past and you've access to that link go and watch yourself what i find is most of us do not re-watch a recorded zoom meeting that we attended because we were there why do we have to watch it again but this is a gold mine for actually figuring out what you sound like on a zoom call what is the quality of your microphone because you aren't hearing yourself back you know we don't usually monitor ourselves on a zoom call so everyone else knows what we sound like but we don't know what we sound like so when you watch back that recording there are a few things that i want you to pay attention to now i want you to listen to yourself but i also want you to watch so when i say listen what are the audio levels comparative to other people so i i actually didn't notice until later i was recording a class i had other people on the call and when i listened back to the recording i was way quieter than other people that has been a common theme for me since changing microphones which i'll talk about later is that my audio levels tend to be on the lower side so i have to be cautious of that i have to pay attention to that and i've been slowly working on it but i didn't realize how much of a difference it was until i was watching back a zoom call where i was much quieter and then as soon as another person started speaking it got way louder which is also not great for watching a replay but even in a meeting if you've probably been in a meeting where one person's talking and the next person's talking and they're so low that you just start bumping up the volume so you can hear them and then someone else talks and you have to go back down again it's this whole back and forth thing so you want to know what is your audio level relative to others is it on the low side which tends to be where i fall or is it on the higher side where you come in way louder than other people now i will find that most people will tell you if you're really really low because if they can't hear you they'll often say i can't really hear you your mic is really low or if someone comes in really really high sometimes people will say oh your mic is kind of high but not always and i i find most people are just too polite or shy or just can't be bothered to actually tell you about something distracting about your sound and that's why i want every single person to listen to themselves on a recording and zoom so audio levels is the first one the next one is background noises so noises you aren't intending to make whether this is typing at your keyboard whether this is people in the background if you have an animal that starts to speak up while you're while you are unmuted so pay attention to that also notice are you tending to leave yourself unmuted even when you're not speaking i think it's really good practice especially if you cannot control your background noise to keep yourself unmuted while you are not speaking um that's always good practice everyone should do that that's zoom etiquette 101 but listen to the background noises because you might be used to them and you aren't hearing what it sounds like for another person on the call then finally watching watch for facial expressions what i mean is when you start talking do people make a face so if you're way too low people might go they kind of lean in and make a face because naturally we kind of or at least i'm pretty expressive we can contort our face because we can't hear something or people even will lean their mic or lean their ear towards the speaker so they can hear you more clearly or does someone make a a jarring back face often if there's a really sudden noise or if your levels are really really high people will actually visibly move or if you do have a background noise if you have maybe a pet or something like that look at people's faces if there's that sudden noise or like i said sometimes unintentional ones like sniffling or chewing or slurping or these noises you don't realize your microphone is picking up when you listen back you're gonna hear them but you also might start to realize that people are making a face and it's because they can hear those things and they don't want to hear those things so really a lot of this is also about etiquette now i'm going to take a look and see what some of if anyone shared their pet peeves for for microphones and microphone etiquette uh so let's see uh so i see here my boss is audio's so bad i just have to leave the zoom meetings i'm curious about that one um cali uh let's see any did anyone share their pippies and just taking a look uh here we go i love the fact that it's uh oh this i was thinking this is the feedback about my stream better example okay than anything edited all right yes patrick people can forgive crappy video but they will tune out bad audio that is so so so true okay i can't stand yeah okay static i'm going to share a story about a couple of sales calls that i was on recently and there was really bad static for one of the calls to the point where i missed a lot of what they were saying about the product that they were selling and jeff is saying unmuted microphones letting the dogs kids tv break into the zoom section yeah those are they're distracting and when they go into our ears when we're not expecting them that can be really distracting patrick is saying zoom audio pet peeve someone's computer they sit on the couch and expect you can hear them yeah really they're so far away using the built-in microphone absolutely okay so uh oh and yeah great so this is actually a really great point so cali is saying i stay away from zoom call recordings because of all the different levels it's hard to listen to well even yeah when you're live i think maybe because we're expecting that but when you're watching a recording it might actually be harder to tolerate all of the different noises and if you've ever watched back a zoom recording where a lot of people were kind of chiming in and chirping in and it's going all over especially if it's in speaker view the screen is changing every time someone makes a noise that that is that's jarring that's a jarring playback experience and i don't think we like that oh and tommy i'm so glad you brought this up so crisp i remember you mentioning this too so crisp is software that can help you with your audio and and i believe tommy you can correct me if i'm wrong but you said it both helps you to block out other people's noises but also i think it can help you as well so um that is a recommendation i have it on my list to try and i just keep on all the things that come up i haven't tried it yet but it is on my list to try um okay so that's the first thing that's your assignment or your tip is to make sure that you listen back to recording even if it's not long i know you actually we don't want to listen to those but that is a reality check because you're going to hear the things that maybe people aren't willing to tell you and so some of the examples of things that you might not realize is maybe your mic is actually if you're maybe wearing um headphones that have a built-in mic are you brushing up against your clothing are you typing during a meeting are you drinking uh maybe you've got a coffee or a water and people can hear your actual drinking noises or maybe you have a runny nose listening back to those things so the audio levels but all those other things is really helpful and uh and people don't i cause there i've been in meetings where i've cringed about something and i didn't tell the person and it's because it's awkward and so also props to anyone who gives a nice message and lets someone know about their audio maybe that's something i should strive for all right when it comes to microphones we've talked a lot about the distracting we've talked about listening back and hearing yourself but now let's talk a little bit about microphones and this is what i have learned through my personal experience so one of the things that i first want to go over is mic categories and i'm going to talk about two there are actually a lot of different ways that you can classify microphones but the two that i'm going to talk about today i think are the most important for you to understand if you are someone who presents on zoom and you want to just make sure that your audio quality is coming through so the first one is understanding how your microphone is connecting to your computer so first and foremost the majority of the mics that you're going to see entry-level mics are often going to be usb meaning you can plug them directly into your computer so you purchase the mic and you plug it in and you are good to go so that is a very common type of microphone now the other type that you see is xlr and for a long time people would throw that word around and i had no idea what it meant so xlr is going to use a cable that looks like this so this is an xlr cable which obviously your computer does not have this built in so when you have an xlr microphone it means that you need an interface to connect this to your computer and so you might be buying an xlr microphone but you also need an interface that you can connect from your microphone to your computer so if someone starts throwing around terms like xlr and interface and whatnot that's what they mean is basically how are you plugging in your microphone and so you also might have an option where it has both there are more and more mics that are coming out that have both options including the one i have right now so i have the shure mv7 podcast microphone and it has both options it has usb and xlr and that is one of the reasons that i ended up changing to this microphone previously i had the blue yeti which is a usb mic only and that's the only option now the other difference between those two microphones is the next category that i want to share and that is condenser microphones versus dynamic microphones and this was an important lesson for me to learn because i was starting to lose my mind with my blue yeti and i've said this before a few times but i will say it again the blue yeti was just too sensitive for me and i didn't understand what was going on and so i actually did go to an audio store and told a person what my problems were and what i was trying to do and that was really helpful because they were able to talk to me about my space about how i could control myself what was my ability to control my sound and what were my objectives because i just started looking at other usb microphones they were also condenser microphones but i didn't know that and so a condenser microphone is going to be more sensitive and a lot of usb microphones are condenser microphones and the sensitivity means that they will pick up your sound they'll they're sensitive to sound so they will pick them up so the nice thing about a condenser microphone is that you can have it sitting on your desk i could have it right now probably a foot or two away from me and it would pick up my voice pretty clearly and that was a nice thing to have i liked that i could just place my blue yeti out of the frame i could talk into it and it could pick me up very clearly and also when it was quiet in here i liked how it sounded and i would even have people compliment my audio and say oh what mic do you have that sounds nice but the moment it was anything except me talking it would pick it up too because it was sensitive it was picking up everything and so even just putting my hands on my table if i brushed my hands across the table the blue yeti would pick that up i was shocked by how much it would pick up every keystroke i i actually panicked when i first got my stream deck because i was so excited to use my stream deck and the blue yeti picked up every single button press and i've seen other people have the same comment of i think i need to return this these buttons are too loud and it's actually that yours your mic is really sensitive and it's picking up those buttons and i was practicing i put some foam under the stream deck i was trying to make everything quieter as much as possible but it was picking it up and for those of you who are aware the mystery of the clock is that when i was quiet on my zoom calls that i was running people could hear my clock ticking in the background to be fair i didn't like the ticking either but the fact that my microphone was picking up a clock that far away when i wasn't talking it would pick up that sound that's how sensitive it was i watched countless videos on how to adjust the gain and the sensitivity and change it and i just started to i just it was driving me nuts so that was a really big problem for me and so when i went to the store they said well you might want to consider switching from a condenser mic to a dynamic mic which is designed specifically to pick up what's directly in front of it and it's not picking up all of the other stuff and so that is what i did i decided i don't want such a sensitive mic i cannot control my surroundings as well as i would like to i also have certain things in my production that are going to make noise and i cannot avoid that so i'm going to switch to a dynamic mic instead and so that is what i did however i tried to have my mic out of the shot because i preferred having the mic hidden and i had it just below and i set my settings on the shure mv7 too far because they had a close and a far option i thought okay that's not that far but it was too low so slowly slowly slowly over time my mic got higher and higher and higher and closer and closer to my mouth and that is what i'm talking about when i say that there is a trade-off so when it comes to your microphone and picking one for zoom you have to choose between sensitivity and proximity now some people might say that's not a trade-off at all i want that microphone in my face i don't mind and that's totally fine and maybe they're right they're right there they want their dynamic mic but i i think this is something you need to consider because i recently talked to someone who wanted a good quality microphone and they went out and they bought a condenser microphone and they said it's great it picks up my voice i sound good but how do i block out all the other sounds like i have a busy street beside me so it's picking up that it's picking up my keystrokes i don't know what to do he said that's the trade-off you might like that this mic is outside of the shot and picking you up but you have to accept the fact that it's picking up other things now zoom does have software that is actively trying to suppress background noises it's also usually echo cancellations so that you're not getting those echoes um having the zoom meeting picked up by your microphone etc so it is working hard to try and do that but as we have all experienced on zoom it's not invincible it cannot get rid of every unwanted sound because it doesn't always know what is the unwanted sound so i think that's a really important thing uh for everyone to know so okay i'm just gonna take a look at uh and then i will tell you the story about the um the sales call in just a second but let's take a look here um so sami is saying if you're on a mac you might need to get audio hijack or loot back to get the best audio you can add a noise gate so this is something that i tried um i actually i did get audio hijack when i had my blue yeti started playing around with the different levels and then i realized a noise gate would be extra so you can kind of add on so noise gate will be able to you can either cut out some of those low frequency sounds like your keyboard or you could cut out some high frequency sounds or some sharper sounds so you can start to play what will it actually do i was playing around with that i found it really hard to do that i don't know if anyone else has tried that that was just if you don't know audio that can be a really frustrating experience trying to figure it out so like trying to do the research up front to land on a microphone that's going to serve you is going to be really important the reason i focused on sharing those two things the two categories the usb versus xlrs first of all i want to make sure that you know that you're buying a mic that you can actually connect to your computer the second thing is i want you to know about the condenser versus dynamic because they are two very different microphones for their sensitivity the benefit of the dynamic microphone is right now you know music can be playing in the other room and this mic doesn't pick it up it really i love that whereas before i would have to go and say hey don't make any noise i'm going to be doing a call i'm going to be doing a live stream so you need to be silent that's that's no good that's terrible but i also had a guest on a show in the fall and we could actually hear conversation on the floor below so it was just it was too sensitive i did try to use software to suppress that and it was uh it was just a headache for someone who did not understand audio and i think many other people probably feel the same way i just want to sound good on my zoom meetings and i do not understand all of this stuff i don't understand noise gates and software and you add all this money and if you can't get what you want then it's a frustration um okay so and i see some people talking about the road caster and sensitive or non-directional oh yeah so directional often when you're buying a microphone you'll you'll see these images and it shows what it picks up because there are different patterns of what is going to what the microphone is going to pick up so paying attention to that is also helpful and i thought when i bought the blue yeti because it showed all those different patterns i was like this is perfect it's got four different types of patterns and i'll be able to pick the perfect one and it'll be great and then it was just too sensitive for me okay so yeah marcus is saying elgato wave three best buy to date worried about ambient noise but receive good feedback i have multiple people um that i know who use the elgato wave 3 i think it sounds great a good sounding microphone and i think it's just a matter of having it in your environment and checking it out i would say if you are testing out buying an external microphone is to know what your return policy is so test it out hear it hear yourself on a recording see have the different noises in the background that you might typically have if you're in a busy neighborhood make sure that you try recording during a time when it might pick up those other sounds and see how that works and see what happens so you really want to test in your environment and be ready to send it back if it's not right so the person i was telling you about who had really lived outside a really busy window ended up switching and going with a dynamic mic and i'm pretty sure they weren't thrilled with having the mic so close to their face but the trade-off was that then they don't have to worry about that sensitive mic picking up all of the other sounds because that was real frustration so what are you willing to put up with and uh so that's something to think about and if one places so here we've got uh tech for toastmasters if one place is condenser mic as close to them as possible and turn the gain all the way down it'll work kind of like a dynamic one okay so you're just getting much closer and so because when you are speaking into a condenser mic it will focus on that sound and it won't pick up for example the clock and the other things but in between or if you're quiet or if you're kind of sitting on a call it might be more sensitive but i think what you're saying about turning that game down is a great idea and homesick mac is saying when using any kind of noise gate or d noise you'll start to get all the noise while you're speaking the gating works when you're quiet oh that's interesting i hadn't heard that before so this is where this is where i'm hitting my limits of audio knowledge because there's so much to understand and there is a lot of valuable information out there i'm just focusing on the basics um and also this is directed probably towards people who are new to getting a microphone maybe they haven't done the research or invested in one and you just want to start what are the things that you need to know so when you keep these things in mind while you're shopping i think it will just help you and avoid possibly spending money on something that you shouldn't have or just knowing when to return it and why that is happening and why you're having a frustration now tommy's saying lav mic is a preferred option for zoom calls it's less rich than a usb but i prefer not having the big mic in front of me so absolutely having a smaller mic just make sure test yourself is it for some people with a lav mic if they're moving around a lot that that could be something that's potentially distracting oh my goodness paul i was on a zoom call and the smoke detector went off and no cancellation blocked it no one heard it excellent so some of that software is really good but we don't always know and so joanna's saying what interface to connect your xlr to the computer so there are a few different options um i haven't done a ton of research on that right now my shure is plugged in through the usb which is one of the one of the nice things about it is that i have both options but if you were going xlr only you want to look into i know this scarlett is one that i think is a more of an entry-level interface and then you can kind of get up there in price and uh okay i think i'm kind of caught up so if you use the sure mb7 how do you have it placed as we can't see it was that super awkward um it's here i just wear a lot of black i wear a lot of dark colors which kind of hides the microphone although today because of the v-neck you can kind of see it but i so wearing black with having and i did turn the mic around so my mic used to be facing where you could see the lights on the shirt um but now it's actually you can see kind of the text so i switched the microphone placement so that the lights were not in the shot um and then and homesick back is saying this shirt is very versatile so it is it is an investment but i would say if you and there are some less expensive dynamic mics that are also like the samson q2u is an example of one i personally don't love the aesthetic of it so if it's going to be close to your face you also and it's going to be in your shot do you like the look of it and so you can also get custom like covers for your microphones i know uh doc rock he has a purple one that i really like it really kind of pops so there are things that you can do to have fun or you can get little like covers around your microphones and just kind of give it your own look and feel and make it look fun for being in the shot i think most of the time with all of the videos that we see where someone is using a dynamic mic like a lot of podcasters or professional you know professional artists etc we're used to it so i think most people aren't distracted by seeing them like in the shot although i just i tried to avoid it and it just it didn't work okay so i said that i was going to share a story about sales call so i have been working on a project with an organization not prof not-for-profit organization and we were trying to select a software to use for this project and so we reached out to five different companies and the first three calls were kind of disasters and they were all zoom calls and this was in this spring this was recently so we we are all used to zoom so these are examples of people who have not listened back to themselves so the first person the entire sales call had a crackling microphone and it was so distracting that i really started like not only was it making me a little bit angry that i was having to tolerate a sales call where they just kept talking to crackly microphone but i also thought you're a sales like this is your job it's sales what is going on and then in the second call we had a person who um actually just turned off the camera the whole time their audio was okay but because i couldn't see them and i just thought what's going on here then the third call we had was a person who was outside and because they were so they weren't outside in a public place it seemed like they were at some sort of outdoor cafe or patio because we could hear people passing by we could hear animals we could hear birds chirping and zoom was trying so hard to counteract a lot of those background noises that it was making her audio cut in and out but at a jarring pace and i said to her early on you know i think that you i could see that you're sitting outside and i think some of the noises might be causing some audio problems it's actually hard to hear you sometimes it will cut out and she said oh maybe it's my internet i'll just turn off my camera that did not solve her problem and then she just stayed off camera with a terrible mic for the rest of the call needless to say we none of those companies even made the short list even if their product was okay the fact that they just didn't even pay a little bit of attention to how they were coming across on those calls was actually a big hit to them so if you are in the business of trying to sell a product or a service to a person please please please listen to yourself make sure that you have decent audio and here's the thing you don't need fancy things i have had perfectly clear calls with people who are just using airpods and it was fine maybe the built-in microphone that you got with your iphone can just plug into your computer and work fine really what we are looking for is no distractions can people hear you clearly you don't have to break the bank there are a lot of options for you if you are a presenter and this is part of your job and you want to invest in a quality mic then obviously look into some of the things that we talked about before do you want a condenser mic or do you want a dynamic mic do you want a usb mic or an xlr mic but at the end of the day just make sure people can hear you clearly that's the biggest thing and make sure those distractions aren't happening if you cannot be in an isolated home area find somewhere else don't sit in a busy cafe et cetera i know that sounds like me just kind of venting about those experiences but i think it's a really important lesson to remind yourself to listen back just pay attention or ask people for feedback how is my audio because sometimes a person has an opinion but they're just not willing to share it once you start to do all of these things then you can start to sound better because you have an important message to get across there's something you want to share something you want to tell and you do not want bad audio to get in the way of you delivering a more professional and engaging presentation

Channel: Cat Mulvihill

Views: 2,466

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: usb microphone, blue yeti, zoom meeting, microphone for zoom, zoom audio quality, mic for online classes, best microphone for zoom calls, best microphone for zoom meetings, best mic for zoom meetings, blue yeti microphone, online teaching, shure mv7

Id: 9eXteJS1FPI

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021