Let's go purple.Another day to make a great video for you guys.Today is, what is today?November 5th, Tuesday.Today, we're going to talk about the best microphones for your startup.
I've got a lot of questions from startup founders asking, what is the best microphone?What's the best headphones?How do I hook all of this up to my computer?I want to start a podcast.I want to do YouTube.I want to even record an audio book.
How do I make myself sound? clear, professional.We're going to get into it.I'm gonna show you everything here.Let me kind of walk you around my studio and show you all the gear that I have here.
Oh, I'll show you all the gear that I have here, but note that I've accumulated this gear over years.So don't go out and buy all this stuff just because I said to go buy it.Maybe you're not like a technical person.You just don't really want to mess
With all the video gear stuff, I have some very simple options.Some very, you know, USB mics that you can just plug right into your laptop and start recording.
The first thing that I want to talk about, this is the unsexy part, is these acoustic panels back here.These are from Acoustimat.I've been recommending these for years.These are 4x2 mats.I got them for $75 a piece.They mount onto your wall.
And if you ever thinking about getting those little Amazon egg crate pad, foam tiles, where you can buy like 36 of them and, and spray glue them to the wall.I've done that too.They don't work.I've done it in perfect configuration around my room.
They don't work.These work.These are professional grade audio, acoustic pads.They dampen the sound and you don't need to cover your entire wall.They're so big and so effective that you could just put three here in a room like this.
This is like a 10 by 10 room and it didn't. sound.Also, another note about audio is carpet.Put down a carpet, put down a rug.Don't try to record in your bathroom or hard tile floors or hard wood floors.
Add some kind of squishy, soft furniture, rugs, drapes, even something to stop all the noise.Even plants, even a plant, for example, will capture the noise and to stop it and keep you from echoing and having all these reflections in your room. Okay.
Now let's go over to the desktop here and I'll just, I've got like a little whiteboard.I will show you just all the gears.So it's clear.You can see the names of the product.Check, check, check.All right, we're rolling.Okay.So let's start off.
I got a couple of items here.Um, the one that I recommend. for everyone if you're just starting out something very simple.This is the best USB mic that I've come across.It is not a podcast mic, it's this mic right here.
This is what I've been using on top of my Canon 70D.It has a wire headphone jack, but it also on the other side has a USB jack so you can plug this directly into your computer and record audio that way.
It's got some mounting points so you just need to get a little tabletop stand.Very easy stuff.And $99, not too bad.
And it's by Rode, it's directional, so if you're even out and about, if you're in a noisy environment, if you're recording at a coffee shop, it's going to isolate your voice.
The other one, if you want to get like real deal and you want to look like a podcaster, is the Rode PodMic USB and XLR.What's nice about this is it has USB input and also has XLR input, so the professional mic cabling.
But if you don't want to go into the professional mic cabling world, stick with USB.It has the USB plug straight into your computer.You can use Rode's audio software to make the microphone sound good.
It does all the auto EQ for you and everything, so you don't have to worry about making it sound like a podcast voice.I want to throw in a third option for you guys.
This is the cheapest, best, most classic battle tank microphone that you can get out there.This is by Logitech.This is the Blue Yeti microphone.It's got a USB port right down here.$84 right here.I bought it for $129.I bought it for $75 in the past.
The price is always going up and down. but it's super affordable and it's all metal construction.You could drop it off your desk and it would still totally work.And what's nice about it too is all the functions are on the thing itself.
You don't have to do the software.You don't have to have a separate control box.The volume's right there.The record button's right there.The mute button's on the back.It's simple.Blue Yeti microphone.
Now let's start to move into some of the professional gear that I was talking about.
If you want to record things on the fly, or you want to record things on your phone, or you want to have a little bit of distance from you and the camera, or you want to bring a friend on and do an interview with them or a walk and talk interview.
I used these two weeks ago, the DJI mic.This is the two person kit.These are flawless from what we use them.
They record all the audio internally into these devices and they can record to your main device or your camera, your iPhone, whatever it may be.The receiver is right here.
The box itself charges the little microphones and they can clip onto your shirt or they can clip onto using like a magnet or something.It's I love it. My headphones fell out.Ripped my headphones off to get too excited.Okay, next is this right here.
This is the most advanced option.This is the Joe, I mean, there's always a bigger and bigger option, but this is the classic Joe Rogan microphone setup.So it's the microphone itself, which is the, what's called the Shure SM7B right here.
This is the Joe Rogan microphone.If you're looking that up, this is the broadcaster podcast mic.This is what I've got right here that you're listening to.
The problem with this microphone is that you need what's called a booster or a gain or some kind of, this one's called the cloud lifter.This microphone is not powerful enough to be heard by your computer in the simplest terms.
So you have to have some kind of volume booster. But when you add volume, you're also adding noise and it's going to start to hiss and crackle a lot.So what this does is it makes it louder, but it cleans up the signal as well.
You're going to need XLR cable as well.And then you're also going to need a boom podcast mic arm.You need some kind of podcast micro, but you can get those for under 50 bucks.
The downside is it's $629 for professional audio, but if you do this microphone or if you did the Rode VideoMic 2, if you did a blind test, you probably couldn't tell the difference, which is sad, but that's how it is.
So unless you are a true audio professional and you know how to tweak this and make it sound like you or make you sound the best podcast style possible, I would waste your money on this one.
I just talked about here, these are the, what I was talking about that I have right behind me.So when you set up your acoustic mats, you want to put them in the direction of your voice.
So if you're gonna be talking, so I'm talking at my wall right now, I've got my computer screen in front of me, I've got the camera here. But behind this camera that you're looking at are the acoustic mats.
So I'm talking into the acoustic mat so that when my voice hits that, it deadens the sound, it dampens it, and it doesn't reflect back to me and make some bad echo.So you don't want to put it behind you.
I wouldn't want to put these, let me switch cameras. Like for example, I wouldn't want to put my acoustics behind me because my voice is going in this direction and if it's back there, then it's not going to do what you want it to do.
It's not going to catch the sound.These are what you want these acoustic pads to do.You want them to catch the sound as they come towards.83 bucks a panel.You only need two or three depending on how big your room is. and these work.
These are scary good of how well they work.
The last thing that you're going to need is if you're doing any kind of, if you're not using a USB microphone, you need some way for your professional microphone to connect to your computer to read that signal.
So if you are doing this route, if you go with the podcast shore SM, I always forget SM7B, then this all has to be plugged into one of these. and then this is what's plugged into your computer.What I like about this one, it has never failed on me.
I've used it for, I've had this one for over five, six years now, no issues, one big switch in the back that turns everything on, and what I like the most about it is the volume bars right here where you can see everything, you can see the levels, you can see your mic levels, you can see the computer volume levels, and that is just, you know, that's also kind of a nice thing, like you're not sure if the audio's coming through or is your computer on, you know, is the volume playing?
It's nice just to have that visual indicator to say, the mic is on, but I can't hear it.So that's, that helps a ton.So that is it guys.
That's the walkthrough of how to get the best audio, the best microphones for you and your startups to sound like a pro.I'm going to put all the links in the description down below so you can click and check out some of these products.
So if you are serious about this stuff, you're serious about creating content or videos, I want you to watch this video right here.This is my YouTube funnel.I show you exactly how to set it up.It's very simple.Click right here.
Sign in
