Right. The microphone. There’s nothing wrong with a Yeti. It’s a very popular USB microphone.
It is big. I saw one in a store once and I was shocked how big it was. I just never put it together when I saw them on-line. This can create usability issues. It’s not the worst idea to hang a microphone from a boom.
This gives you room for your script, reading device, and other studio management tasks (coffee). You can force a Yeti to do that, but it would be like hanging a basketball in your studio. The Yeti doesn’t care if it’s upside down.
Don’t fall in love with using your computer like that picture. That’s a MacBook Pro with very nearly no fan noise.
I’m not reading from the screen. I’m reading from that paper script with the purple clip. I know, right? Who uses paper?
Can you tell if your computer is on just by listening? Try it. It’s not good news if you can hear it at all. It guarantees you will need to add some noise reduction to your voice tracks. You would think you could just move the computer far enough away so it doesn’t pick up and record that way. USB cables are only reliable to about 6 feet or so. So that limits how far away you can separate the computer and the microphone.
Isn’t this fun?
That picture uses a plain analog studio microphone. Not USB. The little black box to the left of the computer is the analog volume booster and digitizer. That box sets the volume and makes the USB connection to the computer.
Two Yeti notes:
They depend on the computer having a perfect, well-behaved, stable USB connection. Not all computers do. If your computer cut corners on the technical design, you could have odd whining noises behind your voice and the noises are difficult to remove. The audiobook specification for background noise (when you stop talking) is -60dB. That’s super quiet which is one reason we’re going through all this sound proofing.
If you can hear your heater or air conditioner go on and off, that’s going to be a problem. Can you hear street noises? You may join the club of people that can only record at night. I can record very well in my messy garage, but only at night when street traffic calms down.
There is a funny design failure of early Yeti microphones. They look like you’re supposed to announce into the rounded top of the screen and the instruction book doesn’t correct you until the fine print near the back of the book. I looked. The microphone is fine. The book was broken. Yeti’s are side-fire microphones. You talk into the side of the screen near the company logo.
Imagine the fuss when Yetis started showing up in Youtube videos with people using them wrong. The latest instruction books make it much more obvious what to do.
Koz
