Blue yeti and a stand.

I have been using my blue yeti and it picks up my keyboard sound louder than my voice. Its about 60cm away behind my monitor on a couple of books. How can I fix it picking up my keyboard sounds without my voice level going to nothing. Tried a noise gate and the gain level on the mic. Would a boom arm help?

So 60 cm from your mouth to the mic? or 60 cm from the keyboard to the mic? Both?

Your best option would be a microphone “boom stand” that sits on the floor and suspends the microphone about 6-10 cm from your mouth. It is still probably going to pickup keyboard noise but the relative volume should be a lot better. They also make microphone booms that will clamp to the desk and have an articulated arm much like you’d find on a Luxo lamp. That could work as well but you will want to be sure it includes an isolation mount for microphone.

If the stand insists on moving and vibrating with the table it’s standing on, then a microphone shock mount is called for. It isolates the body of the microphone from the stand. You can get ones designed for your microphone, you can get generic ones, or I once built one with plumbing parts and letter carrier rubber bands. All work.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/pvcShockMount/final.jpg
http://www.kozco.com/tech/pvcShockMount/shockmount.html

You can still get in trouble if the cable is too tight. Graceful loops are good.

This is my home-built one in a voice shoot.

http://www.kozco.com/pictures/boothFinished/laptop-mic.jpg

Koz

I have the Blue Yeti and do use it on a desktop stand. You have to take care not to bump anything, as it’s very sensitive. But I also have a Røde Boom arm and a Shock mount and that takes out all but the most severe of noise. As for picking up keyboard noise, I’ve tried loads of things, and nothing has ever been satisfactory.

I don’t know of any good way out of this. You can’t have something making clicking noises right next to the microphone. You can help with a noise-canceling headset. That gets the microphone much closer to your mouth than the keyboard, but it’s till not going to go away.

This is a job for Google. Thousands of people shoot game videos. What do they do?

Koz

You can try a boom stand, it will help. What’s your budget? i tried a $13 Duafire mic stand before [from Amazon], it’s fine for this price, works well with the blue yeti. If you want stronger one, pick the $63 one.

Floor standing boom stands can be awkward to position for desk use, but offer much better isolation from noises that originate from or on the desk (such as keyboard noises, putting down your coffee mug and so on).

Another option is to suspend the mic via a “spider” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_mount) where the spider is suspended from a hook in the ceiling.
Note: precautions should be taken if screwing into plasterboard or a suspended ceilings, so as to avoid the weight of the mic pulling the hook out of the ceiling.

You can also use the pattern publication nobody understands.

If you’re standing at the top of that pattern, you’re in the “sweet spot” for best, loudest sound. If you’re at the exact bottom, you won’t be picked up at all—unless your voice reflects from the walls.

A Yeti has switchable patterns and one of those patterns is Figure-Of-Eight or Bidirectional (from the instructions).
Screen Shot 2017-04-28 at 12.18.17.png
That means it doesn’t pick up sound from the sides, so if you can invent an arrangement where the noisemaker is exactly to the side, the volume should be greatly reduced—unless the noise is reflected from the walls.

Those darn walls cause a lot of problems.

Koz