Ep 47: Choosing the Best Podcast Microphone for Beginners: Don’t Judge a Mic By Its Reviews

[00:00:00] Choosing the Right Podcast Microphone

[00:00:00] Verity Sangan: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting.
[00:00:04] Verity Sangan: I’m Verity and on this YouTube channel, on this podcast, I talk about all things podcasting.
[00:00:09] Verity Sangan: It really could not be simpler than that.
[00:00:12] Verity Sangan: This episode is going to be quite a short episode because I want to address the question which I keep seeing time and time and time again.
[00:00:20] Verity Sangan: On Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Reddit, on literally, I see this question come up all the time and I find it so super stressful and it is from new podcasters or people wanting to get into podcasting and it is them asking what is the best microphone that I can get for podcasting?
[00:00:39] Verity Sangan: And I just find this question so stressful because the answers that come out are very, very rarely helpful.
[00:00:47] Verity Sangan: Because the answers that people tend to give to the question of what’s the best microphone I can get for podcasting?
[00:00:55] Verity Sangan: Tend to be this list of I use this, so buy this, or here’s my Amazon affiliate link to this.
[00:01:01] Verity Sangan: And here’s, like, I use this microphone, and oh, this microphone’s the best, and all this kind of thing.
[00:01:06] Verity Sangan: And my answer is get the microphone that you know how to use, or get the microphone that you are willing to know how to use, or willing to learn how to use, I should say.
[00:01:18] Verity Sangan: So, for example, I use the blue yeti microphone.
[00:01:21] Verity Sangan: I love my blue yeti microphone.
[00:01:23] Verity Sangan: I’ve had this microphone for about a year and a half.
[00:01:26] Verity Sangan: I’ve used it for both of my podcasts.
[00:01:28] Verity Sangan: I plug it into my computer, I plug it into my laptop to be able to record.
[00:01:32] Verity Sangan: I’ve even got one of these little extension thingies from Amazon for only a couple of pounds so that I can hook it up to my iPhone as well.
[00:01:41] Verity Sangan: I absolutely love this microphone, but I find that this microphone gets a really bad rep online where people go it’s absolutely useless, the sound quality is awful, yada yada.
[00:01:51] Verity Sangan: But then when you actually start asking questions, you realize that people are not using it properly at all.
[00:01:57] Verity Sangan: Because yes, it is a simple plug and play microphone.
[00:02:00] Verity Sangan: But for example, when you are using the Blue Yeti microphone, my sound might go a little bit strange here as I pick it up, but you will notice that it has a Blue logo here that needs to be facing you and you need to be talking into the microphone in order for it to work properly.
[00:02:16] Verity Sangan: The other thing that you often see with Blue Yeti microphones is people tend to angle it like this kind of thing and talk into it as if they are like singing on microphone on Top of the Pops, if anyone remembers Top of the Pops.
[00:02:29] Verity Sangan: But you get my point, that’s not how this microphone works.
[00:02:32] Verity Sangan: You are supposed to talk into the side of it.
[00:02:36] Verity Sangan: So what I find really commonly is that people will say this microphone absolutely sucks, but they’re talking into it completely wrong and maybe it’s like miles away from them and it’s like all twisted.
[00:02:47] Verity Sangan: You get the point.
[00:02:48] Verity Sangan: Also, I find people don’t have the directional bit set properly, they don’t have the gain bit set properly.
[00:02:55] Verity Sangan: So it’s all of these different things that when you are looking to purchase a microphone for your podcast, the question isn’t which is the best microphone that I can get for podcasting, but actually the question needs to be which microphone am I going to get that I’m willing to learn how to use properly?
[00:03:18] Verity Sangan: Because microphones are not just a case of I buy the most expensive one and then I get the most amazing sound quality.
[00:03:26] Verity Sangan: I’ve listened to podcasts where they have got the podcasters have got like, honestly, these microphones cost hundreds of hundreds of dollars and the sound quality is awful.
[00:03:37] Verity Sangan: And that’s got nothing to do with the microphone, it’s to do with how the microphone has been set up, it’s to do with the podcaster not understanding how that particular microphone works and how they should be using that microphone.
[00:03:51] Verity Sangan: So it’s not always about chucking the most amount of money, it’s not about going for a brand necessarily.
[00:03:58] Verity Sangan: I know people who use incredibly cheap microphones which like no one’s ever you’ve heard of the brand, but it’s because they know how to use the microphone properly.