Gadgetory

hey what's up Internet J is two cents here bringing you a video today all about audio and capturing some audio and some really cheap alternatives you guys can use to really step up the quality of the audio on your channel believe it or not I get asked this quite often and I'm no audio expert just like you I didn't have a lot of money to spend and I really wanted to increase the audio quality of my weekly podcast Tech Talks with JC cents and Barnacle E's so I'm going to show you guys what I picked up how it sounds how much it costs we rarely talk about cost but damn this one it's worth talking about all right so first things first if you've noticed the audio quality right now is pretty much Boop I mean it is just one big cow pipe you know what I'm saying a lot of times people when they start out their channels are so interested in video quality or trying to get the best video quality they can they don't stop to think about the audio quality and a lot of times people will listen to a video more than they will actually watch it so if your audio quality is garbage people are not going to stick around and watch your video okay so first things first guys take the built in microphone in your cameras and just throw them out the window say whatever your garbage I don't need you it doesn't matter if it's a DSLR Canon 5d Mark 3 whatever the best DSLRs have the crappiest microphones built in because people know that you're not going to be using onboard camera mics for most if not all situations so what am I talking on then and how do I recommend getting good sound quality well what I had been using in the past is my Sennheiser II 835 mic just off camera through XLR into a zoom h4n audio recorder into my DSLR but the problem with that for a lot of people is that's actually not a very cheap set up the h4n is still well over $200 the microphone itself is a hundred bucks the cables of twenty-something bucks and so you're talking about well over three hundred and fifty dollars with tax and stuff to get decent audio into your camera and most people starting out channels that's just not in the books it's not possible it's way too expensive so what do I recommend well obviously I'm not talking on this right now as you can see it's not plugged in not to mention the handling of it would be massively noisy so I'm actually talking on my birthday present that my wife bought me my visas in a couple of videos and that is the road smart laughs now some people may pronounce this red I guess that's an accent oh it actually changes that from road to red I don't know okay Road pronounces it Road on their own website and their own videos so I'm saying Road don't correct me if you do I don't know all right you an angry comment okay so this is the smart lab and here it is right here and as you can see is just clip to my shirt it comes with its own clip it's got a lot nice long cable so how am i capturing the audio well it's called the smart lab because it's designed to work with your iOS device now I say iOS because that's what their app is designed for I think they're working on an Android app it may already be out I'm not sure but if we take a look at the phone right here you can see I'm actually capturing all of the audio right now on my smart phone completely independent of the camera so when I'm doing my editing a video this is clearly going to be synced up and put into the video you sync it by clapping and then you line up those peaks on the editing software and so that everything lines up and then you just mute the track you don't want there you go you've got the audio from this thing well how much is this well this lab setup is actually $60 on Amazon yeah link is down in the description I think for $60 it's going to be very hard to find a better solution than this and of course you know it's not a fantastic lavalier but for what it is it's really hard to argue with it now I wanted to increase the audio for Tech Talk I've been doing Tech Talk now for about a year and a half and I really wanted to start to give you guys better audio quality and I had been using a blue Yeti which is a USB mic which is another great mic in fact I even recommended it in my previous microphone video but now we're stepping things up a lot further now I love my e85 from Sennheiser so much I don't think there's another mic you can get on for a hundred bucks it sounds as good even the shure sm58 not convinced is as good as this mic I've listened to both in fact I bought the sm58 first and returned it for this mic so I've listened to both this is my opinion right here 400 bucks is the best mic you can get the problem with it is that guy right there that is an XLR input and the problem with XLR is it's just an analog signal and it needs some way to get into your computer now the zoom h4n you could use that as an interface problem is for me I got a bunch of crackling sounds when I use it as an interface so it wasn't feasible in fact I've been trying to make this transition to using this mic for Tech Talk for quite a while so I thought well you know I know that there are USB mixers and eq's that I can buy that I can use to get to the computer and the sound into the computer where those are just way too expensive I just was like I'm not going to drop hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars just to do tech-talkin and that's a horrible waste of money so I started looking over the internet and started looking reviews and I found this guy and this is the alesis multi mix for a USB EQ mixer it's actually a four channel mixer it integrates through USB into your computer it has its own power source it even has phantom power even though I don't need it this is a dynamic mic it doesn't need power it can power your mics that require power like the at2020 and whatnot if they need to until I don't recall they do but whatever if you need a something to power your mic this can do that and thing is this thing is not expensive in fact I'll tell you the price at the end so I want you to hear it first now when it comes to settings you have to you know two band EQ on here you have the highs which are 10,000 Hertz you have your lows which are 80 Hertz I would have liked to have seen maybe a mid a mid range like a 2.5 k Hertz filter on there EQ but you know whatever for the for the price point this is I have no complaints but it's got a low-pass filter on there it's got a its own gain controls for channels stereo it's got DP meter right here so you can see if you're clipping or whatnot it's nice and weighted and it's got great reviews on it in fact it's you know it's got power you can turn it on and off when you're not using it so yeah the features set on this is actually pretty good considering the price point now enough talking about it let's go ahead and turn around let's hook it up to the computer let's set up the webcam let's kind of look at this as if I was doing my channel with a webcam like a lot of people are going to be let's see how this thing sounds and you might agree with me that it's definitely worth taking a look at now I'm and I may have mentioned I may not have mentioned that this is a high LPL 2t boom desk boom I do not recommend it if there has ever been a product that J has said do not buy it don't buy it ignore my example and learn from my mistake don't buy this desk boom way overpriced there are so many better options on Amazon and eBay I'll even link a few down the description to get a cheap way of mounting your mic to your desk ignore this one behind me just pretend it doesn't exist please for the love of God worth purchase I ever made let's go ahead and it into the computer now we're back and I think immediately the first thing you have to notice is the audio quality of what you're currently listening to now I want to point this out I am doing absolutely no post-production whatsoever to the audio quality I'm not adding any EQ I'm not doing any sort of smoothing on any of audacity or anything like that I am capturing the audio straight into audacity exactly as eq is spitting it to the computer now here's the kicker this amplifier or this nut amplifier but this eq and mixer was $61 that's right 6:161 dollars and I think for the audio quality that you're getting is a for that price I just I had to I had to do it I think you guys would agree that the audio quality is fantastic so if you're looking at doing podcast or doing game commentaries or anything like that I definitely would recommend getting an XLR setup like this over some sort of a direct USB mic now that's my opinion because it's the EQ I mean as you can see here I can pull the bass out so now we don't have nearly as much bass in there or I can add some more highs too I'm sure everything sounds different right now go and put it back up was because I like that nice warm radio announcer voice and the cool thing is that I can control all the audio this now if I want to input music or something from a straight from my phone or something like that I could do that through one of the other channels that's a cool thing about it mixers your you've got so many options now the only drawback to this mixer I've noticed is that the noise floor is very very high now the noise floor is that hissed or that just that kind of a background noise if you will I guess that the actual current noise that the microphone and the line and all that picks up it's actually really really high in fact I've currently got the windows levels for the USB device for this amplifier why don't you call in an amplifier for this EQ set at 7 of 100 and this is what you're hearing yeah 7 of 100 is where I had to put the audio levels because if I went any higher than it was clipping unbelievably bad in fact right now I'm getting I'm getting all the way up to 0 DB and I think I might be clipping just a little bit so I just pulled it back but a little bit that's a cool thing I just reeked down I turn knob so I can be like uh-oh so I definitely recommend if you guys want to bring your audio or your your channels up to the next level if you're doing game commentaries or a podcast or something like that save yourself a couple hundred bucks and do something like this I mean this whole setup the EQ mixer mic and the cable and even an inexpensive boom you guys could have that for less than $200 and that's the thing 1/8 in at2020 USB mic you're talking 130 bucks already and our the USB Yeti USB Yeti mic was 150 when I bought it so we're not talking that much more money and a hell of a lot better audio quality so guys JSU Sens hope this videos helped you in some way hope it's going to help me in some way quite honestly we're going to find out how well it does on Tech Talk but if you want to ask me questions about this setup I'll do the best I can to answer them you can do it on Twitter Facebook all the social media stuff and as always guys listen to this mic see how it does this Thursday on Tech Talk there'll be a live event link right in the front page of the video on Thurs or the channel on Thursday afternoon 6 p.m. Pacific time do the math figure out when it's on for you there will be a replay an archive as well and tell me what you guys think of this mic setup as always guys I hope to see you next one and well stay classy