Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by LastPass your one-stop solution for conveniently and securely storing personal data such as passwords and details into your own digital vault even get an auto filled tool to make filling out forms a breeze LastPass is used by millions including myself and is highly regarded download the app and visit lastpass.com to get started see this video's description for more details when I first started this channel under the name science studio I was unsure of what microphone to purchase being that I was a baller on a budget I didn't have much money to spend at all and I was not a fan of using my camera's built-in microphone the camera I was using at the time was like a Nokia 540 l 540 something along those lines it's a built-in microphone well sucked at this fault the Pacific plate is sliding up north and the North American plate is relatively stationary kind of moving down but really it's the Pacific plate that's moving quite a bit there are pictures of picket fences that have moved further down a plane simply from the sliding of one plate over the other if you look at this picture here the Pacific plate is on one side and the North American plate is on another so as you just heard I was in desperate need of something much better now you might be wondering why I'm outside right now and that's because typically when you purchase really cheap microphones they don't do a great job of suppressing background noise and outside it's pretty loud the dogs are barking inside the house because I'm out here and they're not cars are driving by there are birds chirping you kind of hear just that ambient sound of being outside that you don't have when you're inside and it's pretty secluded noise wise so I'm out here just to give you a sample of what this microphone sounds like in kind of a worst case scenario it's not very windy though that would be one situation in which this microphone would definitely fail but you know the sound quality is not too bad being that this microphone is super cheap we're talking under ten US dollars and this was actually the first microphone I ever bought on Amazon so like I said I've got this lapel microphone or libel ear microphone whenever you really want to call it plug directly into my phone now I needed adapter for this particular model because this is only a TRS microphone which means that if you just want to look it from a physical standpoint it has two black bars okay you want one that has three black bars for most modern cell phones or it will just detect the microphone as a headphone set and that's it you won't it won't detect the microphone built into it as well so if I just plugged the microphone directly into the phone without this small adapter which has three rings on this end then the phone would basically try to play music through the microphone which of course would not work and it would never detect sound from this device so keep that in mind you want trrs that's three rings on your lapel microphone versus two two is a no-go unless you buy the adapter in which case you're spending way more than you really need so I want to make a very clear distinction between what a studio professional microphone setup would sound like which is what you're listening to right now and what's something like this a three or four dollar lapel microphone that plugs into your phone sounds like so the difference really comes down to two different things the first is going to be audio clarity that's how clear your voice sounds in general it's usually bitrate is involved if there's any static or Distortion that just comes with the quality of the mic it's a condenser microphone or if it's an omnidirectional microphone those all play a role as well also whether or not it has noise cancelling capabilities this lapel microphone obviously does not although there are some microphones like this that do plug into phones that do have nodes canceling capabilities keep that in mind you'll be paying a bit more though maybe 20 30 bucks which we can do a video on that separately this is just about a really cheap setup here my studio setup consists of an audio technica 20 35 which is similar to the 20 20 which was super popular as well as a Yamaha mixer now all of that is discussed in detail in this video right here I invite you to check it out for more info but in a nutshell it sounds pretty good right and it's all XLR powered in this case though with a 4 to $6 lapel microphone you'll notice that quality and the clarity of the audio dramatically reduces obviously this isn't a fair comparison that's not the point I'm not doing $6 lapel microphone versus $300 XLR setup that's what this video is about but I do want to make the distinction between what a really crisp audio setup sounds like and what you're foregoing when you decided to go with a more portable sound system the big issue I have with these lapel microphones though the ones that are super cheap that don't have any noise cancelling capabilities is the fact that they're meant to be right taken outside of the studio outside into the world where you can just kind of walk around have a camera and sync up audio & video later because there's no noise canceling capability the sound quality of your voice gets really really distorted especially when there's stuff going on in the background any wind I would say any music people talking within 20 feet of you will all be picked up by this microphone it's super sensitive and it doesn't do a great job at kind of cleaning up the sound as it's being processed by your phone so I've got a 5.1 surround sound system set up right now playing some music in the background and every speaker and the subwoofer is pointed in this direction and we're using the XLR microphone of course right now so you kind of get an idea of how great this microphone does the entire system does at isolating my voice which is the point right you want my voice to be the thing that you hear more than anything else now we're gonna shift over to the lapel microphone and well yeah not too great the bass is definitely taking over a bit this is uh not not doable I would say just because my voice isn't being isolated enough to where you are distracted severely by the sound playing in the background only about 10 percent volume by the way so that's one big issue is noise suppression right the background noise that you don't want picked up in your microphone these are gonna do a great job at obviously there's six dollar microphones but one of the upsides the fact that these microphones literally work off of your phone's power they don't need a dedicated power store so you can literally plug and play take this wherever you go as long as your phone has power the microphone does as well look I'll be honest my verdict on these mics they really aren't too bad you consider that one cost less than 10 bucks I mean that's less than what it would cost if you bought a number one at McDonald's so you're getting a lot of bang for your buck that's for sure but you do have to keep in mind that you cannot go places where it's going to be extremely loud if you're in crowds if you're at an event like CES or Computex for example these mics will not cut it what we actually used at Computex 2017 was a wireless microphone setup that we bought on Amazon for about 300 bucks it comes with two mics and a receiver that you can kind of stash atop your camera plug everything in and run it directly into your cameras to audio syncs up nice and clean it's not the greatest setup only because things are being transmitted wirelessly of course that wireless transmission is always going to great audio to some extent in this case a little more than the pricier sennheiser options and whatnot that you can find for around $1000 but 300 bucks not bad I've got this one link in the description as loyal as the super Chiefs $6 lapel microphones and some that are actually less than 6 bucks but this one here was about six dollars for this microphone look these are just different options for you to choose from if you want something that's more professional than to do a better job isolating sound then buy something worth around 300 or so bucks that's where you really get the most for your money I would say around 300 bucks or we can take the dirt cheap option and pay 6 bucks for a lapel microphone like this it doesn't require a dedicated power source and that really gets the job done in relatively quiet situations like we are in here outside though things definitely change so I hope you learn a few cool things about lapel microphones especially the ones that plug directly into your phone what you should look for if you're going to buy something similar to this for under 10 u.s. dollars equivalent I have them linked in the description by the way the ones that I've used in the past or this one isn't too bad considering it's not very expensive and you do get multiple microphones so if you want your friends to plug in you want to do like a you know multi person shot and you can certainly do that and split the audio accordingly if you liked this video be sure to give it a thumbs up thumbs down for the opposite that's the AC unit that just kicked on hope it's not being picked up by the mic stay tuned for more content like this also sub for more videos like these this is science studio thanks for listening with us