- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative
in this video we're gonna show you
how to set up and connect the Electro-Voice RE20,
the black edition of this microphone
with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface.
I love this microphone,
this microphone is my favorite dynamic microphone by far
even above the Shure SM7B.
It has an extra level of clarity and detail,
the variable D technology keeps your tone consistent
if you move around the microphone a little bit.
I love this microphone,
I think it's a great high-end dynamic microphone
that you could use for vocal recording,
voiceover, podcasting, anything like that.
This is the top of the food chain
for dynamic microphones I think.
Now if you do want pricing
or specs for anything that you see in this video,
the microphone, the interface
we're gonna test to see
whether or not the Focusrite Scarlett
gives enough gain or does it require a Cloudlifter.
So if you need pricing for a Cloudlifter
we have that as well.
The headphones, anything like that
check out the links below,
we do have tons of information there.
Now for the purposes of this video
we do have the audio interface
already connected to the laptop,
and it is already recording.
But we're gonna connect the microphone now
to the Focusrite Scarlett.
So to do that we're gonna connect this XLR cable here
from the microphone,
and reconnect it to the Focusrite Scarlett.
So far everything is turned down,
it is a dynamic microphone like I mentioned earlier,
so you don't need Phantom power anything like that.
We're gonna increase the gain now of the preamp
on the Focusrite Scarlett,
the RE20 here it does have a sensitivity
of around minus 56 and a half DB.
The Focusrite Scarlett can provide 57 DB of gain,
so now we're gonna figure out
if this thing actually has enough gain to power it.
So as we turn it up here,
we can see that this light is blinking
when this light is blinking,
that means that we are around minus 24.
If we turn it up, if we can get it yellow,
which we're getting it yellow right now
just when we're completely maxed out there with yellow.
That means that we got up to minus six,
if we look over in logic here,
we can actually figure out that we did peak at minus 1.4.
So I can back it down a little bit there,
So I'm just gonna reset the peak meter here.
One thing with the Focusrite Scarlett
that you wanna make sure of
is I find that when you're turned up close
to eight or nine out of 10
you do get a noticeable noise floor come in,
some hissing sound so you don't want that.
If we look over right now,
we are peaking around minus 13 in logic,
and we're at eight out of 10.
So I'm just gonna go quiet for a second here,
just so you can listen to the amount of hiss
to see if you're comfortable
with that amount of hiss in your recording.
So if you're comfortable with that
then you don't need the Cloudlifter.
What I'm gonna do now
is I'm gonna replug everything in with the Cloudlifter
that'll reduce how hard this preamp is working
and hopefully get us a cleaner signal.
So I'm gonna unplug everything now,
turn it down, unplug it.
So what we wanna do with this
is we wanna come XLR cable from the RE20
and it's gonna into the Cloudlifter.
And then we're gonna need another Cloudlifter,
we're gonna need another XLR cable
to come out of the Cloudlifter
in the Focusrite Scarlett.
Now this isn't just work based on magic,
what we need to do is we need to supply Phantom power
to the Cloudlifter in order to power it,
to make it work.
So we're gonna connect to the Cloudlifter
to the Focusrite Scarlett,
so when we turn on Phantom power here
on the Focusrite Scarlett,
that will add somewhere around 20-25 DB of clean gain
to the RE20.
So I'm gonna turn this up now,
so in logic I'm watching the meter here,
we're at about minus seven.
I want it somewhere between minus 18 and minus 12.
So you can see here I'm peaking at minus 10,
that's pretty good and back it down just a little bit.
So instead of being at eight out of 10
I do find that we're somewhere around 45%
on the preamp here
and we're getting the level that I'm looking for.
So this 48 volts of Phantom power
is supplying the Cloudlifter
and then that's giving more gain to the RE20.
Okay, so what we're gonna do now
is we're just gonna pause for five seconds again
to see if you can notice any more or less hiss
than we noticed before.
So I would expect that you would notice
a little bit less hiss,
you may need headphones or something like that
and really turn them up so you can hear the difference.
But I would expect with the Cloudlifter
that we're using less of the preamp
and there would be less background noise because of that.
Now a lot of people also wanna know
how the Air Mode sounds with this setup.
So I'm gonna turn the Air mode on now
previously the Air Mode has been turned off
for the whole video.
So this is what the Air Mode sounds like
on the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface.
When you have it connected to the Electro-Voice RE20
the black version of this microphone.
And now I'm gonna turn it off again,
so some people like the Air Mode a lot,
some people don't like it at all.
I am curious about your opinion on it,
if you leave a comment in the comment section below,
if you liked the Air Mode or not with this microphone.
Now with the RE20 microphone here
I don't recommend any other additional equipment
that's the beauty of this microphone.
I don't find that you need an extra foam pop filter,
a windscreen or anything like that.
The Variable-D technology
that's built into this microphone does a really great job
of giving you accurate and more consistent audio.
As you move around the microphone a little bit
it's a little bit more tolerant.
And again, it does have that built in implosive protection,
that's really good.
So I don't think that you need anything else,
just one side note.
Some people I have seen videos
of people talking to the side of this microphone.
This microphone is an end-address microphone,
so you speak into the top of the microphone
like I'm doing in this video as well
just in terms of a couple extra tips for you.
Again, if you do have any other questions about this setup
please leave a comment in the comment section below,
we do respond to as many questions as we can.
If you want pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video,
we do have tons of links down in the description below
to help you find the current up-to-date price
at a variety of online retailers.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like and subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching.
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