Right now you're listening to me on the Rode NT-USB+, which is really
similar to the original Rode NT-USB PLUS some nifty additional features!
So let's start with the basics of the NT-USB+ without wasting NT-more time.
This video is going to be NT-irely made up of terrible jokes like that,
and I'm sorry in advance. (except I'm not really sorry)
The biggest thing to take away here and
maybe the spoiler of the video is that this is an incredibly solid USB microphone.
I'm somebody who typically prefers XLR microphones, and that's what I use
most of the time, so I don't cover a lot of USB microphones, but this is
such a good USB microphone that I really think it's worth talking about
and taking some time to check out.
It's not the cheapest USB microphone out there with an MSRP P of $169.
So it is a little bit on the higher end of USB microphones, but it's not
geared to be the beginner level microphone.
It's supposed to be a "pro" quality microphone.
Right now I have zero processing or effects or anything.
I'm just recording directly into Adobe Audition and what you might notice is that
I'm kind of hunched over, because I'm trying to get a little closer to the microphone.
This is sort of one of the problems. That $169 gets you the microphone,
the stand, and this super cool pop filter, but the stand is a little...
...low.
And so I can use my Rodecaster cover to sort of put this on here and now I can
position it, adjust it a little bit, and it's a little bit closer to my mouth and
hopefully sounds a little bit better.
So right away, that's kind of one of the two downsides to this microphone
that I have is out of the box, you get the stand, but getting it
positioned with that is a little funky.
So you probably need
some kind of boom arm or some kind of support to position it where you want.
That's okay though, because at least out of the box you do get a stand,
which is outSTANDing because not every microphone comes with that.
And you probably want your mic on a boom arm a lot of the time anyway.
But more importantly than that, the sound quality of this microphone is amazing.
I never used the original NT-USB, but I always thought it was a
really cool microphone and I was always really interested in it.
I just never got around to actually getting one.
The biggest difference between the NT-USB+ and the original is what's inside,
which basically they took the preamps from the Rodecaster Pro II, which, what are they?
The Revolution Preamp™!
It says on the side it's branded really well.
Yes, the Revolution preamps from the Rodeecaster Pro II, which
are literally revolutionary.
I've got a whole video about how you don't need boosters with any microphone,
and they're so incredibly quiet and they work so well and they sound so good.
They basically took those preempts and put them into this USB microphone,
which immediately made me really impressed with how this sounds right out of the box.
And even though I'm not someone who usually uses a lot of USB microphones,
as soon as I got this, I started using it a lot for podcasts and
streams and I just was having a lot of fun with this microphone.
It is a USB C microphone.
I'm not a hundred percent sure if the original Nt-USB
was USB C,
I think it might have been a different connector.
So it is USB C, which makes it super compatible with all kinds of stuff.
Not just computers but also tablets and phones.
Anything that you can connect a USB C device to this should work with.
And it should just be plug and play for the most part.
You shouldn't have to install anything.
It does work with Rode's apps, they have Rode Central, Rode Connect, Rode Reporter,
but you can also use anything else like I'm using Audition right now.
You can use Logic, GarageBand–
Anything that you can select an audio source you can use.
I absolutely love the design of this microphone.
It is incredibly well made.
It's so solid and it's just so chunky, but in a good way.
It just feels incredibly well built.
So it's something that I think is definitely designed to last a long time.
And you do have some nifty physical controls here.
You have, of course, a headphone output, which is very
important for a USB microphone.
Not every USB has this.
But you want a headphone output so you can listen with zero latency.
As soon as you connect your microphone to a computer and then try to listen
to the output from your computer.
There's really no way to get around that slight little bit of latency or lag,
whatever you want to call it, and that really messes with your brain and
makes it hard to listen and talk and
things just start sounding bad very, very quickly
So having a direct zero latency output is really important.
And of course, then you can select the microphone like you can
with many USB microphones as the output source on your computer.
And then you do have two dials on the side.
One of them is just your headphone gain.
So this will adjust the volume of the gain.
And the other one is a mix between the headphone and the computer.
So if you have a USB source of audio, like a computer that's sending a
signal here, you can mix how much of that you want to hear versus how
much of your headphones you want to hear.
It has zero effect on the actual output, but it's a nice thing for you
as the person monitoring everything.
And those are all of the physical controls.
Now, as I mentioned, when I talked about the stand and the
positioning, I said that there was
one other thing that I didn't like: those are the only physical controls!
There's no physical gain dial, and there's also no mute switch.
Mute I can kind of live without personally for my setup,
although it is very nice to have that.
There's no physical gain dial on this microphone,
which really does drive me crazy.
I wish every USB microphone had a physical gain dial because it's
just so much easier to control the actual gain of the microphone from
right on the microphone rather than having to go into an application.
Or in my case, I'm using Adobe Audition, which I can adjust levels,
but I want the best levels possible going into that application.
So what that means is I have to go into my computer's sound settings,
select this as the input, and then adjust the level right there.
That's not an ideal workflow compared to just being able to turn a dial
and get the exact gain that you want, especially on the fly if you
quickly need to change something without having to click into settings.
Having the physical dial is huge.
Now, the reason I'm not too worried about the positioning is because,
like I said, I am happy that it comes with something out of the box to get things
set up, and of course, on the bottom it has a regular 5/8" mount.
So let's put this on a regular stand so you can kind of see how that works.
This is the tabletop stand.
I can unscrew that.
And then we've got just a 5/8" mount here that has, I currently have a
5/8" to 3/8" adapter in there.
And this is kind of how it can move and flex.
And this just screws into the bottom of the microphone here, and that's also
how the pop filter is held into place.
It's kind of screwed onto the bottom here.
With this, you can of hear the handling noise
as I'm handling this. It's definitely, you know, susceptible to handling noise.
I guess if you wanted to use this as a handheld microphone, you could
and it wouldn't be too bad, but it's not designed to be a handhold microphone.
It's designed to be mounted to something.
And now I've got the NT-USB+ mounted to the Rode PSA 1,
a traditional scissor style boom arm, an upright boom arm.
And this is kind of the easiest way to mount it, is sort of this
overhead, upside down position, which the way that the mount of the microphone is,
the way you screw it in here and the way you can adjust this angle
does let you position it pretty well, especially to the side.
This is never the most comfortable way to have a microphone because you sort of
have this thing in your field of vision.
I can also move it and position it at different angles.
It is surprisingly versatile.
It is also, as is the case with many USB microphones.
It's sort of awkward to run your headphone cable in addition to the microphone cable
when it's connected here. You could use a lower profile one like this.
This is the El Gato Low Profile arm, and this is easier if you want the
microphone to be upright and sort of the position that I had it in before
when it was on the tabletop stand.
But this gives me a little more versatility and you can kind of
hear how susceptible it is to
handling noise into boom arm.
If I tap on the table, it's definitely picking that up.
It's not something like the SM7B, which is going to just reject pretty
much everything that's thrown at it, but this is how the Rode NT-USB+
will work on the El Gato Low Profile if you want to keep a lower profile.
And speaking of profiles, what is this?
This is the Sennheiser Profile USB microphone,
the other USB microphone that I've talked about recently.
I've had the Rode for about four months now, and I immediately wanted to make
a video about it because I was so impressed with it, and I love the way
that it sounded, but I haven't known how to approach this because not long
after I got this microphone, Sennheiser reached out to me about the Profile.
We ended up working together to do a "first look" for this microphone.
At the time I'm recording this,
it's not available yet, but it should be very, very soon.
And the reason I wanted to do that was because I love the way that this
microphone sounds, but I also felt a little bit better about recommending
this microphone to a beginner.
Or even kind of to anyone.
And I will do a separate video where I compare the Profile to a whole bunch of
other microphones, so that way you can compare the sound profile of the Profile
to those other sound profiles and file that away in your audiophile files.
But for now though, I want to compare these two because for me, these are
my two favorite USB microphones.
One of the downsides to USb microphones is that it can be very difficult to
record multiple ones in the same computer.
So that means I need a separate computer.
There are ways to do it, but for the average person and for someone
like me, it's a total nightmare.
It's not something I would recommend.
If you need multiple microphones, get an XLR mic, get a mixer, get a
Rodecaster, combine your sources there.
So now you're listening to me on the Rode NT-USB+ and now you're
listening to me on the Sennheiser Profile.
I think that both of these are incredibly good sounding microphones.
And they should be.
You're talking about a Sennheiser microphone and a Rode microphone.
It would be absurd
if they didn't sound good. But they do sound different.
The Profile, I don't know how I would describe its sound profile,
but this is what it sounds like.
Peter Piper pitched a podcast.
There's the plosive test. Jumping back over to the Rode NT-USB+,
this is its sound.
Peter Piper pitched a podcast.
Obviously it's got the windscreen on it or the pop filter.
Peter Piper pitched a podcast.
That's what it sounds like without it.
I really don't know why you would use this microphone without the pop filter,
which this is a plastic pop filter.
It looks like a metal mesh one, but it's plastic, but it's a really
nice high quality plastic one.
I think it works really well, so I would definitely just keep this
on the microphone at all times.
I do have that first look video that I mentioned with the Profile where I
kind of run through everything on it.
But one thing that's really impressive to me about it is the lack of handling noise.
This microphone, unless you're like grabbing it like this,
it kind of rejects everything.
It's sort of insane, right?
Tapping on the table, doing all that
versus the Rode NT-USB+, which tends to pick things up a little
bit more, tends to pick up the sound of the table a little bit more.
So this is definitely a microphone that you want to keep–
just be aware when you're using it and try not to bump it.
Whereas the Profile, it's not a handheld microphone by any means,
but if you need to readjust it or move it while you're using it,
there's really no harm in doing that and everything's going to be just fine.
And for both of these microphones, right now, I'm on the Profile.
I am pretty close to them, right?
I'm keeping them near me, and that's really how they should be.
They're not designed to be boom microphones.
If I push this really far away, now I'm talking into the Profile,
you're hearing a lot more of the room.
I can turn up the gain.
You can still hear more of the room.
You can hear me.
Same thing here
now with the Rode.
I'm talking on the Rode, I'm further away from it.
These are microphones that are designed to be used within close proximity to the
source of the sound or to the speaker.
And wait, what did I just do with the Profile, you ask?
Did I just adjust the gain?!
Did I JUST adJUST the gain
right here with this button? This physical dial?! I did!
This is where things get a little tricky between these two microphones and why I
didn't know how to approach the NT-USB+ for a while, so I'm just laying
it all out there on the table for you now.
Putting it all up on the boom arm for you.
Hey, this came out of here.
The profile is $129 for the microphone.
It comes with a small little tabletop stand that's going to keep it even
lower than the NT-USB+, so it's going to be further away from you.
If you want the small Sennheiser boom arm right here,
that kit is $199 MSRP, but of course it has a standard 5/8"
mic mount, just like anything.
So you can attach us to any other boom arm and position it how you want.
The nice thing about it is it is a much smaller microphone, so it's way less
intrusive than the NT-USB is, and I think it still sounds really amazing.
So here's what I have to say when it comes to USB microphones and where I
would put these two specifically, because they're my favorite USB microphones.
There are other ones like the Shure MV7
or the Sampson Q9u that are combo microphones, XLR/USB
and those are great, but they're all pretty much more expensive than these are.
If we're looking at dedicated USB microphones, I think there
are a few things to keep in mind.
First and foremost, who are they for?
If you're somebody who's huge on audio, you probably really want a
mixer and an or an interface, and you want to connect XLR microphones.
However, I still think it's a good idea to have a trusty USB
microphone that you can use.
The reason for that is because they are so incredibly simple.
You just plug them in, plug and play, easy to travel with. And the Rode really
was a total lifesaver few months ago. Not long after I got it, I got sick
with an illness that rhymes with "Blovid."
But after I started coming back to life and feeling a bit like a
human again, but I was still testing positive and needing to quarantine.
You know, I still wanted to be making my podcasts and stuff and editing
videos and things, and I was able to just use this microphone connected to
my laptop, and I did podcast episodes with a very nasally sounding congested
voice, and I couldn't have done that.
You know, I couldn't come in here.
I didn't have the energy to set everything up.
Just having this one microphone, plugging it in with one plug
to my laptop and pressing record
was amazing and the sound quality is just phenomenal.
It's not "great for a USB microphone."
It's just a great sounding microphone.
So there have been times where I'm like, "I want to record a podcast with
this just because I like how it sounds so much." Between these two microphones,
I love the way they both sound, but I would definitely give an edge to the
Rode in terms of pure sound quality.
But I think in terms of recommendation for the average person, I would
lean more towards the Sennheiser for a couple of reasons.
One: the Sennheiser is less expensive, so if you just want the mic, it's $129.
I still think it sounds amazing.
It has no handling noise and it has
all physical controls.
There are no apps that go with this at all.
You don't need anything, other than something to record it with,
but you don't need any apps to access functionality of the microphone.
You have a mute switch built in.
[muted]
Now you can't hear me on this microphone.
I guess you can hear me on that one over there, but it's muted and
these two, the gain and the mute glow red.
If I press them again, then they unmute, and there's also no cutoff sound.
It's a very smooth sound from being able to hear me.
[muted]
To being back again.
There's no pop sound, which sometimes happens on other microphones.
This has the same two other dials that the NT-USB does, the headphone volume,
and then the mix between your USB source and your microphone source, so you can mix
what you're hearing in your headphones.
But the pièce de résistance, as the kids say, is the physical gain dial.
This has everything
somebody needs to just open it up and get started and have great
audio right out of the box without me having to then worry about,
"Are they going to know how to go into the settings and adjust something?
Are they going to know how to do that?"
It's all just right here.
The NT-USB+is a little different because you do, at the very least,
need to go into a setting or a software application to adjust the
microphones gain, and that right there can be a barrier for some people.
However, Rode does market this as a professional USB microphone, and by
that definition, that maybe means it's not fair to judge it on whether or not
a beginner could just jump into it.
Maybe the intention from Rode is that this is a microphone that
you're coming into with a little bit of experience, or at least the
willingness to spend time learning
how to use it and set it up properly, which is something you
should do with anything you buy anyway. So that's kind of where I'm
at right now with USB microphones and with the Rode NT-USB+.
There are the other new Rode ones like the XDM-100, which kind of
seems like a USB Procaster.
Where is my Procaster?
There! It is like a USB Procaster.
I haven't tried that one yet.
This one has such a good sound though.
I'm really happy with it.
If you have the original NT-USB, I've always thought that that's a
great sounding microphone as well, even though I've never used it.
This one should be a step above because the preamps are so much better.
The downside being it is a little bit more expensive, and you do need to rely a
little bit more on adjusting things in the computer, which is not just a little more
confusing, but also it's less convenient, especially while you're recording something,
you can't do things on the fly.
The Sennheiser Profile, on the other hand, is less expensive.
It's more compact, and it doesn't need anything other
than recording in the computer.
You can control everything right here, so this is definitely
what I would recommend. I mean, it's just a really good USB microphone.
This is definitely though, if you've never used like a pro microphone
or a decent microphone before,
this is my number one USB recommendation because it is so simple.
I can feel confident saying, "If you get this, you're going to
open it up and know how to use it right away." The NT-USB+
I'm confident that you would love the sound of it, but I always get a
little nervous when it's like, "Oh that person's going to have to dig in and and
be proactive in learning a little bit more about the microphone before it's
going to sound absolutely as good as possible."
And speaking of things that are absolutely as good as possible, thank you to everyone
who helps support my channel through Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships,
And for this extra little tidbit here, I did just want to point out,
when I'm talking about products in videos, sometimes I feel bad because it's like
every week, here's a video about this thing and that thing, and the other thing,
I hope you know, I'm not telling you that you need to go out and buy that thing.
I'm usually just trying to share something that I'm excited about
and/or I'm trying to share something that I think would be helpful.
Hopefully I'm excited about things that would be helpful, but ultimately it's
like, yeah, here's a USB microphone.
This microphone is really great.
Here's another one.
This is great.
I'm not saying buy both of them, I'm just trying to share my thoughts on
them and maybe that's helpful to you.
But please don't think every week when I have a product related
video that I'm trying to tell you to go buy a brand new thing.
So now we've talked about both these microphones, the Sennheiser Profile
and the Rode NT-USB+, it's time for me to hit the Rode.
Or wait, should I say, "It's time for me to hit the Rode!"
Get it...I hit the hit the Rode... 🫠