- 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 dynamic microphone,
to the Yamaha MG10XU audio mixing console.
This is a really great high quality setup.
For home streaming, podcasting, voiceover,
doing tutorials like I'm doing right now.
This is probably my favorite sounding dynamic microphone.
Even better than the Shure SM7B.
It's tighter.
It has a better response.
It's much more clear on the high end as well.
I do love this microphone,
and I'm glad that we can put this tutorial together
to show you how to use it.
Now, a lot of people have questions about this setup.
The sensitivity on the RE20 is at minus 56ish dB.
So a lot of people wanna know,
if the Yamaha can power that by itself,
or if you need something like a cloud lifters.
We'll go through that as well.
Plus, you'll be able to hear how it sounds
especially compared to the lav mic
that you're hearing right now.
If you do want pricing or specs for anything
that you see in this video.
The RE20, the MG10XU, cloud lifter
XLR cables, headphones, anything like that.
We do have links down in the description below.
Now, for the purposes of this video,
the audio mixers already powered on
and connected to our laptop.
We're already recording in logic.
So we can get straight to, how to connect
and set up this microphone with this mixer.
So the first thing that we're gonna do,
is we're obviously gonna connect,
the microphone to the audio mixer.
So we plug the XLR cable
into the back of the microphone.
Now it is a dynamic microphone
so you don't need Phantom power or anything like that.
We can just plug it straight in.
And now that the microphone is plugged
into the audio console we can start
to bring the levels up.
To do that, we're gonna turn the stereo knob all the way
up to this triangle zero or unity position here
on the main output.
That'll make sure that the meter's working for us.
Then we're gonna turn up the level here,
to that same triangle zero or unity position.
And then we can start to bring up the gain.
Now it is worth noting here just quickly again,
if you're unfamiliar with this mixer,
this stereo output level here,
it just gets the meter going.
But it this doesn't affect the USB output on the console.
That is set up with the gain on the channel only.
So as we bring up the gain on the channel here
you'll see that we do need to be quite aggressive with it.
Again, this microphone has a sensitivity
of minus 56 and a half dB, something like that.
So it does need a lot of gain.
On the Yamaha mixer here,
we can keep adding gain all the way until we're at zero.
If you're at zero, that what's unique
about the Yamaha MG10XU, is that the peak is at plus 12.
Most digital interfaces are mixers with audio interfaces.
The peak will be at zero.
So, you can see here that we're bouncing off at zero.
If we look over in logic here,
you can see that our peak was minus 12.4.
So it is offset by about 12 dB.
But, when I'm recording, I like to be peaking somewhere
between minus 18 and minus 12.
So I find it really good to be bouncing right
off the zero mark on the mixer there.
Now, one thing you're gonna notice is
that our gain is turned all the way up to plus 64.
So we are fully maxed out.
I don't like running my preamps at 10 out of 10.
I find that, even on the Yammer here
which has really clean preamps,
and a lot of gain, you do get hiss
and extra noise when you're fully cranked up.
So just seeing that the gain is all the way up to plus 64.
And I'm at the level that I wanna be.
I wanna be at that level.
I wanna be there with less gain.
So what I'm gonna do right now is I'm just
gonna pause for a second.
Just so you can hear that background noise
that's being generated by the preamp.
You might need good headphones
and you might need to turn your sound up.
But you will be able to hear that hiss.
So that's what we're trying to fix.
So, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna turn this all down,
undo what I did.
And then I'm gonna connect the cloud lifter to this channel.
So we can get more clean gain with less hiss.
It turned down all these channels.
Just turn on the main, just you don't have
to turn on the main.
I just like doing it out of habit.
So we can leave that connected to the microphone.
I didn't have to unplug that.
So unplug that XLRs we have XLR going
from the microphone, into the cloud lifter.
There are a whole bunch of different inline preamps.
You don't have to use a cloud lifter.
There's lots of videos online.
It's just the one that I have.
It's the first one I bought.
So I use it for all my tutorials.
And then we can connect the cloud lifter,
to the audio mixer.
Now what the cloud lifter does is it trades Phantom power
for reduce gain.
As we know, dynamic microphones don't need Phantom power,
but the cloud lifter does.
So when we connect this to the audio mixer,
we will have to turn on Phantom power here.
That will activate the cloud lifter for us.
So we're gonna turn that on.
Now we'll restart, setting up our gain again.
So we turn the stereo level up
to that triangle zero or unity position.
We'll turn up the level knob to that triangle zero
or unity position.
And then we will increase the gain here.
So now you can see,
just how good that cloud lifter does.
The gain now is up at about 40%
instead of a hundred percent.
And we're getting the level that we need.
If we look over in logic here
you can see that we're peaking up minus 11.
Which is even a little bit high,
but I still have enough headroom to do
what I'm needing to do.
Now with the RE20 that you can hear right now,
I don't think that you need a pop filter,
anything like that.
The built in variable D technology
what makes this microphone so great
and so popular for radio and podcasting,
is that the tone doesn't change as you get close to it.
It rejects pops, really well on its own.
The design is already good to go.
So you don't need to add anything
to this microphone I don't think.
It's awesome that they made a black version
of this microphone.
I used to hate the gray version
of it just based off of looks alone.
So this is what this setup sounds like.
I'm gonna throw my headphones on now and then
might make a couple little changes or recommendations here.
I turn up my headphones once I plug them in.
So now that I have the headphones plugged in
I can hear what I'm doing.
So a couple of things that I would do
if I'm running this setup.
Is I would add compression, not more than about 50%
on the channel here.
I would add that 80 Hertz high-pass filter here just
to roll off some of the low end.
And I might brighten up the mids just a little bit,
depending on what I'm doing.
If I'm doing podcasting, I leave it straight.
If I'm doing gaming or streaming, I would give a little bit
of a mid bump, not a lot, but just to help you stand
out when that vocal presence range
amongst all the game noise and things like that.
Other than that, less is more with EQ.
I wouldn't get too carried away, but the compressor is good
in narrowing that dynamic range of your voice.
If you have any questions or comments about anything
that you've seen in this video,
any of the settings that I use,
please leave a comment in the comment section below.
Again, if you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video,
please check out the links in the description below.
We have pricing on the microphone, the mixer
the cloud lifter, the cable, the headphones,
everything like that.
So please do check out those links.
And if you wanna see more videos like this
in the future, please like, and subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching.
(upbeat music)