- Recently, I've had a lot of fun recording videos
where I compare inexpensive microphones
to expensive microphones and on my test video
for the Neewer NW-800 Gravity Gas left the comment
that said there was a point near the end
of the video where I stopped looking at it
but still listening while reading the comments.
At some point a little thought crossed in the back
of my head that you should just do a bait
and switch with the mics
and see if there would really be a noticeable difference.
Lo and behold, when I look back up
at the video near the very end, you've been talking
on the Neewer for a pretty decent length of time
and I didn't notice at all.
So I thought that was a great idea
and I wanted to do a blind mic test
and I told my lovely now wife Heather this idea
and she took it one step further and suggested
that I should also be blindfolded
while testing these microphones so
that way you don't know which is which
and even I don't know which is which
and ultimately what we're gonna find
out we've got some inexpensive microphones,
some more expensive microphones, how much does the brand
and the price actually affect your perception
of these mics just because something is expensive or
because it has a certain brand on the side of it.
Does that make you think
that it's a better microphone?
If you're just judging it on the quality of sound,
will we be able to tell the difference
and I'm really interested to see if I can pick these mics
out of a lineup.
So what we're going to do ,right now I have all four
of them running into the RODECaster Pro.
They have no effects, no equalization.
There's just a dry signal right into the RODECaster Pro.
I'm going to have Heather take as much time as she wants
to rearrange the mics and they can go in any order.
We have the Rode PodMic, the Shure SM57, so this is $100.
This is $100.
We have the Pyle PDMIC78 which is a $14 microphone.
It's a direct knockoff of this
and we've got the Neewer NW-800, not exactly a competitor
to the PodMic but it's similar in terms
of like it's something you would use
for like broadcast voice streaming that sort of thing.
You can even switch the back of the RODECaster,
so I'll have no idea which channel is which
and then it'll be up to you
and we're doing it you can turn which one on and off
and all that.
We're recording this after we did the whole video.
My plan was to block these out so you can see them
and we could get together
but that would basically be blocking out the entire frame.
So I'm not going to block these out.
I'm gonna be blindfolded so I won't know which mic is which,
but you will, if you don't wanna know
and you wanna play along with me.
Just make sure not to actually look at the video,
just set your player whatever over here
and face the other direction and just listen,
you could figure that out but through the magic of editing,
the whole screen would just end
up being like a censored bar or something
and it would look ridiculous.
So you're going to know I'm not going to know, who knows?
So now I'm gonna get blindfolded,
and then Heather's gonna rearrange the microphones
and I won't know what order they're in.
Do I look cool? - No.
- Okay, - Can you see under?
- No, I can't see a thing. - Okay.
Oh, okay hold on.
This is just tangled mess. - It's fine.
If you can hear me I can't see you,
this is very uncomfortable.
The microphones should be in a different order.
I didn't do any kind of test before this
to like check the sound or anything.
I have no idea which order the mics are in.
I'm gonna go through
and quickly do a little soundcheck
on each mic just so we can see the qualities of that
and then we'll go one by one
and see which one I think is which.
The important thing is for me not
to actually touch any of these
because that will give it away right away.
So the one that's on the left is where I want to start.
- Yes. - On our left.
- Okay, - Okay, am I close to it?
You know what, I should put this up so it's not.
- Covering it, don't look though.
- Does that look cool?
- It looks so cool. - Okay.
- Just a little bit closer. - Here?
- Right there. - Okay.
Oh my god.
Okay so wait, this is what the first microphone sounds like.
And then I'll move over to the next one.
Okay, here's the oh my gosh,
this sounds so, so different, whichever mic this is okay.
This is the second microphone.
This is a third microphone.
It sounds so much better than the last one.
Here is the fourth of microphones.
So those are our little quick tests of each microphone.
Okay, I've got some ideas, let's go back to the first one.
- The enthusiasm project wants everything you know.
- And I'm not worried about it.
I'm not worried about it in this video.
- Okay, - You're here,
so it's gonna look good, don't worry.
So this is microphone number one.
What I can say is it's a very like,
there's not a lot of bass.
There's also not a lot of noise in it either.
It kind of sounds good.
I'm gonna say that this is the Pyle microphone
because it's high, It has less low end,
but it still has a pretty clean sound
and a pretty good sound
and it's not really picking up anything besides my voice,
which is good.
It's a good sounding mic if it's the one I think it is.
Which is a $14 microphone.
Okay, let's move to mic number two
and oh God okay
(chuckles)
this one sounds so bad.
This is the Neewer microphone, this has
to be the gold Neewer microphone.
Just because it sounds like almost like a drive through.
I can hear my voice, I can hear like stuff, ambient sound.
It's rough, which we did if it is the Neewer one,
we did make it sound pretty good
when we added some equalization.
Okay, let's do number three.
Oh gosh, see these two are gonna be hard
because three and four sounded really good to me.
So this is three, oh man.
This one sounds so much cleaner.
It's a more rich sound.
It doesn't have as much high end actually
because it doesn't have as much high end I'm gonna say
that this is the Shure SM57
because that mic tends to have a little more low end.
Not too much highs and the PodMic also sounds good
but has more highs than lows.
So I'm gonna say this is the Shure SM57
And last but not least, this microphone just by process
of elimination, I would say this is the Rode PodMic,
I'm kind of second guessing myself.
because there's a lot of plosives happening.
So I actually, can I change my guess?
Or do I have to go with it?
- You can change.
Okay, I think this is the SM57
because it is having those pops.
And the PodMic has a built in pop filter.
So I'm gonna switch those I'm going to say this is the 57
and the third mic was the PodMic.
I hope that's fair but it's my channel
and if I say it's fair, it's fair.
Okay, I'm just gonna do it. - You're just gonna go,
- Okay, so I'm gonna take off my blindfold.
Figure out how this works, wow.
Hey, I think I got it right, okay.
(laughs loudly)
Okay, okay, I'm proud of myself here.
Okay, so I had guessed
that this was the Pyle microphone which it is.
This is my favorite of the least expensive
of the inexpensive microphones, it's $14.
It sounds pretty good.
It needs more low end
but it's not a bad mic at all
and it's $14 check out the whole video on that one.
This guy here (chuckles).
I could just tell that this was this microphone.
That's all we can say, it's very pretty
and then this one was tricky.
The PodMic to me, I mean it's a really clean.
You can totally hear such a difference in sound
with how clean the PodMic is over here.
I really thought that this was the 57
because for some reason being blindfolded,
it sounded like this had more bass than it normally does.
But the thing that really gave it away was
that on when I did this one it had that
like I could just tell.
I've used the PodMic enough over the year to know
that like it doesn't pick up on those plosives as much.
But both of these sound really, really good.
And typically, if you were using the 57 for voice,
you would have a pop filter on it
but I only have one pop filter and it wouldn't be fair.
It would have given this mic an unfair advantage
over the Pyle microphone
or vice versa if we only use the ones.
I don't know we learned today (chuckles).
How did I do?
- I mean, you got it all right.
- Yeah, I mean I kinda got these ones wrong.
I would have gotten it wrong had I not heard the plosives
on this one. - Yeah.
- Do you have any preferences for mic sounds?
- I like all of them except this one.
(laughs loudly )
- I don't know if that's useful information or not
but this is a really fun idea.
Before that though, one very important thing which I meant
to ask while I was blindfolded,
Heather do you know why the microphone wasn't good
at getting constructive criticism?
- No. - Because it was designed
to avoid feedback.
Like audio feedback with microphones is a bad thing.
(lively music)