- In this video, we're gonna show you
how to set up and connect,
the Shure MV7 dynamic microphone
with the RODECaster Pro audio mixer for podcasting.
Now, the Shure MV7 is a super interesting microphone.
It comes in two different versions.
There's the hybrid version, which we have here.
That has a USB output and an XLR output.
We're just gonna be using the XLR output
for the purposes of this video.
We don't need to connect the USB cable to power it up
or anything like that.
And then, the RODECaster Pro is an awesome audio mixer.
I think it's the mixer that everybody's looking for
right now for podcast recording.
We're gonna show you how to set everything up
and connect it.
So, whether or not you have a whole pile of equipment
in front of you, you're trying to figure it out,
or if you're about to buy everything,
we hope this video will be helpful for you.
We do have some links down in the description below.
If you are price shopping,
these links will help get you the best price possible
across a variety of online retailers.
Again, just to save you some money
if there is an opportunity to do so.
For the purposes of this video,
the RODECaster Pro has been factory-reset, except one thing.
I did go in and turn off the audio processing.
My preference is always to set up the microphone level
and gain first, before we go into the audio processing.
The way I do things, it has to be done in stages
and it makes the most sense,
and make sure that things like compression and EQ settings
aren't messing up the way that we set up our gain.
So that's one thing there.
I'm gonna hit record here.
Right now, you are listening to the lab mic.
You can see a picture of it up in the top corner.
When we switch over to the RODECaster Pro
with the Shure MV7,
you'll see a picture of the Shure MV7,
just so you know what you're listening to at any given time.
All right, let's get started.
Now for podcasting, some people prefer no headphones.
Some people prefer with.
I prefer podcasting with closed-back headphones.
This prevents the microphone from hearing
the output of the headphones.
Some people prefer open-back headphones.
They're more comfortable, they're lighter weight,
they're better for longer periods of time.
So, the preference really is up to you.
We do have some links down in the description
of what we prefer.
Next, in terms of setting up the Shure MV7 properly,
it all starts with proper mic positioning.
The microphone just will not sound good
if you don't have it positioned correctly.
For me, that means keeping it
within about a fist of your mouth.
I think that's the best kind of spacing.
If you get too close, it can get really poppy and boomy.
If you get too far away,
you have to turn up the gain too much on the audio mixer.
Next, we can connect the XLR output of the microphone
to the XLR input on the audio mixer.
We prefer using these Canare XLR cables.
They're super high quality, star-quad studio cables
and they come in a variety of colors.
Okay, so we connected it.
Next, we can set up the level.
What we're gonna do here is, there's no master fader.
There's no steps that we need to do beforehand.
We just turn up the level for the microphone.
We're gonna turn it right up
to this kind of darker hash line there,
right kind of in the middle, for the fader.
We can ignore the screen for now.
Now, the reason I don't turn this up all the way
is because we want to set this microphone up
so we have some dynamic range to work with.
If our podcast guest gets a little quieter,
we want the headroom here to be able to turn them up.
We wanna have it kind of here
so we can turn 'em down or up and react to the podcast.
The worst thing that you can do
is start your podcast like that,
because if people get quieter,
you're kind of out of options.
So, we are gonna set up our faders here.
Set up our channels with the fader right in the middle.
Next, we can select this pink button for channel number one.
We're gonna go to microphone,
and we're gonna select dynamic.
The Shure MV7 is a dynamic microphone.
It is not a condenser microphone.
There is one time that you might want
to use the condenser setting with the Shure MV7,
and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.
Next, we're gonna go to level.
Now, the goal here is to set up the microphone
with enough level that you hit the sweet spot there
without it hitting 40.
Once you go over 40, the preamp can get really noisy,
really hissy, and really distracting
in your podcast recording.
I'm gonna go quiet and turn it all the way up to 50,
just so you can hear that hiss noise come in.
(hissing noise)
Okay, so aside from the plane flying overhead,
you should be able to hear that hiss noise come in,
especially between 45 and 50.
So, that's when we really, really don't want
to exceed that limit.
That's when you might consider something
like a cloud lifter.
So, we're gonna show you two different ways
to set up the level on this microphone.
The first way, is simply to increase the level, like this.
Probably around 40, I think looks good.
And we're right,
you can tell I'm talking really comfortably,
I'm not pushing it.
I'm not really quiet.
I'm comfortably moving a little bit around the microphone
and you can tell that I'm remaining right in the sweet spot
of the level meter for the RODECaster Pro.
Now, if you are not as loud as me, that's no problem,
but we do need to find a way to make it a little bit louder.
In my mind, there's no point going over 40,
'cause it gets really hissy.
So, it's kind of counterproductive.
It will degrade the quality of your podcast, in my opinion.
So, we do need to connect a cloud lifter.
So option one, is increasing the level to 40.
Option two, is trying to connect something
like the cloud lifter.
I'm gonna turn the level down now.
So, you're listening to the lab mic again.
Now, a cloud lifter is a type of inline preamp.
There's many, many other versions
of the cloud lifter from other companies.
We'll put some links down in the description below.
But basically what this does,
is it will trade about 25 decibels of clean gain
in exchange for phantom power.
Now, the Shure MV7 is a dynamic microphone,
so it does not require phantom power.
So, we can take the phantom power out of this mixer,
for the cloud lifter,
to give more clean gain for the microphone.
So, we're gonna do that now.
We can unplug the XLR cable
and plug it into the cloud lifter.
So, right now, we have an XLR cable
coming from the back of the microphone
and into the cloud lifter.
Next, we obviously need to connect the cloud lifter
to our audio mixer.
So, we're gonna take the XLR cable.
Connect it to the cloud lifter.
This is the same type of cable that we used before,
same brand and everything,
just a different color to help keep us organized.
If you're really being proactive,
I love doing, like, I'd get a pink cable for channel one,
a green cable for channel two, blue and so on.
Helps keep you organized when you're making your runs.
I think it looks cool.
Some people prefer black, but it's completely up to you.
So, now that we've reconnected this XLR cable here,
you can see that we have no level.
That's because, like I said,
this cloud lifter needs phantom power.
So, there's two ways that we can turn it on.
We can turn on the phantom power switch there,
and you can see that now we have tons of level,
or we can go back, go to, okay, let's go to level here.
We'll turn off the phantom power that we just turned on.
We'll go back, we'll go to microphone,
and you can select condenser.
Now, if we go back to level,
you'll see phantom power is turned on.
So, that's what the condenser mode does.
It basically just turns phantom power on.
Next we can increase the level, something like 25, 24,
try 26,
27, 28,
28.
I think 28's good.
You can see I'm right there,
in the middle of the green meter.
I think this is a great level.
So, using something like the cloud lifter
will give you more gains.
If you are soft-spoken, this would be helpful for you.
I think 90% of people could get by with the Shure MV7
and no cloud lifter or inline preamp.
I think the RODECaster Pro has enough gain built in,
but I did want to show it just for the purposes
of making this video complete.
So, now we have our level all set up.
Okay, I've gotta bring this up.
So, now you can hear it.
So, now we're no longer hearing the lab mic.
You're hearing the RODECaster pro.
Next, let's go to the audio processing.
So, what does the compressor do?
The compressor will narrow the dynamic range
of this microphone.
What that means is, it kind of auto-mixes for you in a way.
It'll take your quieter moments,
make them a little bit louder.
It'll take your louder moments,
and apply a compression ratio and squish it down.
So, it really narrows the volume range of the microphone.
Now, it can make your microphone sound a little robotic.
It can take a little bit of emotion out of the presenter.
So, you don't want to do it to everybody,
but some people it works really well.
So, I'm gonna turn it on there.
Next, we have the high pass filter.
Basically, what the high pass filter does,
I'll turn it on right now,
is it does a low end roll off
somewhere between 80 and 120 hertz.
Basically, what it's trying to do is,
it'll take your microphone
and remove it from everybody's subwoofer.
There's nothing really useful
down in those lower frequencies between 80 and 120 hertz.
So this will roll off those frequencies, clean it up.
People are listening to your podcast in the car.
Now, their subwoofers aren't rumbling.
I think we can all agree that that's probably a good thing
during a podcast.
Or if people are listening at their desk
and they have a subwoofer,
basically, just removes it outta there,
cleans it up a little bit,
which I think is a good thing for almost any vocal mic.
Next, we have a de-esser.
Exactly what it sounds like.
If you really enunciate the esses, if you have a lisp,
if you, you know, have those sibilant frequencies a lot,
it can make your podcast a lot easier to listen to.
So, I like having that on.
Next, we have the noise gate.
Basically, what the noise gate does
is it will automatically mute your microphone
when you're not speaking into it.
I recommend this for group podcasts of three or four people.
But if you're a single person podcast, a one person podcast,
it's probably not the best thing to have.
I can often hear it clicking in and out
and it's more distracting than it's worth.
That being said, if you do have a lot of background noise,
like family or friends that you live with,
roommates, anything like that,
if you have fan noise, an air conditioner,
it can clean up the sound of your podcast a little bit.
It's something that you'll wanna test
and experiment with a little bit.
I'll turn it on now.
So, there you can hear it kind of clicking out
when I stop speaking,
and then it opens up again when I start speaking.
Sometimes it can sound all right and natural,
but for a one-person talking head video like this one,
I prefer to have it turned off.
Next, we have the aural exciter.
This is good if you have somebody that's really dry,
maybe they just have a flat kind of response.
This will boost the upper frequencies
and kind liven it up a bit.
But, if you do turn it on for the wrong person,
it'll make it sound really grating and kind of irritating.
So, you don't want to use this by default.
Just if somebody sounds a little muddy,
that's when I would use the aural exciter,
if that makes sense.
I'm gonna turn it on now, so you can hear what I'm saying.
Now, you might not hear the difference here
if you're not wearing headphones.
Even if you're just using nice studio speakers
it can be lost on some people
and some people's sound systems.
But for me, in these headphones,
it does sound quite a bit brighter
on those upper frequencies,
and it's definitely not something I would use on everyone.
Next, we have the opposite of the aural exciter.
We have the big bottom.
This is good if somebody's just lacking presence
in your podcast.
Maybe you have three guests
that all have a ton of presence,
or maybe you could describe them as being boisterous,
and you have one guest that is not.
This can add a little bit more presence
on those lower frequencies.
In my opinion, if you're gonna turn on
the big bottom for somebody,
you should probably roll off the high pass filter
and let those work together.
There's no point chopping some lower frequencies
with the high pass filter,
and then trying to re-accentuate them with the big bottom.
So, that's something to consider.
Those two would work against each other there.
So you either want one on or one off,
or one on and the other one off.
I'm gonna turn the big bottom off,
and I'm gonna turn the high pass filter back on.
Next, in the voice options, we have the voice tone.
These are, kind of, easy EQ settings.
If somebody has a deep, medium, or high voice.
Generally speaking, I always leave this on medium
unless there's something really specific
that I'm trying to experiment with or trying to achieve.
Next, we have the strength.
My understanding of the voice strength here,
is that this will, kind of, change some of the parameters
of the compressor in the previous step.
So, if somebody's really soft and really quiet,
maybe it'll add a little bit more makeup gain
to that compressor.
And, if somebody has a really strong,
kind of, overtaking every time they open their mouth,
it'll add more, you know, compression ratio
or lower the threshold of the compressor,
to try and make all the guests in your podcast
play a little bit nicer together.
So, that's a tool that you can use
if you are using compression on all the channels.
So, that's really all the mic settings
that you have to work with, with the Shure MV7.
So, you would continue to go down the channels from here
and set up your other microphones.
One thing to keep in mind here, is that the level,
and some of these settings,
really do need to be calibrated per guest.
You cannot simply copy/paste the settings
from one guest to another.
All of your guests are unique, and they all have
their own characteristics with the microphone.
So it is important that you go through this process.
Take 30 seconds with each guest, give them a quick test,
make sure the level is set appropriately.
Make sure their voice sounds the way that you want it to,
and that you edit some of these parameters
to, kind of, dial them in and tune each guest
so they all blend nicely within your podcast.
I hope this video has been helpful.
If you have any questions,
if there's something I didn't cover for you,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
Again, if you are looking for pricing respects,
we do have a ton of helpful links for you
down in the description below.
And, if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.