the Audio Technica AT2040 is marketed as a professional broadcast or podcast microphone
and it's fairly affordable for that type of microphone now i've been a professional
broadcaster for the last 14 years maybe a little longer plus i've done podcasts and other content
creation types of things so i wanted to check this out and hear what it sounds like on my voice and
i know this microphone is intended as more of a vocal microphone for podcasts and broadcast
but i am going to test it out on acoustic guitar because sometimes we have performers who come in
and sometimes we just want to record acoustic and we just use what we have so i will try that out a
little later on i'm Zane welcome to Audio Tech TV I've included a link down in the description
so you can check out more information on the Audio Technica AT2040 and see the latest pricing
the last time i checked it was $99 which is very affordable for this type of microphone this video
is sponsored by Sweetwater they sent over this microphone so I could check it out and if you
need anything for your home studio head over to Sweetwater they have all kinds of microphones
audio interfaces guitars pretty much anything you could need for your home studio they have it
and they ship very quickly even to Canada where I am it's always super quick and they even have
payment plans if you need that sort of thing now you can see i've been talking into the
Audio Technica AT2040 this whole time i haven't done any sort of effects on here or anything what
you're hearing is the raw audio but i am going to have to boost the levels because they are a
little low and i'm going to get into that in just a little bit so the Audio Technica AT2040 is a
dynamic microphone so you're not going to need phantom power but what you will need is a whole
lot of gain these microphones require lots of gain i don't just mean this microphone i mean broadcast
mics in general they always require tons of gain so i have this connected to a Focusrite Scarlett
Solo 3rd gen audio interface because those are pretty much the most popular audio interfaces
out there the Scarlett series and i wanted to show you what it sounds like in there but i have the
microphone gain on that pretty much cranked all the way i think it's like a notch back
from being full just because there was a little noise in the preamp on there
now what i typically do with my dynamic microphones is i put something on there like
a Cloud Lifter or a fethead or even external mic preamp to get some more gain in there so
that way we can bring those levels up and it'll sound decent however i was playing around with
this a little bit and i increased the levels on my software and the quality was nice and clean
so even though i had to crank the levels up in the software it still sounded clean now i have
this pop filter in front of it i'm going to take it down and we'll see how this handles plosives
pizza pop pop filter pizza pizza pop all right let's put this back on pizza pop filter pip
there's a bunch of P's for you and I'm listening to it in the headphones
and i did hear a difference there but most of the time we're not going to be
extremely blowing up our P's like that you'd be talking normally and it probably could handle some
of the normal P's but you should probably get a pop filter in front of it anyway it does protect
the microphone from the moisture of speaking so one thing with broadcast microphones is they're
supposed to reject sounds from the sides and from the rear so i'm just going to go around
to the side here and talk into it this is what it sounds like from the right side of the microphone
here i am at the back of the microphone sorry about the back of my head but there you go
and again here i am at the front i'll go to this side so you can hear this side
it's pretty much the same as the other side there you go that is the mic and i do have a loud fan
that's on my studio lighting it's pretty loud and also i have my computer running that has a
fan in it that's fairly loud and i'm not hearing it in the headphones so i think it is rejecting
some of that kind of noise so i'm just going to pause for a second to hear what it's picking up
i think i am hearing something in there but that could be from the preamp noise because
i have the preamp cranked so loud so when i was going to school for radio and working
in radio for all of these years we've always had performers stop by and in small markets
you only have your broadcast microphones to record them with so we just would mic up their
acoustic guitar and their vocals using a broadcast microphone so i'm going to grab my acoustic guitar
and we'll give this a listen all right so usually when we mic up a performer we have the microphone
aimed more at the voice so the guitar is kind of more in the background
let's just play this guitar and hear what this sounds like at this level right here
all right this is singing and playing guitar into the AT2040 mic
just listening to it in the headphones that actually sounds pretty good it has a nice
crisp sound to the acoustic guitar
yeah that sounds pretty good for a broadcast microphone i'm pretty impressed with that
i'm just gonna put this away now all right so now i just want to test what it sounds like if
i were to get right up on this microphone because broadcasters love to get right on
top of the microphone it gives them that big voice so let's just hear what that sounds like
so yeah this is what it sounds like when you're right on top of the microphone let's do an
announcer break here you've been listening to the best rock station ever that was Nickelback coming
up we've got Bare Naked Ladies and more Nickelback if you're Canadian you'll understand that joke
so yeah this is going right up on top of the microphone which broadcasters love to do and
in my headphones it does sound really nice so if i go back to where i would typically
talk into the microphone which is about this distance here i can tell there's a huge level
difference but if i get right up on it it has that nice bassy sound to it and one of the
things that i'm noticing with this microphone it kind of has like a EQ tuning built into it
so if you're new to podcasting or broadcasting and you're not familiar with EQ or anything like that
this has like a built-in EQ that sounds really good on voice so now let's look at some of the
pros and cons of the Audio Technica AT2040 so one of the pros is what I was just talking
about it has that sort of eq tuning in there if you're just new to podcasting and broadcasting
you want a microphone that you can just set up and speak into this could be that microphone you're
not going to have to worry about really EQ'ing or anything like that this is going to sound good
just like that and if you get right up on top of the microphone you may not even need to worry
about getting one of those preamps or cloud lifter it sounds like the levels are pretty good when
you're right on top of it so you could use it in a live situation if you were to get right on top of
it like that another pro of the AT2040 is i think it sounded pretty good on the acoustic guitar so
if you do plan on having performers come in and do a little acoustic number for you it should sound
alright and capture that quite nicely and another pro is of course the price $99 for a
broadcast microphone of this quality is actually pretty good this microphone sounds better than
some more expensive broadcast microphones that are out there and my final pro here is not really
about how it sounds it's more about how it looks it is a decent looking microphone so if you're
using this in like a video podcast or if you are using it in broadcast and you have video on you
it is a decent looking mic it's kind of stubby it doesn't take up a lot of space and it has a
really nice look to it which brings me now to the negatives and the biggest negative here and
it's not just this microphone it's all dynamic microphones is it does require a lot of gain so
that is the biggest negative i wouldn't really say it's a deal breaker because if you get another
broadcast microphone you're going to have the same issues and another negative might be one
of the things i said was a positive it does sort of have that EQ tuning in there and if you don't
like that EQ tuning you're kind of stuck with it when you record with this and you're going
to have to adjust things to your liking so that could be a negative other than that i don't know
this is a decent $99 broadcast microphone if i was setting up a podcast or even broadcast and this
was the microphone that i was given i wouldn't be upset with it this is a decent microphone
i've tried some microphones that are a little bit more expensive or even double the price
and they don't sound as good as this now check out the review i did of the Focusrite Scarlett
Solo 3rd Gen by clicking the video on the screen and you can see what that thing's all about if you
liked this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this
thank you so much for watching for Audio Tech TV I'm Zane keep creating and we'll talk soon