Today, I'm going to make a video that Curtis Judd just made,
but probably a slightly worse version. Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone and I would
have got away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!
So first things first, I need to acknowledge
that Curtis Judd literally just posted a video
very similar to this idea. I was planning on doing this
before CES, but he beat me to it, fair and square,
but I'm going to make this video anyway,
because a lot of you have been asking for an update
based on my series of microphone testing
that I've been doing for the last few months
trying to find, I don't want to say,
"the perfect microphone", but the best microphone
for me, for the money in the sub-$500 category
for recording interior dialogue like this
and how it sounds on my voice, very specific.
So, I'm going to share my experiences with you
with the different mics that I've tested,
and hopefully some part of that will be useful to you
if you're shopping for microphone as well.
We're not going into the above $500 microphones,
because again, I was trying to win
in that sub-$500 category, and some of these mics
are different patterns and different purposes,
but I was trying them all just to see, you know,
what might work best in here. Now right now,
you're listening to the Oktava MK-012,
which, spoiler alert, I think, is my favourite of the lot,
and I've only had it for a couple of days
but I've really been enjoying it so far.
And all the mics, we're going to go through
and plug all the mics in as I go over this video
and I'll show you up top somewhere what mic
we're listening to at the time.
Normally, I would have this just out of frame
but I kind of wanted to have in the frame both
so I could remind myself what mic label to put up,
and also so you can see a little bit of how it looks.
Usually, it'd be just, maybe, two inches higher than this,
though. This is a hypercardioid capsule
that I have on, but it has interchangeable capsules.
It comes in this box here. I guess, before I go further,
I should tell you that for all of these,
we're going to be running the same XLR cable
into the Zoom F6 recorder, and I can tell you
the gain settings if you want to know.
We can talk about, maybe, how the sensitivity changes
between them, but they're all going to be recorded
exactly the same way, and then all I'm going to do
to them is normalize them to the same level in post,
no other processing, EQ effects, anything like that.
So, you should get a pretty, pretty, I don't know,
adequate comparison anyway. Now, with the Oktava,
this is a Russian-made microphone that I had to order.
I ordered mine from, uh, from a German website
'cause it was, sort of, the best bang for buck
after conversion, but expect to pay somewhere
between 200-300 US dollars depend--
you know, after customs and duties and stuff,
depending on where you order it from.
Now, this one comes in this nice, little box
and inside, this is the film kit or the movie kit edition,
which comes with the Hypercardioid capsule
as well as a little high pass filter option.
There's other ones that come with different capsules
and you can spend a lot more money if you want to get,
like, a dual kit with all the capsules,
but I just got the one here.
I also have a little foam muff for it,
and the little microphone holder is the one
that we're using right now, and the price wasn't too bad.
It definitely performs, I would say,
better than its price based on
some of the other microphones here.
Now, just to set the stage a little bit more,
I'll tell you a little bit more about what I was looking for,
I guess, my wish list for a microphone
in this sub-$500 category. First off, I'm shooting interior.
I have a room that's, uh, not ideal, although,
if you've watched my recent video, I treated it heavily
so it sounds a lot better in here than it did before.
It actually sounds pretty dry in here, which is nice,
and my waveforms have improved
since treating the room. They're very consistent now,
with a lot fewer transients that must have been
bouncing around and doing some weird, warbly stuff.
Also, I'm mainly just recording my voice, almost entirely.
Now, my voice, I can tell you how it naturally sounds
because the microphones might sound
a little bit different, but I do have a rather low voice
and it can be boom-y at times, and so I generally
don't look for a microphone that tries to boost
the low end because it doesn't do many any favours.
With certain voices, you might want that
because it'll make feel warmer.
For me, often, I almost need a nice mid, uh, the mid range
needs to be nice for a microphone for me, because
otherwise it can sound a little muddy and nasally on me.
And in the high ends there, I guess they depend.
Some of these mics, I find, a little bit too much
on the high end, but the Oktava, I think,
is a nice balance because I like what it's doing in the mids.
It does tend to be a little bit friendly towards the bass
but I don't mind it at all, unlike some of the other mics.
I think that's pretty much it for this microphone.
This is going to be a very high level video.
We're not gonna go too deep into any of these
microphones just because it would take forever,
and again, I'll leave that to Curtis Judd.
Go watch his video if you haven't, it's excellent.
I'll put a link to it in the description.
He covers a lot of other categories of mics as well.
But yeah, I think this is probably my favourite one
of the microphones that I've tested over
the last few months, but now, I will switch it out
to another microphone and we can listen
to that one and talk about its pros and cons.
Before we switch though I'll just read you a quick
sentence so that we can have something to compare
at the end, a sort of quick fire comparison, because I know
that it can be tough to hear the different microphones
from the beginning at the end, so rather than jumping
around through timestamps, at the end of this video,
I'll just give you all the mics compared with the same sentence.
"The microphone must be plugged into a source capable
of providing 48V phantom power from a balanced input
with resistance of not less than 1 kiloohm
via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable,
wired in accordance with the current EU
or international safety standard."
Okay, so now you're listening to the RØDE NT5.
Now, I picked up this mic originally
because I thought it would be a better solution
than the Samson C02, which I have here,
which I've been using for long time in my videos
but they have quite a bit of self noise,
and so I was basically hoping to try and spend a little bit
more money and get a noiseless Samson C02,
and while the RØDE NT5 can be quite good
for certain types of recordings, it wasn't quite that,
a noiseless Samson C02. Both of these mics are listed
as a cardioid pickup pattern,
although there are some discrepancies
with the Samson C02. Let me show you something
on one of these microphones.
So, if you go on their website,
it says that it's a cardioid pattern,
but if you look on the mic itself, you can see right here
that the symbol is not a cardioid.
This is either, sort of,
like a hyper or supercardioid pattern
and if you actually look at the pattern that they provide
in their datasheet, it takes on a bit more
of a directional profile than what you would see
on the RØDE. And so, what I found
when using these two is that while the RØDE
was generally a lot better for noise, like,
a lot better self-noise performance than the Samson,
it was picking up more of the room
and it was getting a bit more of that
sort of reverberance and echo, and I also found
that there was areas where there was a bit more boom-y.
Remember I said I wanted that clear, kind of, mid end?
I found that the RØDE had a bit of, bit more bass,
but then also I found the highs went, kind of,
way up to the point that they were getting, kind of,
sharp and brittle sounding. And you'll probably be able
to hear this, maybe, now and if not,
then in the comparison at the end, but it just,
it was borderline harsh on my voice, which surprised me.
When I had to choose between it and the Samson,
it was choosing it because I did find the noise
on the Samson to be a bit bothersome.
I usually was using noise reduction,
but by the time I took the noise reduction off
because it was so aggressive, you could hear that,
sort of, ramp up and ramp out with the release
of the noise reduction, which I didn't really like,
kind of those moments before talking how you can hear
the noise reduction come in and out of play.
And so with the RØDE, I didn't have that,
and so I ended up using that even though I did find it
a little bit brittle and a little bit boom-y.
But that's why I kept looking for another mic.
So, I think that's probably enough for the RØDE NT5.
This one costs $219 US.
It's probably a little bit cheaper than the Oktava
once you factor in the fees of getting it to you,
but similarly priced, and for those two,
I definitely prefer the Oktava.
[audio tinnier] Okay, so now you're listening to
the Samson C02, which, I'm assuming that right away
you're going to hear that the noise floor is probably
a bit higher. And before I forget, for the RØDE NT5,
what you get for your $220 US is it comes in
this leather case, and inside you get the microphone holder
as well as a little foam windscreen
The Samson C02, which I think you can only get
in this matched pair is just over $100,
like, $115 for both mics, so this is definitely
the cheapest possible mic you can get,
and it sounds pretty darned good for the money.
There's just two things that I don't like about it.
The first one is, like I said,
the self-noise is quite a bit higher
and it's at a frequency that I find mixes in.
It's not like it's really, really low and you can just,
sort of, get rid of it. It mixes in and it does affect
your audio when you remove the noise.
Secondly, you might have noticed right away,
especially when in comparison to the RØDE,
is that this one tends to focus more on the medium
to high end and doesn't have as much of that low end,
which I liked when my room was less treated,
because it was, kind of, ignoring some of that boom
that comes from my voice, that comes from, you know,
just these low waves bouncing around.
So, it was better for that
and I did find that when you're in, kind of,
a sloppy environment, that sometimes
the Samson's actually a really good bet, for under $500,
because a little bit of noise reduction,
it's already removing some of the stuff you don't like,
and a little bit of noise reduction
goes a long way, if you're okay with that...
attack and release of the noise reduction thing.
Also, talking about that pickup pattern,
I did find that it was more targeted when I switched from
the Samson to the RØDE, I was, like, "Oh, I'm hearing
a lot more of the room." You might notice--
it might be harder now that the room's treated--
but you might notice that the Samson isn't picking up
as much of the room so regardless of the fact
that they say it's a cardioid, it's definitely more targeted,
closer I found, to the Oktava's Hypercardioid capsule
is similar to what I was getting here.
[audio muffled] Okay, now we're onto the Deity S-Mic 2S,
which is a short, very short shotgun microphone.
And I was testing this one out to see if it would help.
Generally, mics like these aren't what you would
go for indoor because, you know,
you focus in on weird phase issues and you get
that garbling stuff, potentially, and they're better
for outdoor and that is true for this microphone,
I did like it better outdoor than indoor.
But, I thought it was worth a try to see
if maybe that would solve some of the problems that
I was having a few months ago when it first came out,
and I ended up not using it for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I find that Deity mics,
and I think that's pretty consistent throughout the ones
that we're going to show as far as the shotguns ones,
tend to hone in a little bit on that lower frequency
that I was talking about and for me,
I find that they make my voice a little bit
too bottom heavy and a little bit too boom-y,
so if you potentially have a boom-y voice like me,
this might not be a great mic for you, but if you don't,
then as Curtis Judd pointed out,
it's a pretty great little option for somebody
who might need to buy only one mic
and use it for both indoor and outdoor,
this is a pretty good, versatile choice.
And I do like a lot of things about the microphone,
the value, the build, the accessories.
You get, this is the case you get,
you get this nice little pelican case, get the holder,
you get the nice little windscreen with it
and the total price for this kit is $319 US on B&H right now.
So I think it's a really great little value.
[clearer audio] Okay, so now we're listening
to the Deity V-Mic D3 Pro, and I have the gain knobs set
to about 5.5-6 to get similar levels on the Zoom F6,
so there's the answer to what I was talking about.
It can go all the way up to ten on this one,
but about 5.5-6 would be similar to the other mics
that we've looked at. Now, I wanted to show you
this thing that I have dangling here,
I don't want to touch it in case it picks up noise,
but the Deity V-Mic D3 Pro location kit,
which we'll also talk about, and I think you can buy
this thing separately, but they have this,
uh, 3.5mm XLR adapter and, apparently,
it gives you a balances signal if you run it
to an XLR cable. So basically what I'm doing now,
I should have a balanced out.
Now, with this thing, I'm able to use
the same XLR cable and plug it into the Zoom F6,
but we can also use this on other microphones,
which I'm going to use when I use the RØDE.
I just don't think that we're going to get a balanced
output out of the RØDE because I believe
the microphone has to support that as well.
Now, speaking of the different kits,
there are a couple of options, like I said.
so this is your basic kit would be this one.
You would get the cord that I'm using up there now.
The coiled cable as well as the shock mount,
the windscreen and a charging cable for USB
and this is the, this is the D3 Pro kit.
Now, there's also a location kit which comes
with that XLR adapter. This is the little clip
that comes on it, but I take it off 'cause...
I find it more convenient. And then you get, uh,
Pistol grip shock mount that you can use,
attach it to a boom pole and it's got a smart cabling
option because you can run the cables through here
and then through here and then that little XLR adapter
goes in here. And it's pretty good.
Uh, I'm really happy with the location kit.
Now, there are a couple things that I didn't love
about the D3 Pro which I'll talk about,
especially in comparison to the RØDE VideoMic NTG,
but the main thing for me again is that it's got the same,
sort of, bass-y problem as the S-Mic 2S has for me
on my voice. I don't think it's quite as pronounced
as it is on the S-Mic 2S, but it's still there.
Now, as far as the technical features of it, of things
that I liked and didn't like, uh, I liked a lot of things.
I like how it charges over USB-C, I like the output port,
I like that it has the auto on/off feature,
it's got a 75 Hz and a 150 Hz high pass filter
and I love the step-less gain knob.
And they're--Deity's definitely the one that, sort of,
pioneered that design with the step-less gain knob
and all of these features, and I think they did a really,
really great job with it. And I, this was the mic
that I was recommending for, sort of, best on-camera
shotgun mic despite the fact that I didn't love it
on my voice, indoors because it's probably not
your best indoor mic. Works well for some people
but outdoor, it sounded great
and that's really where this microphone shines.
This Pro kit is $199,
and if you get the location kit combo
with all these things, it's $288, but that price
can vary a little bit depending on where you get it.
Okay, so now you're listening
to the RØDE VideoMic NTG and I have the gain knob set
to between six and seven, so a little bit louder
than on the Deity V-Mic D3 Pro, but the RØDE gain knob
goes all the way up to 15. Now, I don't think the curve
of the knob are exactly the same on the Deity
and the RØDE, but I do think that you still
get a little bit more gain out of the RØDE's knob on max
versus the Deity's. There are a few more features
on the RØDE Mic that I like, and like I said,
some improvements over the Deity in terms
of the overall kit. This is basically what you get.
This, and a cable. I'm using the cable right now,
but, uh, the Deity comes with a case, the RØDE does not,
they both come with very similar shock mounts.
The RØDE's shock mount has a little cable manager on it
which is nice and does a good job.
They both have the foam windscreen
and then they both have very similar features
on their build.
That's a funny sound. [whistling squeaks]
So, first off, the big one for me was that output
that I was talking about. So, they both have
that smart output that's capable of on and off,
but the RØDE implementation is a bit better.
First of all, the RØDE allows you to turn the mic on
and off, and it's engaged, where the Deity you can
only really turn it into standby and then it has to detect
the power from the source in order for it to work.
This causes problems with certain devices
like if you plug it into, I believe, the Blackmagic camera
or, like, an Atomos recorder if they don't give
that three volt signal or whatever it is,
the, I don't know why I'm pointing up,
the Deity will never engage, it won't turn on,
and so you have a problem. But this one,
because you turn it on manually by holding the button,
it does work with the Atomos recorder.
So that right there, which might not be important
for a lot of people, but for me that makes this mic
a lot more useful than the Deity
because it integrates better with my hardware,
and it also allows me to use it with some, again,
dumber devices that don't send the correct signal
to the Deity-- I don't know why I keep pointing up,
that's the RØDE mic-- I have two of these
and I have two of the Deity, the Deity's over there.
It's more compatible for me, and, I mean
that makes your money go farther, right?
Second of all, it does have a USB option
where you can use it as USB mic which is great
if you want a flexible mic that you can also use
for streaming or something and be able to monitor,
because when you use the USB port,
you can then plug your headphones into the regular
output jack and now you can monitor your headphones
and then the gain knob works as a volume control
for your headphones, so it's pretty cool.
So if that's something you want to do, then you're going to get,
again, more value for your money by, you know,
using this microphone 'cause it has multiple purposes.
Now, when it comes to actually controlling it,
the one thing that I've noticed is that the on/off
seems a bit more advanced. These are small things probably
for the average, you know, person using it as, like,
an on-camera shotgun mic, but as soon as I plugged in,
so in this case, I didn't have to turn the mic on.
I said that I could turn it on, but I didn't have to.
As soon as I connected it to the Deity location XLR cable
thing, and because it was connected to the Zoom F6,
it just immediately turned on, and if I disconnect it,
within three or four seconds it turns off,
where the Deity, like I said, you have to turn it on
into standby mode and then provide power to it.
So that means, for me, the RØDE mic
is better if you were to forget something,
it, sort of, is a bit more stupid-proof
because it will just turn on and work, whereas the Deity,
you have to remember about the standby mode thing.
It has the same 75 and 150 Hz high pass filter that the--
Stop pointing up, Gerald-- that the Deity has,
but it also has a high frequency boost which is good
if you're going to put wind protection on,
'cause you can cut through it and still get some
of that high frequency back. And, it has the -20dB pad
and the safety channel that it had on the, I think,
the RØDE VideoMic Pro+. So the -20dB pad just lowers
the whole input by 20dB in case
you're recording something really hot
and then the safety channel separates the left and right
at two different volumes so one is recorded significantly
lower than the other one, so if you clip your one channel,
you can recover it with the other channel.
These are great features to have and then it also
has a clip warning beside it, which I like as well.
They basically took Deity's design
and then added their VideoMic Pro+ features
and then some extra stuff to make it, basically,
the ultimate single microphone.
But, my question for you is, is that okay?
is it okay to take a design like the Deity,
pretty much note for note and then just add a couple
of your own twists on it? Or do you need to completely
redo it for you to think that's ethical development?
I'm not sure exactly how I feel,
maybe just because I like Deity a lot
and I don't want to see somebody kind of get knocked
off, but to me, this is a great mic. This is the best mic,
I would say, best on-camera shotgun mic
that you can get right now, but it only exists
because of stuff that Deity's done. I don't know.
No real strong opinion here, I guess I just wanted
to have the conversation so let me know
in the comments what you think about that whole,
the ethics of, of, you know, iteration after
a previous device so closely resembling the one
that you're making now.
Now, as far as pricing, like I said,
you get basically just these things, this is the Deity cable,
but pretend that's the RØDE cable and it costs $249
so it costs more than the Deity but you're getting
a few more features than the Deity
so I think both microphones are fairly priced
for what they are. And I'll just read
that sound sample now. "The microphone must be
plugged into a source capable of providing
48V phantom power from a balanced input
with resistance of not less
than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[baser] "The microphone must be plugged
into a source capable of providing 48V phantom power
from a balanced input with resistance
of not less than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[shriller] "The microphone must be plugged
into a source capable of providing 48V phantom power
from a balanced input with resistance of not less
than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[clean tonal] "The microphone must be plugged
into a source capable of providing 48V phantom power
from a balanced input with resistance
of not less than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[sharp] "The microphone must be plugged
into a source capable of providing 48V phantom power
from a balanced input with resistance
of not less than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[clear audio] "The microphone must be plugged
into a source capable of providing 48V phantom power
from a balanced input with resistance
of not less than 1 kiloohm via 3 pin to 3 pin XLR cable."
[beeping] Uh, pretty good [fumbling]
And use this. Stop it.
Now my stomach's making noise too. [grumbling]
What is that? Get off me! What is this?
By making, uh, essential, slight upgrade--
did I spit all over my case?
This has been a sloppy video.
A pretty darned good value microphone--
[blowing]
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining.
And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
well then maybe this will change your mind.
[whistling hum] Alright, I'm done.