- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, I wanna show you the difference
between an XLR to USB cable like this one
and an audio interface.
Right now I have the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface,
but there's a whole bunch
of different audio interfaces out there.
But this video is gonna compare
the general concepts between these two.
To help make those comparisons,
we have three different microphones here.
We have a condenser microphone,
we have a handheld dynamic microphone,
and we have a studio dynamic microphone.
So those three microphones all have kind of different needs
from an interface that interacts with your computer.
And we'll show you what those needs are
as we get to the demo portion of this.
First let's talk about each of these devices by themselves.
We have the XLR to USB cable
which is a very simple plug and play.
It'll plug into any USB port and it goes straight to XLR.
The drivers auto install,
but it doesn't work for every microphone
and it's just a single input.
This also doesn't open up your computer
for things like headphone jacks
or monitoring or anything like that.
This is just a raw XLR to USB cable,
but it is quite inexpensive
and it works well for a lot of people
if they have simple requirements.
Next, we have an audio interface.
As you can see here, this one has two different inputs,
and both inputs will take XLR or quarter-inch.
You can get smaller units
that just have one input on it as well.
But with something like this, you gain volume control,
you get your own gain or volume knob on the front,
you get phantom power,
we'll explain what that means in a minute,
you have better monitoring options,
you can plug in a headphone jack
and adjust the volume of your headphones.
And on the back of the device,
you can plug in studio monitors or desk monitors
for you as well.
So this will handle all the audio in and out
for your computer.
It's a much more fully featured device,
but these are also a bit more expensive.
So that's something to keep in mind.
Now, for everything that you see in the video today,
we do have some links in the description below
so you can check out pricing or specs
and help to make some decisions.
But this video is just focused
on the features of both devices
and showing you how they work
with different types of microphones.
So first of all,
we're gonna connect this USB end of this XLR to USB cable
to the computer.
And we're gonna connect the other end
to our condenser microphone.
Now we'll open up our system preferences,
we'll select our audio settings
and select the USB sound device.
Now as we bring this microphone up to my mouth,
you can see here that it's both turned up to 100%,
and we're not getting any input level.
And that's because condenser microphones like this one
require external electricity.
They require 48 volts of phantom power
in order to just activate the microphone
to get any sound out of it whatsoever.
This XLR to USB cable
will not work on condenser microphones.
That's something very important to know
when you're making your decision
as to what solution to go with,
but we'll show you how it works with other microphones.
Next, we're gonna plug it
into a handheld dynamic microphone.
Plug it in there.
So again, you can see that our volume is up to 100%.
And we're getting kind of that eight or nine out of 10 mark,
depending on how I'm speaking into this microphone.
So this will work pretty well.
You can hear it now,
you can make up your decision as to how the quality is,
but I think that this works pretty well
if you have the ability to keep this microphone
fairly close to your face.
You can see here though
we are completely out of volume adjustment.
We cannot turn this volume up any further.
So that's something to consider with this option
and a microphone like this.
Next we have a studio dynamic microphone, the Shure SM7B.
So as you can see here, still were turned up to 100%
and we're only getting about 40 or 50%
out of the level of this microphone.
With a microphone like that, it's definitely not viable.
I think you're gonna need more output out of a microphone
for whatever you're working on
if you're recording or if you're doing video conferencing
or video streaming or anything like that,
I don't think this will give you
the power that you're looking for.
So next we're gonna connect
the audio interface to the computer.
This one takes USB-C,
plug that into the computer.
On the computer,
we'll select the Scarlett 2i2 USB device there,
we'll plug this XLR cable
into the bottom of our condenser microphone,
we'll plug the XLR into the front of our audio interface.
I'm gonna turn on phantom power here,
that's that power we were talking about
that will activate condenser microphones,
and I'll turn the volume down.
Now as I bring this up to my face, I'll turn the volume up.
And here we can see
that we're getting a nice healthy level there.
We're about nine out of 10 with this condenser microphone
coming into the computer.
So you can see there
that we are able to activate a condenser microphone.
So right away, this box will open up
a whole new class of microphones for you
so you don't have any limitations there.
I'm gonna turn off phantom power, turn the volume down,
then plug in our handheld dynamic microphone.
Now with the volume turned up here,
you can see that we're getting about the same volume level
that we were getting with the previous XLR to USB cable,
but we have more headroom on the volume knob
so we have the ability to turn it up even further
if we have to move the microphone farther away from our face
or something like that.
Next we have the studio dynamic microphone.
So here the volume is turned up all the way
but we are able to see that we got way more volume
with a microphone like this.
Now with a microphone like the Shure SM7B,
you can get even more
if you use something like a cloudlifter.
What a cloudlifter does
is it takes that phantom power from the audio interface
and it boosts the microphone even more.
So if you need an option like that,
the cloudlifter could be a good choice.
But you can't use a cloudlifter with the XLR to USB cable
because it doesn't have phantom power.
So that's something to consider.
This audio interface really does open up
a whole new world of possibilities
of what you can connect to your computer.
So as you can see there, they're two different devices.
The XLR to USB cable is very simple plug and play
and it works pretty well with handheld dynamic microphones.
So if you're looking to get
into handheld dynamic microphone,
a cable like this will offer you a cheap entry point
and a good upgrade path to something like an audio interface
then eventually you can get into a condenser microphone
or a Shure SM7B or other microphone like that
that has a higher gain requirement.
But if you wanna go for it right away,
there are all kinds of different price ranges
for an audio interface.
You don't just have to get the Scarlett 2i2,
a lot of people do this, it's probably the best selling
audio interface on the market right now.
It does have a lot of features, multiple inputs,
you can plug your guitar into this
and interact with your computer
with a guitar or amp simulator,
you can have multiple inputs, you can multitrack record,
it can do all kinds of cool things.
But you don't need one with all those bells and whistles
just to get started if you don't want to.
So there's some things to consider
when you're comparing these two devices.
If you have any questions
about anything that you've seen in this video,
please leave a comment in the comment section below.
Again, if you wanna see pricing or specs
on anything that you've seen,
please check out the description.
We have links to all these different things
so you can get more information.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
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