- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, I'm gonna show you
how to set up and connect the Shure MV7 hybrid microphone.
It's both USB and XLR with the GoXLR audio interface
or audio mixer for live streaming.
If you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video,
we do have links down in the description below
with current up-to-date pricing
from a variety of online retailers to make sure
that you are getting the best price possible.
If you are looking to purchase anything
that you see in this video.
Now, for the purposes of this video,
we are not going to be using the USB functionality
of the Shure MV7.
When you're using the GoXLR, it's assumed
that you do wanna be using the matrix mixing,
the built in effects and the other benefits of the GoXLR.
So in order to do that,
we're going to bypass what is built into the Shure MV7.
Also for the purposes of this video,
the audio mixer here is already set up
and connected to our computer.
So we can get right into the best settings possible
if you are looking to stream with this setup.
Now, before we set up
and connect this microphone to the audio mixer here,
we do wanna make sure that we have good mic placement.
This is the foundation to everything sounding correct.
You wanna make sure that you're about a fist away
from the Shure MV7 microphone.
If you're farther away,
you're gonna have to compensate
with more gain or more volume from the mixer
and that's gonna make the microphone sound super sensitive.
If you get too close to the microphone,
it's gonna sound boomy and poppy.
This microphone doesn't have amazing PLOS of protection.
So you will hear pops and smacks and that type of thing
if you do get too close.
Ideally you wanna position yourself
in such a way that you're about a fist away.
If you're looking for mic stand
or mic boom arm recommendations
to help accommodate getting that distance set correctly,
we do have links down in the description below,
but this is foundational to the rest
of the settings working correctly for you.
Now, that we got that out of the way,
the next thing that we're gonna do
is we're gonna connect the Shure MV7 to the GoXLR.
You do have two options
and I only recommend one of them.
I do not recommend that you use a cable like this
that goes XLR to eighth inch jack
and then use the alternate mic input
on the back of the GoXLR.
This will not give you the best sound possible.
For the best results, you wanna use
what the GoXLR is really good at,
has a really nice Midas Preamp inside it for the XLR port.
So I recommend using a proper
run of the mill XLR cable here, male to female.
You can get whatever length you want
that will suit your studio.
I happen to like using color cables
because it helps keep me organized
when I have a lot of cables going,
but you don't have to do that,
but you do just want a standard XLR cable.
So I'm gonna connect that to the back of the microphone.
And then I'm gonna connect the other end
to the back of the GoXLR.
Next, to make sure that I can hear everything properly,
I'm gonna put my headphones on here.
And then we're gonna go
into the mic settings of the GoXLR software
and we're gonna go into the mic setup window.
Here, we're gonna set the gain for the microphone.
For me, I usually set it somewhere around 50 dB
when I'm using the Shure MV7.
Again, do make sure that you have proper mic positioning
that you are within about a fist of the microphone
'cause that will make sure that the gain is set up properly.
As you watch this meter, as I'm speaking,
you can see that I'm on the high end of what it calls good.
Just from experience,
I know 49 to 50 dB works really well
for how I speak into the microphone.
So I'm gonna leave it there.
You should leave the microphone
on the dynamic setting here.
There's no benefit to switching this
to be a condenser setting.
What that does is it sends 48 volts
of phantom power to the Shure MV7.
It won't necessarily hurt the Shure MV7,
it's just completely unnecessary.
So it is best practice to leave it turned off
if you're not using it.
And again, we're not gonna recommend
that you use the 3.5 millimeter input
on the back of the GoXLR.
I believe you get much better results using the XLR Preamps.
We're gonna use the XLR cable.
We're gonna set this to dynamic 50 decibels of gain
then we're gonna hit Okay.
Okay. So now that we have the gain set up correctly,
we can talk about the noise gate.
This is the first setting that we have on the GoXLR.
The noise gate is a handy tool.
You can think of it as a way to automatically mute
and unmute the microphone for you.
The most famous use case for a noise gate
would be around something like a drum kit.
You have a single instrument that might have somewhere
between three and 12 microphones on it.
And what you want to happen is you want
when you hit the snare drum,
it unmutes the snare drum,
it captures that sound, it records it
and then it mutes the microphone again.
When you hit the floor tom,
it opens up that microphone for you,
but you don't want all the microphones hot all the time.
This allows for a lot more control in the sound
if it is automatically opening
and releasing the microphone
as you use each instrument around the drum kit.
Now, lately, this has been more common
in things like home studios
and this can be a helpful tool for muting the microphone
when you're not speaking into it.
If you have things like background noise,
fan noise, roommates,
anything like that can be distracting to your live stream.
The downside of using a noise gate
is that its muting and unmuting can sound unnatural
and sometimes it can be more distracting
than for what it's worth.
If you're doing a talking head video
like I'm doing right now,
where I'm just talking to the camera,
there's no background noise,
I recommend avoiding the use of a noise gate,
if at all possible.
A noise gate can be helpful, however,
if you are using it with something like game noise
'cause that game noise will help mask
the noise gate clicking in and out.
And then it'll just automatically unmute the microphone
for you when you're speaking into it
and then it's a very useful tool.
Now, I'm gonna show you what happens here
if you set the threshold too aggressively.
As you bring this up, you're gonna notice
that you can start to hear it click in and out
as I stop speaking.
And when I come back in, you can kind of notice
that some of the syllables are getting clipped.
This is a symptom of it being set too aggressively.
It's really choppy sounding,
but some of that can be mitigated
by masking it with game noise.
For me, I generally set this really relaxed.
I like the noise gate to break
the second I start speaking into the microphone.
Somewhere between minus 50 and minus 45 dB
is as aggressive as I would go.
Even then you can hear it clicking in and out right now
and it can be somewhat distracting.
Another way that you can help mitigate
that distracting clicking in and out
is by changing the attenuation of the noise gate.
The attenuation will control how much
of the microphone is getting muted
when the noise gate is gating
or holding the microphone back.
By setting this to 50%, it means that
when the noise gate is in,
when the microphone is muted,
then it's only muting or controlling 50% of the sound.
This means that when you break the noise gate
and the microphone opens up,
it sounds a little bit more natural
because it's only ever muting it down to 50%,
if that makes sense.
So something like the settings I have here,
minus 50 and 50% with the attack and release
at 10 milliseconds and 200 milliseconds, respectively,
is a really good setting that I would use for a live stream.
But like I said, the rest of this video is talking head.
I don't wanna hear the noise gate clicking in and out
as I talk about the other settings here.
So I am gonna turn that threshold down now,
but this is the setting I would recommend for you.
Next, we have the EQ.
There's a lot of different strategies
around EQing for live livestream.
There's a lot of YouTube videos on there
where they give some settings to bolster the low end
to make you sound really authoritative, like an AM radio.
That's not my preference
and that's not my strategy for live streaming.
I come at this from the perspective
of mixing sound sources together.
You want things to play nice together.
What that means to me is just like
if I was mixing a band on a stage,
I wanna EQ each sound source or each instrument
so you can sit back from the mix
and hear everything cleanly.
I can hear the kick drum separate from the bass guitar.
I can hear things like acoustic guitar,
piano and vocals all separately.
The volumes can all be set the same,
but when you stand back from the mix, it all sounds clear
because each instrument is in the frequency range
that it's supposed to be
and that provides it the most clarity.
So what we're gonna do with our EQ settings here,
instead of fattening the low end
to give that big bold radio voice,
we wanna make space for game noise
and we wanna make sure
that your voice is as clear as possible
with as little volume as possible.
This means that when you're speaking,
everybody on your live stream can hear you,
but it's all playing nice together
with the other sound sources on your stream.
So the first thing that we're gonna do here,
we're not gonna use this fine tune.
I can't get the fine tune settings the way I want.
So we're just gonna use the default settings here.
I'm gonna roll off 31.5 kilohertz all the way down
and 63 hertz down to about minus three.
This is basically building
what's known as a high pass filter.
We're taking this microphone
out of all of your audience's subwoofer
because there's nothing in the vocal range
that is appropriate for a subwoofer.
I would say 99% of all vocal mics
on any recording would have something like this added to it
because it just helps to clean up the mix.
And again, this is creating more space
for things like special effects and game noise
that might be accentuated down here.
So it will create a cleaner mix
for your audience that's listening online.
The next thing I would do is
if I had the perfect choice here,
I would lower 400 hertz to about minus three.
Even if when we enable the fine tune,
I can't sweep these to 400 hertz,
so I'm just gonna leave it off.
I'm gonna take 500 hertz down to about minus two.
This will open up the low mid.
Again, you should probably hear it now
if you're wearing headphones.
It's a pretty big change
that will open up the low mid of the voice,
create more clarity in the voice.
So as we're working through here,
we're gonna do things that make you stand out
amongst everything else on the live stream.
One kilohertz is fine.
I'm gonna boost two kilohertz by two
and four kilohertz by one.
Generally the clarity of your voice,
depending on your voice, is somewhere
between 1.5 kilohertz and three kilohertz.
This is where the main intelligibility,
the meat and potatoes of people hearing you be articulate
without being too sibilant or anything like that.
This is where you get clarity.
So it's really important that you boost those
because we want these frequencies of your voice
to stand out among the game noise
so you are clearly heard.
Next, we're gonna leave the eight K
and we're gonna chop the 16 kilohertz
all the way down to about minus four.
Again, in those really high sibilant frequencies,
there's no clarity, there's no benefit
from having vocal up in that 16 kilohertz.
And again, we're just creating more space.
Very high percentage of people
who can't even hear above 10, 12, 14K.
So by chopping this, we're just creating a bit more clarity
and we're focusing on the frequencies
that matter for your voice.
If you look at this EQ graph,
you're gonna notice
that this is very similar to popular microphones
like the Shure SM58 and other similar microphones
that are vocal only microphones.
That's for a reason.
This is a very standard, very popular EQ graph
that will help you accentuate the frame frequencies
that you need for your voice without,
while still chopping other frequencies
to make more room for other instruments.
That's exactly what we're doing.
Again, this is a very popular EQ graph
that you can look up in other places as well.
So that's what I'd recommend for the EQ.
Next, you have the compressor.
The compressor is a very helpful tool
for narrowing the dynamic range of your microphone.
What this means is
it will make your loudest moments a little bit quieter
and your quietest moments a little bit louder.
It makes it more predictable in the mix.
So if you get emotional dynamic,
if you rage quit, anything like that,
you're not actually gonna slam the stream
with a whole bunch of volume.
Your emotions should still come through.
You don't wanna squish it to take all the emotion out,
but you wanna make it more controlled
so you're not constantly having to mix the levels
on your audio mixer for your live stream.
You want it a bit more predictable.
So the first thing that we're gonna do here
is we're gonna lower the threshold to minus 15.
So if zero is peaking,
we're working in a range.
Right now, as you're listening to this,
we're probably in a range
of minus 20 to minus 12 where I'm recording.
That's when we set our gain to be 50 dB
that's a normal working volume.
So we want everything that goes above minus 15,
as we approach zero to where we would peak,
we want everything above minus 15 to get squished
at a compression ratio of 3.2 to one.
What this means is everything above minus 15
will get squashed three to one.
3.2 to one is a fairly middle setting.
You can go four to one, five to one, six to one
and you can go less as well.
If you under compress,
you're not gonna get the benefit of the compressor here.
It's not gonna be as helpful of a tool.
If you over compress,
you're gonna take all the emotion out.
You're basically, just putting a limiter on it
and you're squishing it
and it won't sound dynamic.
One of the worst things
that you can do to any vocal is over compress
because it does take the personality out of the microphone
and just makes it sound like a robot.
So you don't wanna do that.
So minus 15 and 3.2 to one are really good.
So we brought it down.
Now, I said that compressors
will also make your quieter moments a little bit louder.
So we need to compensate for this
by adding a little bit of makeup gain.
We're gonna add five decibels of makeup gain here.
So that's gonna add more gain to the whole channel.
It's gonna push us up into the compressor.
I really wish the GoXLR had a compression meter
so you could see the squish that's actively happening.
But what's basically happening
is this is pushing us up into the compressor
where we're constantly getting squished
at 3.2 to one to narrow that dynamic range.
Right now, you should hear the voice
get a little bit louder,
a little bit more predictable
and tightens that dynamic range,
again, just to make it more predictable in your live stream.
The next tool that we have here is the de esser.
If you have a lisp, a lot of mouth noise
or really sensitive microphone
or even depending on your EQ choices,
a de esser will generally make you
more pleasant to listen to.
I'm gonna change it here to be about 50%.
This will get rid of all the annoying
and grading frequencies in your live stream
to make it more palatable
for people to listen to you for prolonged periods of time.
This isn't as critical
if you're doing a 15, 20, 30 minute live stream,
but once you start going to an hour,
90 minutes, two hours or anything like that,
this will make it a lot nicer for people to listen to you
for more prolonged period of time.
So it's a very helpful tool.
Just like anything here, you can overdo it.
I like setting it right in the middle at 50%.
But if you are somebody that struggles with S sounds,
if you have a lisp, it's really helpful.
If you're not making those S sounds,
maybe you wanna leave it dialed back a little bit
because you do need some of those sibilant frequencies
to help you out to be more clear.
So I'm just gonna review everything that we've done here.
I'm gonna put the noise gate back
into where I recommend it
so you can hear the full concept here.
So the noise gate is set,
so it will actively break the second I start speaking
at minus 50 with an attenuation of 50%.
This means that when I'm not speaking,
it will only mute 50% of the background noise.
I don't recommend this
for talking head videos like this one,
I'm just turning it on right now so you can hear it.
Your EQ here, we have a built-in high pass filter
with a low mid cut.
We have a bump around the intelligibility frequencies
of two and four kilohertz.
That's as close as we can get on the GoXLR settings
and we have a chop at the end at 16 kilohertz.
We have a pretty conservative compressor set here.
That's just tightening up the dynamic range a little bit
without over compressing.
We're keeping it nice and loose.
Again, we do want that emotion
of the vocal to come through.
We don't want it too flat,
but we do wanna make it easier to mix
for a long period of time.
And if you're doing a live stream
for a long period of time,
this is one thing that the GoXLR has over the GoXLR mini
which is a de esser.
Again, super powerful,
makes it more pleasant to listen to
for a longer period of time.
I hope this video is helpful.
If you have any comments or questions
about anything that we covered,
please leave a comment down in the comments section below.
If you are watching this video
'cause you wanna make sure
you understand everything correctly
before you buy or now looking to buy,
we do have some links down in the description below
with everything that you see here
and some other recommended gear as well.
If you're looking at things like boom arms
or mic stands or anything like that,
please check those links for current up-to-date pricing.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
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Thank you for watching.
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