I have a secret to tell you.
What if I told you there was a whole industry of audio products, microphones and interfaces,
etc. that you never really see?
Literally, you don’t see it, where’s my microphone?
OH CRAP WHERE DID IT GO?
Video calling mics that sound great and say out of frame, microphones for board rooms
or conference meetings, teaching mics that suspend from the ceiling or are embedded into
the ceiling - tools that “just work” and are designed to be plugged in, out of sight,
and run for years with minimal to no maintenance.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well it’s not!
And it’s actually the subject of today’s video.
I’m EposVox, the Stram Professor, and today we’re talking about audio integrators.
These are companies that typically don’t make mass-market audio products you’d buy
off a store shelf, but something you’d pay an audio integrator to kit your your new office,
LAN party room, or conference room with.
These are tools that have been built to satisfy customers who never want to think about or
mess with the actual product themselves, and have something that will always work when
needed - and have been refined over and over to best suit those goals.
Or, they’re tools that have been made based on a specific need that hadn’t been implemented
before.
Do you need a boundary mic that sits flush with the desk to pick up your meeting?
Easy.
A podium mic for State of the Union speeches for an entire nation?
Done.
What about a retractable mic that drops down out of the ceiling when needed?
C’mon, what else you got?
These are companies you’d never really hear about at CES or NAB, but rather at shows like
InfoComm.
There’s some really awesome tech at play here, too.
If there’s an idea for how you want audio to be done that a conventional desktop microphone
isn’t doing, these are the people who can do it.
Just as I’ve been diving into the world of broadcast tech to see the innovations there,
I also wanted to see what the audio industry had to offer.
For this, I sat down and had a chat with ClockAudio - a small audio systems company based out
of the UK - with offices in Montreal and Singapore - headed up by former designers from some
pretty major audio companies.
In an era where most streaming microphone setups are all about giant microphones in
your face, RGB lighting and the like - I wanted to see what options there were for the businessman
or the minimalist.
And there’s far more than I had imagined.
For a little taste, ClockAudio sent out a nice kit consisting of their CUI-2 audio interface
and pre-amp, a gooseneck mic setup, and a few different mic capsules to take a look
at.
This particular setup is what you might see set up at a big conference room table, a podium,
or a desk where you don’t want big mic arms and giant mics just to get good audio.
The only issue with setting this up was… had to drill a hole in my desk!
Yes, many of these audio solutions are designed to elegantly fit into your environments as
if they were part of it.
THAT BEING SAID… before you get scared off, I have been told that ClockAudio is working
on an alternative solution that can just sit on your desk or otherwise not required drilling
specifically for the work-from-home crowd.
So if DIY-ing isn’t your thing, don’t worry, they’re on it.
Making new tools to fit new scenarios is literally their thing.
The timing was great, I was right in the middle of building my new desk at the new studio,
so a quick paddle bit through the MDF top makes a nice hole.
This particular kit fits in with a screw-post XLR connector that tightens with a nut on
the bottom of the table, with gaskets on both sides to help absorb any rumble or bumps of
your desk but also cover up any imperfections in your hole.
This is designed to look as clean and professional as possible.
Paired with the mic mount is their quiet touch-capacitive mute button and status indicator.
The bottom of the desk is where the audio interface goes, with a XLR run to the bottom
of the stud we attached to it.
The CUI-2 interface is minimal but as flexible as it gets.
One side features the USB port, a 12V DC jack in case extra power is needed (usually for
adding extra mute buttons), the 5-pin phoenix style connector for connecting up to two microphones
for stereo audio, and a RJ45 jack for connecting the mute button interface, which I also attached
to the bottom of my desk here.
The front of the interface sits two recessed dials: One for controlling the brightness
of the mute status LED, and one for controlling the mic pre-amp gain.
These are adjusted with something like a small flathead screwdriver or a pocket knife - that
way these can’t be accidentally changed by whoever is using it.
There’s also a series of dip switches which control various settings and functions of
the interface: Whether the mic is in stereo or mono mode for 1 or 2 mics, as well as control
over the mute button LED.
By default it’s set to Red for Mute and Green for unmuted or active - which now also
reflects in your mute status in Zoom which is neat - but for accessibility, you can change
the colors to assist colorblind users, such as setting active mic to blue instead of green.
You can also change the function of the LED entirely to be a VU meter to indicate the
levels of the speaker so they know when they’re peaking or clipping the mic, etc.
Useful for podcasts!
Additionally, Clockaudio provides a plate that can be mounted with the interface that
totally blocks off these controls - a must for installations in offices, board rooms,
or stage scenarios where a multitude of different users will use the setup and someone might
get a bright idea to change a setting, messing up the audio for the next person.
I’ve been there when shooting client gigs, it’s annoying to try to go back and fix.
On top of the XLR stud sits the gooseneck - they have a few different styles, mine is
the CA30.
Then you plug the mic capsule end to this.
The end is miniXLR, the XLR routes entirely through this, so as far as the top of your
desk is concerned, there are NO cables!
It’s brilliant, but quite the stark contrast to all the other things I have going on with
my desk setup.
I want to go ahead and mention now that this is just ONE of MANY configurations they have
available.
They have boundary mics that sit flat on the surface, multi-directional mics for different
speakers, conference mics which pick up *everything*, Halo goosenecks that have LED indicators right
around the mic, and suspended or ceiling-integrated mics.
So if you’re looking at this particular gooseneck setup and being like “well that’s
not what I want” they have others, we will take a look, too.
In terms of audio quality, I’m pretty impressed.
The mic capsule you’re hearing now is their C1000H bigger capsule, but they also sent
over their C3H smaller capsule and C800H small shotgun setup - which can be used for different
scenarios.
Here’s a super quick comparison.
As I’ve covered a million times, positioning matters, too - and the best place ergonomically
to put this mic was with the back of the mic up against the corner of my two computer monitors,
so mic capsules that have a little pickup range there will pick up reflections off of
those monitors.
The truth is, compared to a large diaphragm mic like my Lewitt LCT440 or CAD E100s, or
even the bigger dynamic mics I have here, no the overall audio “quality” won’t
quite be the same for specific voiceover or studio scenarios.
But for conferencing, teaching, and even streaming, these can still provide a completely natural
and pleasant sounding experience while being completely out of your way.
I will say the boundary style mics are best suited for having either a keyboard tray below
your desk, or putting on a monitor shelf or something, because it will not play nice with
keyboard noise.
These goosnecks are fine for this scenario, though they’ll pick up more keyboard sound
than a mic that is closer to your mouth, of course.
Can’t beat physics.
Honestly, this is one of the more mundane solutions they have - but I thought it would
be most appropriate to showcase for the work-from-home or teaching part of my audience.
Other solutions I’ve looked at that they provide are tracking microphones to track
directionality to specific speakers, back to back mics for a small podcasting setup,
a huddle mic for huddlerooms if..
We ever get back to that life, things like that.
The suspended mics can provide great audio for fitness or yoga teachers who have to move
around and can’t have wires and gear in their way.
There’s no end of possibilities, which I find really neat.
As someone who is building my entire studio to have ultimate function without sticking
to traditional gear setups, it has been really neat to take a look at some of these.
I kinda wonder if one of the suspended mic setups would be a great solution for PC building
streams at my workbench.
What do you think?
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Happy learning!
Honestly, what really frustrates me about making videos like this, is I not only come
away with solutions to specific problems, but I wind up coming up with new ideas that
could overhaul entire setups I’ve done - or finish ones I’ve neglected like my workbench.
What ideas do you have for integrating audio into your future builds?
What questions do you still have about audio integrators?
Sound off in the comments below.
If you’re interested in getting some ClockAudio gear set up for yourself, they don’t have
a direct consumer-facing store, so shoot an email to [info@clockaudio.com](mailto:info@clockaudio.com)
and they’ll connect you with local distributors or reps that can get you squared away.
I hope you enjoyed today’s peek at the other side of the audio scene.
If you enjoyed, hit that like button and subscribe for more tech education and stream guides.
I’m EposVox, and I’ll see you next time.