greetings earthlings and welcome back to podcast ditch my name is bandrew and i am in a very
festive mood because it is coming up on christmas if you celebrate christmas happy christmas
how awesome is that we made it another year we are today doing the second annual version of my
favorite audio gear of the year last year i made this video because i was being lazy this year i'm
making this video because i just love these types of videos and i have been wanting to make this
all year long that's why we're here so let's jump right into it and start discussing my favorite
audio gear of the year the first category is my favorite microphone that i reviewed and if
you follow me or if you're in the discord server chances are you're guessing i'm going to pick the
aea ku5a which is an absolutely gorgeous sounding ribbon microphone or my new all-time favorite
microphone the neumann u67 but i picked these as my favorite microphones that i purchased last year
and i don't want to be redundant so i am i'm not allowing myself to pick either of these
now going through all the microphones that i reviewed this year it was incredibly difficult
to pick a favorite and a runner up because we reviewed some insane microphones this last year
we did the mojave ma201 the new telefunken tf-11 the akg c414 xls the sony c100 all of those
microphones are great in their own right but when it came to selecting a favorite i wanted one that
almost surprised me a little bit and the winner is the neumann tlm-49 i reviewed this in the middle
of the year and i didn't know what to expect going in because this is a more mid-forward microphone
and sometimes that can make the microphone be a little bit specialized where it doesn't work on
everything but over the months of testing this i tried it on electric guitar on acoustic guitar
on singing on spoken word for a podcast and it just excelled at everything and that is why i'm
picking the tlm-49 as my favorite mic that i reviewed of the year and the runner up here has
to be the earthworks ethos which is a broadcast condenser mic that i reviewed maybe a month ago
the reason i'm picking this one is it just sounds incredible on my voice it does so many
favors for my voice that it seems as though it was almost designed exclusively for me to make
me sound less bad and that's something that i'm always looking for in a microphone but with that
being said other than making me sound good i do still think it's a fairly versatile microphone
even though it wasn't my favorite for music and after i published my video about this i stumbled
across cooper drummer's video covering it and he used it on an insane amount of instruments and an
insane amount of vocalists and he got it to sound amazing and that is the runner-up for my favorite
microphone that i reviewed the second category is my favorite audio interface that i reviewed
and if you follow me or if you just look in the rack behind me you will be able to guess it is
the universal audio apollo twin x the reason that i'm picking this is because it does have
amazing preamps and a to d and d to a converters but mainly because of the dsp processing which
allows you to emulate emulate emulate a lot of vintage gear that is prohibitively expensive and
for what i do which is mainly spoken word stuff and maybe one or two guitar recordings at a time
this is more than sufficient with two preamps it also does have a data expansion if i want
to run an outboard preamp into this and get eight additional channels and it has just been a joy to
use for the last two years that i've had it i've had it for a while before i reviewed it so that
is my favorite interface that i've reviewed this year and the runner up here has to be the audient
id14 because audient just has incredible sounding preamps they have great sounding
di inputs for electric guitar which is something that i do use a lot it has a very usable meter
independent 48 volts phantom power and again a dad expansion if you need more channels which is just
an incredible thing to have on an interface if you record music so that's the runner up and
those are my two favorite audio interfaces of the year now let's jump to the next category and the
next category is my favorite new production gear and the first thing that came to mind
was the new acoustic guitar i recently upgraded my taylor big baby to the taylor
517e builders edition because i wanted to get a higher quality guitar to demonstrate small
diaphragm condensers i spoke to the folks over at taylor and i told them what the use case was
and they recommended the 517e they said this is the one to get for recording and i agree
it just sounds insane let me go ahead and include a quick back and forth comparison between the big
baby and the 517 e even though it's an unfair comparison because the big baby had incredibly
old strings you should still be able to hear quite a big difference and see why i upgraded
staying on the topic of guitar my second pick no pun intended is the jim dunlop usa
nylon .6 millimeter which is their gray pick this thing changes the tone of the acoustic
so gosh darn much prior to this i was using the ernie ball prodigy 1.5 millimeters
and i still do use this for electric but let me demonstrate the difference between the thick pick
and the 0.6 millimeter nylon pick
i hope that you're able to hear the difference there because to my ears it is a night and day
difference between that 0.6 mil nylon and the 1.5 millimeter much more rigid guitar pick the
nylon really opens up the top end it doesn't sound as muddy and it just sounds more alive
and that's something that i think a lot of folks should try out try experimenting with different
guitar pick thicknesses to see what gives you the best sound for your specific use case
and lastly we have a new addition that i picked up maybe a month ago and i've already used a couple
of times in my videos and that would be the radial engineering js3 mic splitter this allows you to
run one microphone into here and then on the other side you have two identical isolated outputs so
you can run this to two different interfaces two different preamps and get the exact same signal
exact same performance going into two different pres so you can really hear the difference between
what is being recorded and how the preamps are altering the signal and this is something that i
have really been enjoying playing around with i do wish that there was one of these that had four or
five outputs that would be incredibly useful but it doesn't exist at this time if anyone does know
of something like this that offers four or five outputs that are identical so i can try four or
five interfaces or outboard pres at a time that would be incredible let me know in the comments
down below and the final category in last year's video was my favorite gear that i bought i'm not
including that in this year's video because i had to eliminate the ku5a and the neumann u67
which are two of the best microphones i've ever used because i did not want to come across
as redundant or like i'm just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again so i'm just
going to leave it up to your imagination what gear i've bought and what might be my favorite
next year but if you do want a secret there is a way to get a sneak peek of all the gear that i'm
testing and going to review i use all the gear that i have on all of my other channels which
i have way too many of i have a podcast channel i have a music channel i have a random personal
channel where i do audiobook readings of grimm's fairy tales i have a watch channel and on all of
those i use the gear that i have to review so i can get a lot more real world experience with it
so if you want a sneak peek of the gear that i'm testing out and will be reviewing and hear samples
of the gear that i'm using i will throw links to all of my channels in the description down below
so you can go check them out make sure to check the descriptions in pretty much every
video that i make because i always disclose what gear i'm using in every single video and
that concludes my favorite picks for the year but i do want to pass the question off to you
what are your favorite microphones interfaces and production gear of the last year let me
know in the comments down below what has been the most useful for you over the last year of
content creation all right that's going to wrap up this video so if you found this video fun
interesting or helpful go ahead and give me a thumbs up if you hated it give me a big ol
thumbs down if you want more videos go ahead and subscribe logo down beneath me and i do
have to send a sincere thank you to all of these amazing people over here these are all the amazing
supporters at the five dollar tier or higher they really do help me continue to produce this content
if you want to be one of them you can go to patreon.com podcastage or click that
membership button and join at the five dollar tier or higher as i mentioned really truly does
help me continue to bring you these videos so until next time thank you so much for watching
thank you so much for listening i will talk to you one more time before the end of the year
you