greetings earthlings today we are looking at an all-in-one broadcast podcast voice chat
microphone thing the microphone we are reviewing today is the neat B caster which is an all-in-one
multi-pattern USB microphone yay if you are interested in this microphone it typically
will set you back around three hundred and fifty dollars but it's been on sale for a
hundred bucks for the last six months or so for the majority of this video I have the
microphone connected directly to my Mac with the gain set just at around eleven o'clock
I will not do any kind of post-processing but I may boost it in post so check the dooblydoo
to see what I did Ali did now let's talk about what comes in the box and unfortunately it's
a bit too heavy to throw like normal so I'll just place it down I dropped it anyways of
course you are going to get the microphone which has the desktop mount already installed
you will get a foam windscreen that sits right on top of the microphone you'll get a USB
cable a small amount of documentation and some kind of spinning top or something that
looks like a B then as far as the build quality the microphone feels perfectly fine the majority
of it is made out of metal at the top you have the microphone rectangular box and it
does have a metal grille which has a bit of give to it and there is a yellow light on
the front to indicate that it is plugged in and getting power attached to that microphone
capsule is a very small adjustable boom arm which then attaches to a metal base which
does allow you to rotate the microphone about 45 degrees on the metal base there are three
dials and one button you have a polar pattern selection dial a microphone gain dial a headphone
volume control and a microphone mute button on the front of the base you will find a 3.5
millimeter headphone port which does offer a latency free monitoring but there is no
way to turn that off or adjust the mix between your computer playback and the zero latency
monitoring and on the back you will find a USB port next up as far as the specs the microphone
has a cardioid stereo or XY wide stereo or bloom line and focus stereo or mid side polar
pattern a frequency response of 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz a max SPL of 128 DB a self annoys
of 14 DB a a bit depth of 24-bit a sampling rate of up to 96 kilohertz and the microphone
is compatible with both Windows and Mac first thing we'll do is go ahead and press the microphone
mute button and see what sound that generates I will continue to talk and see if it picks
any of my voice up
it doesn't seem to be just attenuating the signal it is actually muting the microphone
and there is no click when you hit that button now we'll go ahead and walk through all of
the polar pattern settings on this microphone right now I am on the mono setting which is
just a cardioid polar pattern I will move around to 90 degrees 180 degrees I can't spin
it around anymore so go back to 90 and then end at the front now I am on the stereo polar
pattern and as I moved to one side you should hear me out of one of your ears then if I
go to the other side you should hear me out of the other side of your headphones or your
speakers now I am on the wide stereo or blum line setting I will rotate around to about
around trying to minimize the handling noise to 180 degrees continue back to 90 degrees
and then ending at the front lastly we are on the focused stereo setting and I will rotate
around to 90 degrees on the left hand side I rotate back to the front and then I will
rotate to the other side at 90 degrees and go a little bit back to the rear of the microphone
and then rotate and end at the front of the mic now let's go ahead and bump the desk to
see how it does at rejecting that kind of noise and then I will tap the attached boom
arm to see how it does at rejecting that kind of noise now I'll go ahead and tap the microphones
body to see if there are any kind of resonant frequencies
now I am typing on a keyboard with cherry MX blues to see how much of my voice for so
much of the keyboard it picks up sad w key test for all you sad bowl gamers out there
now I am right on top of the microphone on the cardioid setting to show you the proximity
effect on this mic about three inches off of the microphone and this is how it sounds
one foot away from the microphone two feet away from the microphone right now I am speaking
into the neat B caster in a decently treated room now I am speaking into the need to be
caster around the same distance and a completely untreated room on the cardioid polar pattern
now I want to do a very quick demonstration of what kind of effect the provided foam windscreen
has on the tone of the microphone so right now I am on the mono setting of the B caster
without the foam windscreen on the mic and this is how it sounds and now I have the foam
windscreen on top of the microphone to reduce a little bit of that wind noise and this is
how it sounds now let's test the plosive rejection of this microphone please bring Pizza pronto
please bring Pizza pronto please bring Pizza pronto please bring Pizza pronto please bring
Pizza pronto please bring Pizza pronto nine o'clock
twelve o'clock
three o'clock
and five o'clock or 100%
all right now with the beat caster set at 24-bit 48 kilohertz and an i/o buffer size
of 64 samples we have a round-trip latency of nine milliseconds and a three and 1/2 milliseconds
output if we jump up to 128 samples we have 12 milliseconds roundtrip or 4 and 1/2 milliseconds
output if we jump up to 256 we have 17 milliseconds round-trip or 7 and 1/2 milliseconds output
next up for the music test I am going to emit the electric guitar test because with this
all-in-one setup and the inability to remove the microphone capsule and all of that from
this boom arm it would be nearly impossible to get a decent microphone placement on a
guitar amp so it will just be an acoustic guitar test and a singing test Oh
I can't say
so or something because I'm trying here give me a break now I want to do a very quick comparison
between the NEET be caster and the blue Yeti because they are both multi-pattern USB microphones
that come with desktop stands and see how they compare right now I am speaking into
the need to be caster on the cardioid polar pattern gain set just at around 11 o'clock
and this is how the audio sounds now I am speaking into the blue Yeti at around the
same distance on the cardioid mode again and the gain is also set at around 11 o'clock
and this is how the audio compares here's something interesting I found while testing
out this microphone I will be quiet so you can hear the noise floor now I will grab the
microphones grill
do you hear that 50 cycle style hum there's some kind of bad wiring or something with
this microphone I am not saying that that is going to be an issue on every single need
be caster out there that is just something that I noticed on the model that I bought
so I wanted to share that with you another thing that I want to note is how noisy the
headphone amp on this device is I can have the microphone gain dial set at zero and the
headphone volume set at zero percent and it is still just a hissy hissy mess that is unusable
you don't know if your recording is noisy and awful or if it's just the headphone amp
it is not a usable headphone amp at all to demonstrate how loud the headphone amp is
it is currently set at 75 percent or three o'clock rather the headphone output is running
into the zoom h1 and the gain is set at 35 I will first go ahead and decrease the microphone
gain and then I will decrease the headphone volume to zero to show you that even when
all of it is set to zero they're still noise
all right so I guess this entire all-in-one broadcast base and boom are microphone kit
is a cool idea in theory but in practice it seems to fall short and ultimately I understand
completely why this microphone is discounted so much and first up in terms of pros it's
cute it looks like a bumble bee it comes with a bumblebee top the box looks like it's made
of honeycomb how cute additionally although the tone of this microphone isn't necessarily
my favorite I do find it really impressive how smooth the microphone sounds a lot of
USB microphones have a very gritty or grainy upper frequency but this maintains a smooth
sound throughout the entire frequency range and also all things considered it does do
a pretty decent job at rejecting bumps of the desk which I was pretty impressed with
but then in terms of cons the headphone amp on this thing is so noisy that it borders
on being unusable and makes it impossible to know if you're getting a good recording
also I don't know if it's just my microphone or if it's an entire production issue but
there is some kind of shorting and 50 cycle hum and lastly the inability to remove the
microphone from the boom arm or from the desktop stand really limits the versatility of this
microphone forcing you to record stuff sitting at your desk then as far as my overall thoughts
I really did like it on the XY mode or the stereo mode on the acoustic guitar I thought
it sounded a really nice and open and airy and on vocal recordings it does have a somewhat
mid forward sound which some people like some people hate but it does maintain that smooth
sound so what I recommend this microphone not really even though I think it is pretty
good on the acoustic guitar and it offers a very smooth mid forward sound for voice
I think the drawbacks this microphones form-factor and maybe some design flaws are a little bit
too much to make it a good option with the really noisy headphone amp the limited versatility
the wiring issues there's just too many drawbacks to make this a good option so if you are dead
set on picking up a multi-pattern USB microphone I honestly think that you would be much better
served by something like the blue Yeti if you have not done so yet make sure to hit
that subscribe button down below for more audio related videos and at 500,000 subs we
will be doing a microphone collection reveal slappers if you found the 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 to hang out in the discord server a link in the description and if you want
to become one of these incredible people over here you can do so by clicking that join button
and joining it the $5 tier or higher really does help me continue to bring you these videos
thank you all so much for watching thank you so much for listening I'll talk to you next
time bye