If you're a YouTube content creator one of the things you probably worry about is making sure
that your audio sounds as good as possible now there are a lot of microphones out there
and probably just as many people telling you which one you have to own in order to become
a successful YouTuber but do you really need expensive microphones to make good sounding
YouTube videos let's put some of these to the test and see how good they actually sound.
When it comes to recording my voice there are typically three different mics I use depending
on the application where I'm filming and the look I'm going for now you might be asking
yourself Daniel what do you mean look why do you care what the microphone looks like well it's not
really the look of the microphone it's more about the look of the shot sometimes you care if the
microphone is in scene and the viewer can see it and sometimes you don't care about that at
all the three different types of microphones I'll be talking about today are the lavalier or lapel
mic this is the type of microphone you'll see newscasters use a lot or people out in the field
it Clips neatly onto your shirt or can actually be taped onto your chest just a warning if you're a
guy and you have chest hair pulling that tape off can be painful that sounded really sexist warning
to women who are out there with chest hair too today I'll be using the Boya bym1 this is a great
lavalier lapel mic that only runs about 15 or 20 dollars and it can plug directly into your phone
or your camera or you can even plug it right into your computer they refer to it as a lapel
mic because it actually has a little clip on it and it Clips right onto the lapel of your shirt
or your jacket now I've seen a trend lately where a lot of YouTubers are actually holding these in
their hands and talking into them on camera but I don't really recommend that for a couple of
reasons one it makes you look like an idiot and two it makes you look like an idiot the second
type of microphone I'll be testing out today is a podcasting style microphone this one is the
industry standard Shure sm7b and it runs about 400 these tend to have a really great tone but they're
designed to be in scene close to your mouth they don't work very well when they're pulled farther
away the last microphone I'll be testing today is a shotgun microphone now this is the kind
of microphone you use when you don't want your microphone to be in shot you'll often see these
microphones mounted to the top of a YouTuber's camera pointed back at them or you might have seen
these in movies where the assistant will actually have them on a very long pole hanging them over
the actor's head so they can capture their audio but not have that microphone in scene for today's
test I'm going to be using a Sennheiser mkh 416 and these run about a thousand dollars a piece
now some of you might be using the built-in mic in either your phone or your camera or
your laptop these mics tend to sound better based on proximity meaning the closer they are to your
miles the better they sound and the farther away they get they tend to get more echoey and not as
great sounding so to get these mics to sound good you really need them very close and often that
means that the camera shot is much too close to your face maybe that'll be a new trend maybe we'll
start seeing YouTubers putting their laptop way up close to their face and shot hey guys welcome to
my channel now let's compare the sound quality of each of these microphones to see what they
actually sound like back to back in a YouTube video right now you're listening to the Boya
by M1 lavalier lapel mic it tends to have less bottom end than some of the other mics because
of the capsule size but it also does a really good job of capturing your voice because it's
right up close to your mouth and somewhat discreet in shot you can even hide the wire down inside
of your shirt right now you're listening to this microphone directly into my system so it sounds a
little bit flat this is what it sounds like after compression and EQ let's switch over to the shore
sm7b and see what that sounds like in comparison this is what it sounds like directly into my
system but with a little EQ and compression it really starts to smooth out and sound very rich
and full it tends to have more bottom end than some of the other microphones and it's designed
to be fairly close to your mouth when you use it I like this one for doing live streaming or
doing any kind of voice over work because of how rich it ends up sounding and now I'm switching to
the Sennheiser mkh 416 shotgun mic which is just out of shot above my head this is what it sounds
like directly into my system but with a little EQ and compression this one just like the others can
sound a little more Rich a little more full and a little more flattened out so that it captures
all of the tones in my vocal and it tends to be my go-to mic when I want to create a video but
I don't really want the microphone to be in shot I want it just to feel like I'm talking directly
to you and no microphones can be seen which one did you like the best I'll put links to all of
these microphones down in the description below so you can check them out yourself and see what
you think I'll be honest considering the price difference from twenty dollars to a thousand
dollars all of these when used properly do a pretty good job of capturing a vocal for a
YouTube video and if you're a YouTuber trying to make better content to grow your YouTube channel
click on the video that I've got on screen now because I think it actually might be helpful peace