- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative in this video,
I wanna show you the differences between
an XLR to USB cable like this one
and an Audio Mixer with a USB output.
Now, oftentimes if you're new to XLR microphones
and you're looking for a way to connect these
to your computer, it'll come down to these two choices.
Oftentimes it really comes down to budge,
so you need to figure out what you can get away with
and what you can't even though you might want
an audio mixer, do you really need it?
This video will show you exactly what an XLR to USB cable
is capable of and we'll also go over the audio mixer.
Now to demonstrate what these devices are capable of,
we have three different types of microphones here.
We have a condenser microphone,
we have a handheld dynamic microphone,
and we have a studio dynamic microphone.
Each one of these microphones
has a very different requirement so we gonna walk through
that with these two devices to show you
the strengths and weaknesses of either device
so you can make the decision that you're looking to make.
So before we get into the demo,
I wanna to about both devices an XLR to USB cable
is a very simple device , it takes the XLR microphone,
it has a little microchip in here
that converts it to USB digital signal.
It adds about 20 decibels of gain
you may not know what that means
but we'll show you what that means in a minute
and then it connects to your computer
and sends that audio straight through.
Now an audio mixer is obviously a lot more complicated,
it has its roots in live sound
so you can mix multiple input sources like a band
or computer inputs with microphones,
it's commonly used for live streaming as well,
just to the nature of how many things you can do on
the mixer itself and then kick out
the stereo mix to the computer.
Now you can see here that we have lots of different options.
We can set the gain and volume, we can set compression
what compression does is, it will raise the volume
of the things that are quiet in the input source
like a vocal and it'll compress the parts that are allowed.
So basically narrows that dynamic range
which makes it a lot more desirable for things
like live events or live streaming,
where you don't wanna be mixing the volume the whole time.
It's a tool that really just locks
the volume in to a smaller window
even though it does give up some dynamic range.
You also have the ability to equalize your voice.
What that means is you can make small changes
to the low end high end or mid range of your voice
or any input source for that matter
to the desired effect that you're looking for.
So you can make little changes to the way
that the input source sounds
and you can pan things left or right.
Everything gets mixed together to the stereo output
and the stereo output gets sent through the USB cable
on the back of this device to your computer.
So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna connect
this XLR to USB cable to the computer
and then we get test it with these three microphones.
Now, in our sound settings we select this USB audio device,
we get pick up this condenser microphone
and even though the volume is turned all the way up
we can see here that this condenser microphone
is not making any volume all the way to the computer.
And that's because the condenser microphone
requires 48 volts of phantom power.
It needs electricity in order to activate.
So it will not make any sound without the electricity
and unfortunately, an XLR to USB cable does not provide
that phantom power or that 48 volts of electricity
that this microphone needs just to turn on.
So it's not a viable option
if you have a condenser microphone
that you wanna connect to your computer.
Next we're gonna use a handheld dynamic microphone.
So as we pick up this microphone,
you can see that the volume is clearly coming through,
you can hear it now as well but one downside
with this solution is that the volume
is already turned all the way up.
When the volume is turned all the way up
to that full mark there, you will get a little bit of noise
that preamp is working really hard
to get you full volume there but also what you'll notice is
if we move this microphone away from our face,
we don't have the ability
to turn this microphone up anymore.
So this might be a good option for you
if you have a microphone like a handheld dynamic microphone
and you can use good mic technique
and keep it close to your face
but do be warned that if you need more volume than this,
that you just don't have any more headroom to turn up
to give you that volume.
Next we gonna use
the studio dynamic microphone, the Shure SM7B.
Now, as you can see with this microphone
it's fully turned up and we're getting about 50%
of the volume that we need.
So I do not think that this is an option for us
because we really need more volume than that in order
to make this microphone work correctly.
So there you have three different microphones
that we just tested with this XLR to USB cable.
I think the only one that might work
is the handheld dynamic microphone
but even then just be warned that
we were already fully maxed out there,
so might not be the best option for you.
Next we gonna connect the condenser microphone
to our analog mixer here,
and the cool thing about a mixer is
that we can connect all three microphones at the same time.
That's what it's built for
it's built to mix between all three input sources
or as many input sources as your audio mixer has.
So we'll select the MG10XU
in the sound settings on a computer.
The USB cable is connected to the computer,
will pick up our condenser microphone.
Now, in order to make this condenser microphone work,
we do need turn phantom power on,
then we can turn the level up to the triangle position
and increase the gain.
So this is what it sounds like
with a condenser microphone plugged into the Yamaha MG10
and then the USB cable comes out
of the Yamaha MG10 into the laptop.
So you can see here that that microphone did work correctly.
Having this phantom power on the board,
does open a whole new class of microphones for you
so might be a great option for you there.
Next we have the handheld dynamic microphone.
So here we have the Shure SM58.
You can see here that we are getting full volume
and the cool thing about this solution compared
to the XLR to USB cable is we do have more ability to turn
the microphone up from here
so if we have to move the microphone farther away
from our face we can turn the microphone up
to make it a little bit louder
for those who are trying to hear us.
Next we have the Shure SM7B.
So with the Shure SM7B,
I do have the volume and the game cranked all
the way up to 10 but you can see here
that we are getting more volume than we did
with the previous option.
Now there is another solution if you need even more volume
than this with this microphone.
It is common for that microphone
that you need even more volume than
what even this mixer can provide, so in options like that,
you have the option to use a mic activator
like the Cloudlifter there's a whole bunch
of different versions of this,
there's a FetHead, there's a dynamite,
radio makes one as well.
But each of these what these do
is these will trade phantom power
for more volume out of the board.
So this wouldn't work with the XLR to USB cable
because it doesn't supply phantom power,
but this would work with an audio mixer like the MG10
that supplies phantom power and that would get
you even more volume out of those dynamic microphones.
These does not work with condenser microphones though
but that's typically not a problem.
Condenser microphones don't require a lot of gain compared
to dynamic microphones.
So there you have it, you have two different options
the XLR to USB cable is pretty straight forward,
I would really only recommend it
for a handheld dynamic microphone,
if you don't need a ton of volume
but if you need even a little bit more or extra volume,
it might not be able to supply with the gain
that you need, but Yamaha MG10 or any other audio mixer
with the USB audio output will have tons of gain
for all three microphones.
If you have something like a studio dynamic microphone,
this mixer would unlock that option to use a Cloudlift
or something like that but the big one is it has,
is that it has Phantom power for your condenser microphones.
That's a huge benefit with going with a solution like this.
Plus you have all kinds of outputs and routing options,
you can do video streaming, live events, hybrid events,
where you're doing both like a real in person event
and your live streaming as well,
you can do all that from this mixer.
If you have any questions about these two options,
please leave a comment in the comment section below.
If you wanna see pricing or specs on anything
that you've seen in this video,
we have a bunch of links in the description
to give you more information,
to help you make your decision.
And if you wanna see more videos like this
in the future, please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
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