today's gonna be a really fun video we're gonna compare some
of the best on-camera microphones for under 200
hey if you don't know me my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators
on the go so i review lots of drones cameras lenses other filmmaking equipment and i give
you tips and tutorials on how to use them so if that's something interesting consider subscribing
this video is going to be best viewed with good set headphones or at the very least a good set of
speakers so you can hear the differences between these microphones that we're going to be testing
today we're comparing the rode videomic ntg the dd d3 pro which has been my mic of choice for
aquatic few years now and the sennheiser mke 400. but before we jump into those i want to show you
why you want an on-camera microphone this is the built-in camera microphones i'm next to a
waterfall and a stream flowing through this little area of the woods here and it gives you a lot of
extra noise because there's a lot of noise around me whereas when we switch to an on-camera mic
it makes it much easier to focus on my voice because on-camera mics offer a much higher quality
of sound from the microphone itself but they also offer the ability to reject noise so right now the
main noise the waterfall is back over there and because this mic is directional it helps to reject
a lot of that noise so let's go and check out each one of these mics and how much noise they reject
then we're gonna do a little wind test and see which one sounds best in the wind
this is the rode videomic ntg directly behind me about eight feet nine feet is a waterfall and
this is what it sounds like with that noise being directly behind me now as i turn that
noise is obviously going to get a lot louder now you can see the waterfall there because this mic
does have good directionality it rejects a lot of that noise when that noise is behind the
microphone this is the ddd3 pro same thing the waterfall is eight to ten feet behind me and it
rejects most of that noise but which one do you feel like is doing better as i turn of course
the waterfall gets much louder and because it's you know right there but then again as i turn
around it makes the noise a lot less because of the directionality now this is the sennheiser mke
400 it's actually the smallest of all these mics but again it's also very directional so
it rejects most of sound from behind as i turn around you can hear you know the waterfall there
it's actually very close same thing but then as i turn around and put it to the rear it should
reject most of that sound and then we need to test how much wind these mics can handle so we're going
to test it by themselves with the wind protection that the mics come with and then also with some
extra wind protection that you can buy off sites like amazon bh photo etc so right now there is a
very strong wind coming from directly behind me straight into the microphone and i do have
wind protection on now i'm going to take that wind protection off and you'll see what it sounds like
now this is the wind protection that comes with the microphone it's just the little black
fuzzy thing and then this is a mobile wind protector protector
that i bought off amazon for like thirty dollars
and that's all with the rode ntg now let's try the ddd4 duo this is the dvd3 pro straight on with
same exact thing now i'm going to put on the little wind protector that comes with the
microphone this is the ddd4 duo with the default wind protection that comes with the microphone
and this is the dd d3 pro with the movo dead cap which works really well and i've used a lot over
the last few years and i've always been really happy with the performance even in some pretty
strong wind this wind right now is blowing about 10 to 12 maybe 13 miles an hour depending on you
know when one thing that's different about the sennheiser mke 400 and we'll talk more about
the features and specs of each one of these microphones when we're inside and not freezing
out here in the wind but it's that it has this built-in wind protection that is just part of
the mic and also the suspension that isolates the mic from handling noise is also built into this so
you never really take it off i'm very curious to see how this performs so now this is the
sennheiser mke 400 same distance away same very strong wind coming from behind me but it is just
the mic by itself the way it comes out of the box now i'm going to attach this little dead cat that
sennheiser sends along with the microphone and see how much of a difference this makes
and now this is the sennheiser mke 400 with the dead cat the furry that sennheiser sends
along with it uh i'm really curious to see how this handles this strong of wind from behind
none of these mics have had any low cut filters or anything like that to get rid of any extra wind
noise they're all basically just flat straight across the board same gain same structure as
close as i can get them next we need to test the handling noise because each one of these mics
comes with a shock mount system the dd and the road come with the right recoat system whereas the
sennheiser is all built into that little unit so if say you're walking through really deep snow and
things are bouncing around a little bit especially when you sink down you should not hear any
thumping noises or anything like that and now this is the ddd3 pro which has been my mic to go for
for quite a while and you know if you sink in snow when you're walking in deep snow shouldn't handle
you shouldn't hear any handling noise and now we're on the sennheiser mke 400 same thing
walking through snow not trying to hold the camera steady obviously it's shaking all over the place
but you hear any handling noise all right i'm pretty much frozen let's go back to the studio
we'll talk about the features and the specs of each one of these microphones and which one
might be the one for you and then we come down to the specs and the differences between these mics
let's start with battery life for battery life the sennheiser is the clear leader of the pack
at 100 hours per set of batteries it doesn't have rechargeable batteries it uses two aaa's
but it does give you 100 hours of run time which is amazing the road comes in with the lease at
about 30 hours per charge but 30 hours per charge is not bad it charges up fairly quickly and the dd
comes in the middle of the pack at 50 hours per charge and yeah it's run really well same thing
both of these have a rechargeable battery whereas this has removable interchangeable
batteries and then we'll come to the way each of these are controlled for the dd mic it uses a trrs
cable to be able to automatically sense and detect where it needs to kind of put the audio and where
the power is coming from and then to turn the mic on you actually do have to push and hold this
little button until this light lights up amber or green and then when you turn the camera on the mic
will automatically power on and start working now can stay in standby mode for a really long time
but it will slowly drain the battery over time in the standby mode so you need to be aware of that
and then it has a 75 cut and a 150 cut filter to be able to get rid of some of that extra low
rumble noise and then a gain knob that goes from zero all the way to 10. i found six is usually
about my sweet spot for the way i set my camera up next up we have the road now the thing about the
road is you can turn it on by pushing and holding this button down until it lights up green but it
will also automatically turn on when it's plugged into a camera so if i put it on my cold shoe here
and turn the camera on you can see the light pops on automatically when you turn it off it waits a
second make sure you're actually turning it off and then it turns off another thing that's nice
about the rode mic is you have a 75 1550 and then a high boost filter so you get a little bit more
control over the ways you can shape your sound and then you also have a minus 20 db pad you can also
have it do a safety track where it splits left and right so left becomes the regular volume whatever
you have set here and the right becomes a track that is about 20 db lower in volume which gives
you some safety if there's a lot of dynamic sound in whatever you're recording and then it also has
a variable gain dial in the back that goes from 0 or 1 to 15. so uh gives you quite a bit of room
quite a bit of change i found that eight is pretty nice and on the mic itself it uses a regular trs
cable and then we come to the sennheiser definitely the smallest out of these microphones
if you put it on just like that it also uses a trs and then on the front here is a locking
trs connector so it's really secure connection plug it in and then like the rode when you turn
it on the mic automatically senses and turned on you don't need to power the microphone on
unless the microphone doesn't automatically sense the camera if you're using something else
sometimes it won't sense it but for my cameras it all turns on automatically then you have some
really basic controls you have a low cut filter and a three position gain switch so you can go to
less middle or loud so you get much more limited control over how much audio you want
and over on this side you get a volume control for your headphone output so you can listen in
through the microphone with headphones if you need to and adjust your volume here which actually is
kind of handy if you're working with interviews and things like that and as you can see the dd
is the largest or the longest it's uh very small i'm not really going to comment on the
weight because these are all really lightweight microphones they take up almost no space at all
dd does supply this foam windy which you heard works fairly well rode is uh the next size
smaller it's a little bit smaller rode supplies this furry here or this
wind jammer fuzzy foam thing here which works okay and then the sennheiser one is the most
interesting one to me because it's all included the shock mount system which works really well
and the wind jammer or the wind control is built in and there all the time and then if you want to
you can add this for outdoor work which does work extremely well for winds like
i was standing in earlier now for the dd and the road you have to add something like this the movo
dead cat which works well they run about 25 bucks on amazon they're linked in the description
um actually i found these to work extremely well on these two microphones to be able to
cut through a lot of pretty strong wind and then we come to price you have 250 for the road is the
most expensive but it definitely offers a lot of features and a lot of things you can use this for
the sennheiser comes in at 200 and i think for the way it functions and the usability of it and
the compact size of it because it's definitely the smallest it's not a bad deal at all the dd
is the clear winner for price at 130 or 139 right now it's it's a really good deal especially for
the performance now i've used the dd for about three years and it's been rock solid and going
strong and i've really abused the heck out of it so i can vouch for the quality of deity rode has
been a well-known microphone maker for a really long time as has sennheiser so i'm sure these mics
will both perform well for a really long time but they're your price most expensive is the road next
is the sennheiser and the best deal bargain deal is the deity and then there's the way these mics
interface both the dd and the sennheiser interface through a trs or a trrs cable so you have to use
adapters if you're going to plug them into things like phones with no headphone ports you've got to
use that the rode is the one that's a little more interesting because you can also use the
cable here the usb-c cable as a direct plug-in to a audio source as an audio source in your computer
so you can plug a usb-c cable here plug it into your computer and it shows up as an audio source
when you do that then this here the microphone or the trs connector can actually become a headphone
port so you can monitor audio through the microphone both directions which is kind of cool
and one last thing to note something that i haven't been able to test personally but i have
heard a lot from other people is interference when you're next to things like cell phones that emit
radio frequencies then you can get interference on some of these microphones i have had people tell
me they've really struggled with that with the dd i have not but i'm in areas that don't have a lot
of other rf a lot of other radio frequencies so usually it's not been a problem for me
the road definitely does not have that issue it's very well shielded and works well that way the
sennheiser i don't really know because i haven't been able to test overall any of these mics will
give you some great performance and help you vastly improve your audio directly off the camera
but if you're very budget conscious and you want extremely good performance go with the dd
if you've got a little extra money and you prefer some of the extra features the road is really
excellent or if you really want really compact uh size and really long run time with the ability to
just swap some batteries out and keep going the sennheiser definitely rules there audio quality
wise i think they all perform about the same with some slight differences between the way
each one of them sounds because they're made by different manufacturers and each manufacturer
will always voice their microphones a certain way but all of them deliver
really great audio quality for a really small on-camera microphone now if you want to know
other gear that i think is essential for creators you can click or tap right here
i put together a small playlist i'll see you in one of those videos as always if you have
questions ask me in the comments below or join my live streams which happened most wednesday nights
from 4 pm alaska time to 8 pm eastern i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers