Making Your Videos Pro: Microphones & Audio

When it comes to creating video content, whether its a review, vlog, or anything, you want good quality.  If during the entire video, all you see is your pixelated face, and you can only hear a loud “buzz” in the background, almost nobody will like your content.  Therefore, if nobody likes your content, chances are, you won’t get subscribers, views, and face it, you won’t be popular on YouTube.  I am going to challenge you to find one “popular YouTuber” that produces horrible video quality.  Its hard!  Therefore, if you want to aim high on YouTube, or in the vlogging world in general, you are going to want to have great video quality.  Therefore, in this series, we will be going over almost all of the things you need to do to create great quality videos.

When discussing your videos audio quality, the normal choice for video reviewers and vloggers is the USB Microphone.  These are microphones, that hook up to your computer via USB.  These microphones can usually cost you between $100-$250 and will usually provide great audio for your videos.

Blue Snowball

One popular choice is the Blue Snowball.  This is a round microphone, that will cost you $100.  This microphone can provide great audio quality, if you are relatively close to the mic.  For voice-overs, etc, the Snowball is perfect!  However, if you are recording yourself from 5 feet back, you are going to want to go with a different option.

Blue Yeti

The next step up from that, is Blue’s Yeti.  This is made by the same company as the Snowball, except this $149 microphone produces much better sound quality, along with many more features.  The Yeti does not only produce crisper sound quality, but allows you to use cardioid, omnidirectional, and bidirectional sound patterns.  This is definitily a bigger step up from the Snowball, but is a great choice as you move “higher in the YouTube world”.

Audio Technica AT2020

Although this USB Microphone is known to be a competitor to the Yeti, many have said that they prefer the AT2020, even more than Blue’s top-notch microphone.  Although, this microphone does not include multiple sound patterns, it produces very clear sound, in which is hard to find from another microphone.  The AT2020 is $169.99, more expensive than both of Blue’s Microphones, but you can definitely argue that the AT2020 is more than worth it’s price.   As personally owning one of these, I can confirm that the sound produced from this mic is very professional, and I personally believe the AT2020 is the best USB Microphone on the market.

Obviously, there aren’t only  3 USB microphones out there.  There are many more options to choose from, but I just pointed out 3 of the most popular.  If you are a beginning “vlogger” or “YouTuber” I would recommend the Blue Snowball, but, as you get more popular and gain more viewers, you are expected to gain video quality.  The snowball is a great way to start out, but as you progress, you will probobaly want to upgrade to something along the lines of the AT2020 or Yeti.  This is the first article of the “Making Your Videos Pro” series, and expect more posts in this series to come!