Speaker 1: Audio is by far and away the most important part of video production. It's not even close bad audio will ruin your video Faster than anything else. So today we're gonna find out how you can increase your audio by not spending too much money Let's get to it. What's up, everyone? I'm the everyday dad and if I can figure it out you can figure it out Welcome back to I don't know what we're calling this yet. It's budget something It used to be called reviewing the cheapest But now it's like budget video production how to make your videos better for the smallest amount of money as possible because I'm not made Of money. You're not made of money. We got to save money. That's the name of the game So today we're gonna check out some audio equipment That I found that seems reasonably priced and should be pretty good for making sure that we have the crispiest audio possible because we don't Know you need good audio. So today we've got the Takstar SGC-598 recording microphone and the BOYA BY-M1. Now, astute viewers will know that I actually checked this out almost a year, two years ago when we did the $75 YouTube studio. So we're gonna check that out again. And to help us out with all of this today, we almost broke it, but we've got the handy dandy G85. So we're gonna compare the audio with just the camera itself. Then we're gonna unbox these, plug it in, see how they sound combined together. And then for a bonus, at the end, we're gonna talk about, because again, it's not reviewing the cheapest, it's how you can make your video production better on a budget. I'm gonna show you my favorite budget audio device, so stay tuned for that. Okay, let's check it out. So we've got the G85. I'm a pretty big darn fan of the G85, so this is the audio straight out of the G85. We've currently, you know, we're not using my nice professional audio system now. This is just straight audio from the G85. Audio test, one, two, three. Audio test, one, two, three. Panasonic has great preamps. Panasonic generally has some of the best audio you're gonna find, so whatever that sounds like, that's as good as you're gonna get. So let's start off with the shotgun microphone. I currently use a shotgun microphone in my own video production, but it's an XLR one. So let's get to the SGC598. Ooh, look at that. It comes with a nice little carrying case, and I spent, ding, amount of dollars on this microphone. I can never remember when we make the video, so it wasn't that much, but it's got a nice little microphone case. The SGC598 Condenser Microphone. And it was product qualified, certified, by inspector Q something something 03. Q something something 03, thank you for your dedicated work. Nice little thing here. Ooh, the microphone. Uh-oh. Please continue to not eat the silica gel. That is bad for your health. Don't eat it. I gotta go pick that up after this video. Okay, so what do we got in the box? We've got the microphone, we've got some spare parts, which we're not gonna use. So here's the microphone. It actually, it feels pretty darn good. I mean, it's made of plastic, you're not gonna escape that for the price that we paid. My biggest complaint that I see right now off the bat is that there is no way, like here's the cable, it's a TRS, it's a TRS cable, so it should work perfectly fine with the G85 that we're gonna try out. But I already don't like that this is stuck on here, so there's no way, you will not be able to boom this. This is only gonna be able to be mounted on the camera itself. It's got a little windscreen on it, so you should be safe using it outdoors a little bit, but I doubt that would stand up to too much. You know, we're just not gonna even use that right now. But I doubt that it would stand up to too much abuse or wind noise. The buttons feel pretty good on, I don't think it, does it use batteries? It does use batteries, it uses one AA battery that we're gonna go need to find here real quick because it wouldn't be this video series if I remembered to bring the batteries up here, right? Ha, I haven't been using my Rode Wireless Filmmakers Kit anymore so I can use the battery that comes with that. I think the batteries are still good. I've been using the Rode Wireless Go and it's been great. So on, there we go, okay, that was probably user error. So it does have a nice little cold shoe, hot shoe mount here on the top. It's got zero or plus 10 decibels. That's important because again, if you watch my videos, I recommend that you do not just use the audio to set to auto. You should turn the preamps down as low as possible inside of your camera and let the microphone do the work. And if it has plus 10 decibels, that's even better. So let's plop it on the G85 and see how it sounds. On, plus 10, audio, audio, audio. Okay, I see it's working. Okay, so this is the audio coming out of the Takstar microphone. Audio test, one, two, three. Audio test, one, two, three. And it's just sitting here, you can see it right there. It's sitting, I'm talking at it. It should not be able to pick up too much around the side. Let's see, let's do a quick test and see how it works. So, audio test, one, two, three. Audio test, one, two, three. These condenser microphones really point straight to the front, so you should not be picking up as much as you did when it was facing straight at me. So again, this is plus 10 decibels. I've done no processing to this audio. I've done no processing to this audio. After the fact, this is straight up in camera with the preamps turned all the way down. Audio test one, two, three. Audio test one, two, three. Yeah, audio is super important. And I do, there are benefits, there are negatives to using microphones like this. Shotgun microphones are great. They're super limiting though. So if you're not like straight up just stuck at the camera right here and you want to go wander around, what are you going to do? Like right here, it's fine that I have a boom microphone because I'm not gonna move from this spot. But if I wanna move around, you could use something like a lavalier microphone. We just did that twice and ruined both shots, but whatever. So you could use something like a lavalier microphone like the Boya here. What I like about the Boya is it costs, ding, amount of dollars. And that's not very much. But the reason that I like this so much is you can see kind of from here that it's got a switch on it. This is a powered lavalier microphone. So again, you can get better audio quality because it's doing a lot of the lifting. You don't want cameras, these consumer level cameras generally do not have good audio preamps. So you do not want them to do the lifting. You want the microphone to do it. And this is a rare lavalier mic for this price that will do powered stuff like that. It's incredible. So we've got the Boya BY-M1 instruction books. Nobody reads those. Shenzhen JIA Photo warranty card. Gotta make sure we have the warranty. And it's like a birthday. Double thing of silica gel. No matter how much silica gel you get, don't eat it, please. From here at the Everyday Dad, do not eat the silica gel. I gotta pick that one up too, and that one just hit itself. Okay, so we've got the microphone. We've got, ooh, the batteries, which is nice. It comes with all sorts of goodies. I like when equipment comes with goodies. So we've got the battery. Very important, it's a little battery. It's a little battery, the LR44. So you have to use an LR44 for this. This comes with a TRRS, so tip, ring, ring, sleeve connector, so this should work perfectly fine on a cell phone. It also comes with a quarter inch, so if you're using like an actual audio board instead of just a camera, this will help you with that. So as you can see, the microphone looks pretty good. I mean, it's made of plastic. It's not made of metal, unfortunately. The battery compartment, though, is made of metal, And it feels, it feels pretty darn good. Like, can you hear that? Like that is made of metal. And for the price, that's pretty darn impressive. So let's put the wind muff on this thing. So it does do smartphone. It has a smartphone setting and a camera setting. I assume that means with the TRRS, the TRS. So let's take you off of here. Let's clip you, which comes with a little clip thing too. Man, this is just full of useful little features. camera, camera mode, audio test one, two, three, audio test one, two, let's clip you down here. There we go. Recording on the G85. So this is the audio out of the Boya BY-M1. It does look like it's a little hot. I can see the audio recording levels on the camera itself. Maybe that was just me talking a little too loudly, but you will need to be a little careful. It looks like it is a little hotter than the Tacstar that we had earlier. This was set to plus 10 decibels. This is just set to what it, you know, whatever it is. It does not have a level. It has smartphone and camera setting. We're currently on the camera setting. So audio test one, two, three, audio test one, two, three. I would do this thing where I spin the camera around again, but it's not gonna matter because, you know, it's hooked to me, right? It's not hooked to the camera. So I really liked the Boya. This was definitely part of my $75 YouTube studio for a reason. It is a fantastic budget microphone that just works. And I really am impressed with this Takstar too. It's build quality is okay for the price. And again, the only real negative I have is that it does not unhook from this. That's the big problem. If this was unhookable and you could use this to boom, this would be like the ultimate, but then why would you buy more expensive stuff? So we talked about all of the cheap stuff. This is very budget ways that you can make your audio. You've seen it yourself, like here in the studio, how you can make your audio better without spending an arm and a leg. But here's my favorite budget suggestion. If you're looking for like the best way to increase your audio if you have something that is not a Panasonic camera, if you're using like a camera that just does not even have a mic input, or you're using ones that have terrible preamps. This is the best audio device you can get on a budget. This is the Zoom H1n. I love this audio recorder. This is basically like, so the audio recorder that you're currently hearing is called a MixPre-3. It's got pro-level preamps, and I've got it hooked into an XLR microphone going into the Nikon Z6 over here. This is kind of like a mini version of that, Whereas it doesn't have XLR inputs, but it's got a very nice 3.5 millimeter input. And then when you turn it on, you see this, this is the gain dial. So you can have access to gain right from the front here, which is incredible. Here, let's turn off the G85. It records to SD cards and something cool that you can do is if you're having a situation like this where your camera doesn't have the greatest preamp in the world, you can actually plug a mic in and then you can plug out straight into your camera. So you can use this as like a, just a straight up preamp by itself to bypass everything and just get really good audio. It's got a quarter inch tripod mount on the bottom, so you could mount this to a camera, get really good audio, or use it as like a recorder itself. So let's turn it on, let's start recording. Or you could plug it into a lav mic if you don't wanna do that. It is a fantastic device. Now it is a little more expensive, like I said. This is not cheap, but if you want good audio, and it will show you your levels, like right there. So we're plugged into the Boya M1, and it will show you the levels as you're recording. So let's actually. So this is the audio now, so you were hearing the audio out of the MixPre-3, now you're hearing the audio through the Boya M1 and you can see the levels right here. Like this thing, the Zoom H1n, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Now it is about a hundred bucks, so it is not cheap, but it will give you so many more benefits when you're trying to do audio. Like I will use this sometimes on cameras that even have audio in jacks, just because maybe their preamps aren't the best and this darn it works. And you can hear like right now, So audio test one, two, three, audio test one, two, three. So this is what, $130 audio system. So let's compare versus the $700 audio system. So $700 audio system, audio test one, two, three, audio test one, two, three, $130 audio system, audio test one, two, three, audio test one, two, three. Like it's fantastic. So what are your guys, what's your advice on how to get really good audio for really reasonable prices? Let me know, leave a comment down below. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. Thanks for joining us for Budget Video Tech. I don't know what we're calling this yet, but budget something video gear. Thanks for watching.