Speaker 1: Hello everybody, this is Pund the Frugal Streamer and I have a new review for you today and that is on the Samsung Q2U Dynamic Cardioid Microphone. This microphone right here that I am currently using. I have been using this for a little over a month now and I have grown to love it. It provides something that I have not had in a long time and that is great sound, great affordability and excellent background noise rejection. So I want to show you this because I think this microphone can give a new streamer something that they are willing to grow into at a cheap price but give them a good quality microphone that will allow them to have flexibility for upgrades later on. So let's go ahead and let me show you what that is all about and I think you will be very pleased with what this microphone gives you. Alright so let's talk about the Q2U Microphone. So first of all, as I said before, this is a dynamic cardioid microphone. So dynamic meaning that when your voice hits the diaphragm inside of the body of the microphone here that it strictly makes a signal based off the vibrations coming from the diaphragm without any power applied to it. It's called a mic level output. So mic level has no power to it, very weak signal, it requires some sort of amplification for it to come to a usable level. So this microphone has a preamp built into it if you use the USB. There's two outputs on this, an XLR and a USB. The USB provides you with the preamp built into the microphone. Also the A to D conversion turns analog signal into a digital signal that can then be transferred over to your computer and then your computer can use it for whatever you need it for. So it's plug and play, really nice. The XLR function, it stays as a true analog signal out into a preamp where you would need to buy it of course, an audio interface that has a preamp or a mixer that has a preamp built into it. And then from there that's where the A to D conversion happens and all that good stuff. So the good thing about this microphone, the fact that it has both USB and XLR is the fact that you can grow with this microphone without spending a ton of money. So this microphone is $59.99 on Amazon in the United States currently. It comes in a podcasting pack. That's how Samsung is packaging this. So it comes with not only the microphone itself, it comes with a tripod mini stand, it comes with an extension pole, and of course it comes with the cradle that the microphone sits in, which is a standard cradle that you would find on any that most mic stands would have it. And then it comes with your USB and your XLR cable and this nice little wind sock that goes over the bonnet of the microphone itself. All included in one pack for $59.99. Think about that. The microphone itself is built like you would expect a professional microphone to be built. Nice solid metal case. It's got a lot of weight to it. Really strong. Feels great in your hand. The bonnet, of course, metal. It does not feel cheap at all. Okay. Really nice. It has an on off switch built in. It has volume control up and down. It has a USB that is right here, or not a USB, I'm sorry, an LED right here if you're using the USB where you can monitor your signal to make sure the gain is good or if you're clipping it'll turn red if you're clipping. It has the headphone that is an eighth inch or three and a half mil, excuse me, a three and a half mil connector that you can monitor your mic, your voice, you know, going straight out of your headset. You can also use this as an audio output for your computer, okay? Your computer looks at it as an audio output so you can use this to listen to playback audio from your PC, which is nice. So all that's the USB functionality with the XLR functionality. It's like any other XLR microphone. It just gives you the analog signal out into an audio interface or mixer. And what I like about it is it just gives you the ability to grow with the microphone. So you can buy this microphone, you can use the USB function until you can afford an audio interface or a mixer. And when you buy the audio interface or that mixer, you don't have to go buy a new microphone. You can just switch from USB to the XLR, plug it in, set your gain and continue to record with it, continue to use it in your games, all that stuff. This microphone is a nice quality microphone. It sounds great. I like it a lot. The plosives aren't too bad, even for somebody like me who is wicked with your P's and your B's and your S's, it handles plosives very well. So if you're a little more soft-spoken with your plosives, this microphone is perfect for you. For somebody like me, I don't really think there's any microphone that can really help it out. But along with that, is it so good at rejecting background noise, number one, because it's a dynamic microphone. That is one of the pluses with a dynamic microphone and something that I think a lot of streamers should really consider when they're recording is think about their space that they're using their microphone in. What is your background noise levels like? Do you have a PC on your desktop like I do because I have restricted space? Do you have a fan in your room running like I currently do, a ceiling fan? Do you have a lot, are you in a room with other people? If you have a condenser microphone that uses phantom power to give you a line level output from the microphone itself, you're going to have a lot of that background noise come into your signal chain, your audio chain, and it's going to make post-processing difficult. With a dynamic microphone like the Q2U, it does an excellent job of rejecting background noise. Right now, I have my PC is maybe two feet from the microphone, I have a ceiling fan running on high, so my condenser microphone that I was using before, you could hear it. With this, you can barely hear it. It's a lot less than what it would be with the condenser. I would recommend you take a look at this microphone if you're a new streamer who wants to have that flexibility to be able to use a microphone for a long time. This microphone rivals microphones that are twice the amount of money. I would put this against a Blue Yeti, I'd put this against my Audio-Technica 2020 USB, which I will do here in a minute. I think that you need to consider this because I think this really is the go-to microphone for somebody that wants to get into a nice quality stream or a nice quality podcast using a microphone that's not going to break their wallet. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this and let's go ahead and do some recording. I'm going to do three. The first of the two recordings is going to be the Q2U microphone with USB and then with XLR just so you can hear the differences. Right now I have my gain set to the one o'clock position on my audio interface, which is about 60, maybe 65% gain. So I will try to, I'll have the gain set to that for the USB also, so you can just hear the difference between the two. If you're wearing headphones, you might hear subtle differences and that really is the difference between the USB and the XLR using a preamp that's, you know, pretty decent preamp. And then I'll go ahead and third recording will be my Audio-Technica 2020 Plus USB, which is a condenser microphone and you should hear big differences with that. I shouldn't need to use as much gain with the Audio-Technica. It is a condenser, so you should hear more background noise than the Q2U, so I'm going to give you an idea of what the differences are between dynamic condenser and differences between the Q2U dynamic and a condenser that's almost two and a half times the price of this microphone here. Okay, so let's go ahead and cut into those recordings now. This is the Q2U on XLR and I'm going to read the Samsung Tech sale page for this microphone. Podcast Perfection. If you're looking to start a new podcast, the Q2U is the best choice for creating a production studio on a budget, whether you're recording a solo broadcast on your laptop or multi-person interviews through a mixing deck. The Q2U delivers high quality audio effortlessly with minimal setup. It even has a 1 1⁄8 inch or 3 1⁄2 millimeter headphone output to monitor the audio you're capturing as well as the audio from your computer. All right, so this is the Q2U in USB and I will be reading the same paragraph as before. Podcast Perfection. If you're looking to start a new podcast, the Q2U is the best choice for creating a production studio on a budget, whether you're recording a solo broadcast on your laptop or multi-person interviews through a mixing desk. The Q2U delivers high quality audio effortlessly with minimal setup. It even has a 1 1⁄8 inch or 3 1⁄2 millimeter headphone output to monitor the audio you're capturing as well as the audio from your computer. This is the Audio-Technica 2020 Plus USB Condenser Microphone and I will read the same paragraph that I read for the other recordings. Podcast Perfection. If you're looking to start a new podcast, the Q2U is the best choice for creating a production studio on a budget, whether you're recording a solo broadcast on your laptop or multi-person interviews through a mixing desk. Your Q2U delivers high quality audio effortlessly with minimal setup. It even has a 1 1⁄8 inch or 3 1⁄2 millimeter headphone output to monitor the audio you're capturing as well as the audio from your computer. All right, so that is the three recordings comparing my $150 AT2020 Plus USB to the $59.99 Q2U. And so you can kind of see some differences in what to sound like. I recommend you listen to those if you listened to them before and you didn't wear a headset. I recommend you go back and listen to a headset because you can hear some subtleties that I like that the Q2U handles a lot better than AT2020. First of all, the noise field is a lot louder in AT2020. It's a condenser microphone. I talked about that before. Because it's powered with phantom power, it picks up a lot more noise and you can hear the background noise floor there and it's considerably louder than the Q2U. Now compared to the USB chain compared to the XLR chain for the Q2U, I prefer the XLR chain a little bit better. I think that there's some subtle differences between the two. You heard some noise in the USB version that I recorded and that's just the preamp noise. The preamp noise is actually a little bit lower. I tried to maintain the same level on OBS, which I'm recording now. So I actually reduced the gain by about 10 dB on the USB, so it was at 50%. On my preamp, it's at 60% for the XLR. But you can still hear the gain level is a bit higher and you can hear a little bit more white noise coming in from the preamp. So the XLR just has a little bit more of a nice natural tone to it and it also handles the high end a little bit better, I think, than the USB and the preamp does. So I prefer the XLR, but the USB sounds really good and compared to my Audio-Technica, I think it sounds as good, if not better, for a little over half price. So it's something to think about. This microphone really is, I think, the go-to microphone for anybody that's looking to get into a podcast microphone. So try it out. I think you'll end up liking this a lot. $59.99 on Amazon and it pretty much comes with everything that you're going to need to get started. If you're looking at getting a scissor stand like I have here, you can get this for $12 to $17, $20 bucks. This is a newer, NEEWER scissor stand. I think it's like $12.75 on Amazon and you can see it holds a microphone just fine and it does a great job. I've had this stand for about a year now, or two years now, and I've used it for three different microphones and it does equally well for a dollar. So the Q2U by Samson podcast pack. Go try it out. I cannot recommend this enough. It is a great microphone to really grow and expand your podcast for your live stream. And as I said before, you can start out with a USB, expand to an XLR, you know, audio interface or mixer later on and still use the same microphone. You get a nice quality signal for live streaming and podcasting. You can't go wrong with it. It really can't. And like I said, you know, it just does a really good job at controlling the background noise and giving you a nice solid signal, nice solid sound for your voice. I don't know if I would use this for instruments. They say that you can, but for voice, for podcasting, for live streams, it's perfect. Absolutely perfect. I appreciate you taking the time to watch this video. This microphone has been an awesome microphone. I love it. It is now my daily microphone. I just want to let you know, for those that may be wondering, this is not a sponsored video. I bought this microphone with my own money. Samson did not reach out to me to do a review. I just bought it. I saw it. I thought it was an interesting microphone. I was willing to give it a shot. And now it has replaced my $150 microphone because I love it so much. So go out there, give it a shot. I'll provide a link in the description. If you are, you know, you're looking to buy a microphone, getting into a podcasting or getting into streams, I think you'll like this microphone a lot. Anyway, that's it guys. I hope you, you know, again, like the video. If you did hit the thumbs up, hit the subscribe. I'd love to see you come back, hit the notification and say, you know, when I have a video goes live or if I kick into live stream, I would love to see you become part of the frugal community. Tons of tutorials that you could look at and you know, pretty much everything you can think about to get your live stream going. So anyway guys, lastly, this Memorial Day weekend, you know, it's a time for us to kind of take a minute, take a day, you know, go out, enjoy your weekend, enjoy your holiday with your family. It's the start of summer here in the United States. And it's really meant to sit back and think about someone who's paid the ultimate sacrifice, you know, and they've died in the line of duty for our country. A lot of times we take our freedoms for granted, you know, because it's just a part of our lives. You know, we didn't, we haven't seen what it's like not to have freedom. These guys have gone out and these men and women have gone out and fought for our freedoms and they have died in the line of duty as a result. So think about someone, I know, you know, there's a lot of people, pretty much everybody can say that they know of someone who has a family member, a distant friend, whatever, that has died in the line of duty in defense of this country. So think about them, you know, take the time and just kind of reflect on that and think about them this weekend as you're having fun. But most of all, just be out there and be safe. You know, a lot of people can do some pretty stupid things. The military calls this the dog days of summer where most of your injuries and things happen. And so this is the kick in for it. So just be safe out there and, you know, think a veteran and think about those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. This is Pundit Frugal Streamer. We'll see you later. Bye bye.