Speaker 1: Hi guys, so I wanted to do a topic today that has come up a lot recently. I've had a few different people who do e-learning development ask me about doing basically a video on a mobile setup. So what I'm going to be talking about today is audio equipment you can use if you need to be able to move and travel and still do voiceover for your e-learning courses. So first I want to introduce you to my friend. This is my Blue Yeti Pro mic and this is actually the one that tends to travel with me. I do voiceover and I also do speaking engagements and conferences and things. So sometimes I need to be able to actually record something while I'm in a hotel room as weird as that might sound. So Blue Yeti Pro tends to be the one that I travel with. I kept the box that it came in and I fold it down and I take it with me wherever I go. This just tends to be a mic that I find is sturdy enough to travel. I would suggest if you're going to be traveling with your audio equipment don't assume that you're going to be okay checking that equipment and having it cooperate with you. I would keep that in your carry-on everything that you've got except for this piece here. So let's talk about the rest of the equipment that comes with the mic. If you're looking to set up an audio voiceover studio in a conference room at work, something that you'll want to consider is how to basically make the sound make the room sound a little bit better. So you might want one of these. This is a foam shield and what this basically does is gives you a little bit better acoustics. You would sit the mic in here, open the mic up like that and you use this setup to basically absorb a lot of the sound that's bouncing around in the room. So you'll notice that this makes a significant difference in how your voiceover sounds. The other thing that you can do if you're traveling and there's no way that you can move with something this size, you can use blankets, you can use pillows and different things to kind of muffle the sound around the mic and make it sound a little bit better. So I have been known to actually travel with this and also put a pillow over top of it and sometimes that actually makes it sound a lot better. The other good thing, if you have old blankets, keep them. You can use them. You can put them on the table underneath the mic and that can improve the sound quality. You can use old moving blankets. Those are really good because they're nice and thick. You can also use carpet samples. I use carpet samples in my closet to absorb sound and make it sound a little bit better in there. So those are some of the options that you have. I will say this is a Monoprice Pro Audio Series Foam Shield. I'll put the link in the description below in case you're interested in this one. But obviously you've got a lot of choices in terms of foam and things like that. The other thing that will greatly improve your audio quality is something that is called a pop screen or a pop filter. So that's what this little guy is. And what this basically does, if you hit a P or you hit a B really hard and it creates that pop sound, obviously that's going to reduce the quality of your audio overall. This catches those and it basically makes them less impactful and it evens out the quality of your audio. So you definitely want to have one of these. If you're caught and you're traveling and you do not have one of these, I've actually made one before and it worked just fine. You can take a hanger, a metal hanger, pull it apart and if you're a girl you've got pantyhose or something like that, you can stretch them and have those over top of your hanger and it does exactly the same thing. Just make sure that the the hosiery is really nice and tight and it will do the exact same thing. It will look funny though. These, obviously if you're recording your voiceover, you're also going to need to check it, especially if you're editing on the run, too. I would not take your most expensive headphones with you everywhere because eventually they're going to get messed up. These are some Audio-Technica headphones that I take and honestly, you can use a lot of different brands of headphones. I like these a lot, but look at, if you're buying them online, look at the reviews and see if people say that the headphones are very bassy. What you want is not that. You want something that's more of a well-balanced headphone, so the headphones that you're using to listen to your rap music are probably not the ones that you want to be editing your voiceover on. So the last thing I will point out to you, we have this lovely cord and I will tell you that I travel with extra equipment for a lot of reasons. At conferences, I found that it's always better to have two laptops in case one fails you or something goes wrong. Well, same thing with cords. This is an extra cord that I have for my Blue Yeti and the reason I want to point this out to you is actually because of the end of this cord. If you're working with certain mics that are on a pivot like this one is, so it pivots like that, sometimes you're going to catch your cord, at least if you're me, in that pivot and it can bend the cord. So that's something to be aware of, number one, and number two, if you have an extra cord and you've done something dumb like I've done in the past, then you're not worried about not being able to record your voiceover on time. So I also want to show you this set up, completely set up, so I'm going to take a minute and do that. This is what it looks like fully assembled. So we have connected to the microphone the headphones in the event you're one of those people who like to hear yourself as you're going through the voiceover. Also, obviously, we've got the USB cord that would be connected to the laptop and whatever software application you're using to record the audio. You've got the pop filter or pop screen that's actually attached to the microphone and then I've got the blanket on the table to kind of pad the sound that's jumping up from the table and also the foam shield. So this is what I consider to be my full mobile setup. There are a few things to keep in mind when you're doing a mobile setup and maybe you're someplace that you wouldn't normally be recording. For one thing, if you're sitting in a chair and the chair squeaks, it's going to pick that up. So be aware of that. Be aware of the table. Be aware of the fact that if you're pushing against the table you could be creating a sound or if you're touching the table you could be creating a sound. Things to keep in mind. The other thing that I would do in terms of your mic setup in the event that you've never handled one of these microphones before, you will find that you have a few different setting options on the back. So you can see you can select a pattern here and you can also select the gain. This is going to be different depending on what you're working on, but for voiceover, you tend to want the cardioid pattern. So the cardioid pattern is an upside-down heart and if you set it to that, basically what that does is it tells the microphone to pay more attention to the audio that's close to the mic and it basically makes the field that it's looking at a little bit more narrow and so it's good for voiceover. The other thing that you can look at the gain here. This is going to be different depending on your voice. But for me, if I'm recording something that's a voiceover and my face is within six inches of the mic, that's going to be around 10 or 11 o'clock. So I would say one of the biggest important things to do if you're resetting your entire setup and it's not where you normally record, record a piece of voiceover before you go through your whole project and do it and assume it's fine. Just record a little piece of it and listen to it. Try to optimize it in different ways. So maybe you'll need to use a different gain than you normally do or you'll notice a background sound that you don't normally have in your clip and you have to adjust for those things. Check that your air conditioning is off if you can do that. If you're near a refrigerator and you can shut it off, turn it off, you know, just be very aware of your background noise. So one additional tip, if you are purchasing your microphone and you haven't used it before, either look in the manual or experiment with it yourself, but figure out where on the microphone you should best be talking into in order to get the best quality. Some microphones you are going to talk into the end of the mic. With this one, that would actually reduce your overall audio quality. You would want to talk into the side of it. So that is the case with most mics, but just make sure before you do an entire project like that. And that should probably give you good audio wherever you choose to record. So I hope this has been helpful. I'm going to put some product links in the description in case you're interested in duplicating the setup that I use. Obviously, I don't do paid product endorsements, so that's not what this is. But if this helps you, I hope that you can duplicate the setup and enjoy it. So thank you very much.