Speaker 1: Hey guys Jarrod here and today we're going to check out one of the classic choices when it comes to microphones, the Blue Yeti from Blue Microphones. We'll find out why this microphone is so well loved by many YouTubers and where it can also improve, so don't go anywhere. Alright so we'll just quickly skip through the unboxing section because there isn't really too much going on inside the box. So essentially we have the instruction manual, the single USB cable to plug the Yeti in to the computer and the Blue Yeti microphone itself. Alright so now that we've unboxed everything let's take a closer look at the microphone and stand. So first the stand, as you can see it's solid metal and it has a really nice finish to it. It can be used to adjust the angle of the microphone and position it as needed. This is done by loosening the side screws which allows free movement and tightening the screws to lock the microphone into position. If you undo the screws enough you can take them out completely and then remove the microphone from the stand which will be useful if you plan on mounting the microphone to an external boom arm for example, so you don't have to just use the stand that comes with it. The base of the stand has some soft padding which should prevent it from scratching up your desk and stop it sliding around. The padding doesn't really dampen movement sounds unfortunately, for example if you have the Yeti on your desk like I currently do and you bump the desk, the sound will be picked up very easily so I'd recommend that you get a shock mount or boom arm to keep it off the desk if that's going to be a problem for you. Alright so at the moment I have the Blue Yeti microphone on my desk as you can see right here and I just wanted to do a quick test to demonstrate what it will sound like if you accidentally bump the desk or just typing on the keyboard to demonstrate that the stand isn't very good at absorbing these types of vibrations. So I'm just tapping the desk lightly now and as you can hear it's picking all that up, the same goes for typing on the keyboard. So you should be able to hear the vibrations that that's picking up, it's definitely not ideal so I would look at getting some kind of shock mount for the Yeti to avoid that sort of noise. The stand also assists with cable management by allowing cables to run from the bottom out the back between the two legs which I found quite useful, it just keeps the cables for the USB and headphone cable nice and tidy back there. Anyway enough of the stand, let's move on to the microphone unit itself. So first off with the top of the microphone, it's covered by a shiny metal mesh to protect the tri-capsule array which contains three condenser capsules, otherwise there's nothing really exciting going on up there so we'll move on to the bottom. So underneath Otherwise there's nothing really exciting going on up there so we'll move on to the bottom. So underneath we have the mini USB port which plugs into your computer with the included USB cable, this is what powers the microphone so there's no need for any other cables to get going. There is also a zero latency 3.5mm headphone jack with amplifier which will be used if you're listening to yourself while talking as there's no lag which will be great for live streamers. You can plug your headphones in and listen to both yourself talking in real time without any delay as well as any sounds from your computer such as music or any games that you might be running. In the middle there is a standard threaded microphone mount which will be useful for mounting the microphone to another stand or boom arm and that's basically it for the bottom. The front of the microphone has the blue logo, a mute button and the master volume control knob. So with the mute button first, when the red light on the mute button is not flashing and it's lit solid red it means that the microphone is not muted and it's ready to use. After pressing the mute button the light will start flashing indicating that the microphone is now muted. Having this button right on the front of the microphone makes muting quickly very fast and easy which I've found helpful. Just below the mute button is the master volume control knob which is used to adjust the volume of anything that you may have plugged in through the 3.5mm headphone jack. This only adjusts the sound that is output from that 3.5mm jack and it doesn't modify any of the sound that you're actually recording. So on the back of the microphone we have a gain control knob at the top which is used to increase and decrease the microphone's sensitivity level and underneath that there's the four polar selection knob which lets you easily change between the four modes which are stereo, cardioid, omnidirectional and bidirectional. So you would use each of these in different situations. For example at the moment we are in stereo mode down here and stereo mode uses both the left and right channels to capture more realistic sound so it's useful for vocals or instrumentals where you need to record the different directions that the audio is actually coming from. So hopefully you can hear the difference between me talking on different sides of the microphone and that's basically what stereo mode is used for. So the next mode here... So this is cardioid mode. Now cardioid mode is the mode that I've used for essentially the rest of this whole video. So it captures the audio directly in front of the microphone and it's the best option for podcasts and voiceovers so that's the main reason why I've done most of the video in it except for this example part of course. So the next mode is omnidirectional. Now omnidirectional basically captures the audio equally from all directions so around the whole microphone and the back it should essentially sound mostly the same so that would probably be useful in situations like conference calls for instance where you have a bunch of people around the microphone from all different angles and you need to capture the audio equally. And the last mode here is bi-directional which is useful in an interview situation where one person is on either side of the microphone so at the front here and then another at the back so you should hear the sound equally both front and back and it will try and block out the left and right sounds as best as it can. Alright so now for my final thoughts and conclusions on this microphone. I found the microphone extremely easy to use and set up. You literally just plug in the included USB cable and you're ready to go. As soon as I did that Windows picked it up as a microphone straight away and I was able to use it to record with absolutely no problems. The microphone provides a high level of audio quality which I believe is really great value for the price. Originally I was looking at the Blue Yeti Pro however it almost doubled the price. The extra features didn't really seem justified for my first microphone which definitely seems decent so I'm glad I made that choice. Maybe in the future I might need to upgrade but for now this is definitely good enough. As mentioned this recording was done completely using the Blue Yeti microphone so you should be able to judge the quality for yourself. I haven't actually edited any of the audio in this video at all and it's been exported with the highest audio settings available so hopefully that should give you the best opinion on how the microphone actually sounds. It's probably also worth noting that the YouTube video rendering process might compress the audio a little bit so you're probably not hearing absolute perfect sound that you get through the microphone but hopefully it should be pretty good and give you a good representation of what to expect. If you're interested in checking out any of the details of this microphone I'll leave a link in the video description to Amazon where you can pick one up and have a look at some other reviews that people have written who've purchased it already. So what did you think of the Blue Yeti microphone? Like the video if you thought it was pretty cool or otherwise be sure to let me know in the comments. If you have any other decent microphones out there that are worth checking out please let me know and I might have a look in the future. So make sure you subscribe for future videos like this. Thanks and I'll see you guys in the next one.