Speaker 1: How do you set up the Shure SM7B, the most legendary vocal microphone of all time, the one used by Joe Rogan? All the big YouTubers, all the big creators, they all use this mic because it's great at isolating out background noise. It's got super clean audio. It is a forever mic if you want it. How do you set it up properly? Tons of mistakes are made out there. I've set this mic up for Fox News hosts, CNBC hosts, multi-million subscriber YouTubers, CEOs. Let me go over the best practices you need to know to set this mic up right to get everything just right so you can have the high-quality audio you're hearing right now out the box. Got it? Step one, choose the right windscreen. There's two options that come in the box. The one I have right here is the close-talking windscreen. It's meant for you to be able to bring the microphone this close and have a different sound. It's more of a broadcast audio sound. If you like that broadcast audio sound, use the fat windscreen, not the skinny one. If you wanna have the microphone further away from your mouth, more than one to two inches from your mouth, like this, then you're better off using the skinny windscreen, this one. So what I'm gonna do is pop this windscreen off. It's very easy. Slide up. It exposes the metal casing inside. Then I'm gonna put the skinny windscreen on top. Now, the skinny windscreen, the standard one, has metal thingies, and see how it clicks? You probably heard that. Sorry, it's loud, but it's a live setup. Now, the proper distance to talk in the microphone is what I like to call hang 10 distance away. Hang 10, thumb on your lips, pinky on the microphone. Put it hang 10 distance away, and then boom, you're at the optimal distance, and you can kinda hang around the hang 10 distance with the standard windscreen. You won't hear pops. You won't hear any bad audio that you don't wanna share with your audience. So that's step number one is choose the right windscreen for the distance away from your mouth you want the mic to be. Do not have this microphone more than hang 10 distance away from you. If you do, it will sound significantly worse. So what do I mean by that? Just quick demo of that. I'm hang 10 right now. Just going back one foot, not even that far, one foot away. Do you hear the difference, just one foot away from the microphone with the Shure SM7B? It goes from like a nine out of 10 to like a four out of 10, just like that. This mic is not designed to be far away from you. If you want a microphone that's far away from you, don't buy this microphone, period. Okay, you're setting it up wrong and you're using it wrong if it's far away. Got it? Great. Now that you've selected the right windscreen, we need to get all of the mounting done correctly. So I'm gonna switch over to my camera phone. Might be jarring for a minute, but it is what it is. There you go. Now let's get the mounting done. The microphone comes on this stand right here that you can adjust. You can loosen up the bolts here and you can change the angle of the microphone to get it just right for you. Hang 10 distance away or less. And you've got the XLR only input. There is no USB. There is only XLR. So you have to get an XLR cable to plug in. And then you're gonna wanna plug this in to the XLR jack with an XLR cable you purchased. Do not cheap out on the XLR cable. Buy a good low noise XLR cable. And then see this little screw down here at the bottom of the mount? You can screw this onto an extender or screw it directly onto a microphone stand. I recommend the Rode PSA1 microphone stand. That's the one that you see here because it's all metal construction and it lasts for years. I've tested so many other ones and they just break. This one's awesome. It mounts to your desk or table and you crank it in real tight if you want it on there because you don't want this microphone stand coming loose because this is a very heavy microphone. It's a big microphone. Got it? Windscreen. Adjust the mic angle. Plug in the XLR cable. Screw it in using the screw right here to whatever your microphone stand is. Screw the microphone stand to your desk securely. And then your last step here is to run that XLR cable along your stand and then Velcro it down with Velcros. I recommend Velcros to keep it nice and tidy so you don't pinch the cable. Got it? Then, the next step is what I recommend using the Cloudlifter. In most scenarios, you're gonna need a Cloudlifter. What? You're like, what? Another piece of equipment, a Cloudlifter? Switching back to the phone here, guys. Why a Cloudlifter? Because the microphone is so low signal, low power, if you will, to use a layman's term there, that you need to boost the signal to get it up to par. The purple cable here is the one from the microphone running into the XLR jack. The purple cable goes into the left side of the Cloudlifter. The Cloudlifter needs an additional XLR cable. Plug it into the other side. And then run that XLR cable into whatever your mixer is. In my case, it is the Rode Castor Pro mixer. It's my recommended mixer. You can choose whatever mixer you want. But the point is, you don't wanna run this microphone with its XLR cable directly into most mixers. Because you'll probably have to crank the gain way up inside that mixer. Maybe turn up the levels inside. And you're gonna get a lot of line noise. Do you guys hear ssss? And do you guys hear chk-chk-chk right now in my audio? No. Why? Because I have the Cloudlifter. It keeps the signal ultra clean. Look, if you're buying this mic and paying the money for this mic, you're wanting a forever setup. Don't cheap out. Get the Cloudlifter. It makes a big difference. Don't listen to anybody who says otherwise. They don't know what they're talking about. The next step, once you have that XLR cable, you plug it into whatever your mixer is. Here, I've got it plugged into channel one of my Rode Castor Pro. You can choose the mixer of your choice. This one's the best one in the world, in my opinion. Once you plug it into the mixer, what you're gonna do is you're gonna find the area in your mixer where you get to check out the levels of that microphone to make sure they're not too high. The Rode Castor Pro literally has a level setting, and in this area, you're gonna turn on phantom power. You're gonna want phantom power on, and then you're gonna wanna get your levels inside your mixer where it's in the green zone, orange zone, not in the red zone. Got it? And you're gonna see right here, when you look at the levels in your mixer, whether you needed that Cloudlifter or not. As you can see, I'm plus 35 decibels inside this mixer with the Cloudlifter, and I'm just barely in the green, and I'm close to unity on the fader here, and I'm just barely in the green at the right volume. For those of you that aren't audiophiles and you don't really understand what that means, what I'm basically saying is here, even with the Cloudlifter, it just gets my signal up to normal for microphones. Got it? So that's why you wanna add on a Cloudlifter. Get your level in the green, in the orange, not in the red on your mixer, and then now you've got a clean audio signal that you can use. But wait, there's more. So the last thing you're gonna definitely wanna do with this microphone, in my opinion, is get a pair of monitoring headphones. I don't like using big, hunky headphones. I think, for the most part, they look silly on camera. I recommend the Shure Pro Earbud Headphones. They run into your ears. You don't have to get the cyber blue ones like I have. They have clear ones and what have you, and they're not expensive. You get these and then you'll wanna get the extension cable for these, as you can see right here. This extension cable, run that into whatever your mixer is and hit monitor so you can listen to your own audio while you're using the Shure SM7B. It is very important to do that. If you're buying this mic and you're setting up this mic and you're paying all this money for all these accessories, you're gonna wanna make sure your audio is perfect. That's why you spend the money on a microphone like this. Got it? Get Shure's Pro Ear Monitoring Headphones, get the extender cable so you can be comfortable, and then now you know your audio is top-notch. Those are the basic things you need to know to set up the Shure SM7B. I know there were a lot of steps, but if you want the best, you have to go take all those steps to get the level of quality audio that you've been hearing throughout this video. Enjoy your SM7B. See you in the next one. Adios.