Earth Notes: Metacast 1: Blue Yeti, Shy Eurasian Footwear

Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis, and this is an Earth Notes metacast for 10th April 2020.

I've been happy recording for this podcast with my MacBook Air's built-in mic. But as I accidentally discovered for my Sign-off for 2019 with my cheap mobile headset, I can do significantly worse. Given repeated prompts from some musician friends, I'm trying to up my game!

I hummed and hawed and then lashed out on a Logitech Blue Yeti USB Microphone which seemed widely recommended, if maybe more money than I necessarily wanted to spend (£88 including VAT and P&P) on a podcast with maybe less than one listener!

(Separately, to help deal with the inflated number of Skype and other calls provoked by lockdown, on the same day I bought a Jabra headset. Quite spendy for me.)

I'm quickly testing all four microphones available to me and that are candidates for recording future episodes. Though if I'm not at home I'm quite likely to revert to the zero-equipment zero-hassle MBA built-in mic for simplicity! We'll see.

For a test recording snippet I want something that exercises the gamut of my spoken language, ie English RP (Received Pronounciation). I was sorely tempted to use one of the diction exercises from the film "My Fair Lady" (based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion) such as In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen. But a phonetic pangram should be better.

Also, because people have complained about my sibilance and harshly suggested a "de-essing" filter, I can use a famous sound-check test phrase too.

My two-part test phrase is thus:

• Testing: 1, 2, 3.
• Are those shy Eurasian footwear, cowboy chaps, or jolly earthmoving headgear?

Listen to the sample text captured with each of the mics:

• The mobile headset ...
• The Jabra Evolve 40 Stereo headset ...
• The MacBook Air built-in ...
• The Blue Yeti ...

All are sampled at 44.1kHz, and captured and normalised in Audacity. All are stereo, except the Jabra.

I'd say that the cheapo [Leap] mobile headset mic is clearly the least good. I didn't even know that the headset had a mic when I bought it, so the mic was effectively a free bonus!

Next best is the new (mono) Jabra. I may not be doing it justice since the level seemed a bit low, making the normalisation work hard.

The MacBook Air's built-in (stereo) mic is clearly the best of the first three. It's done a good job so far for Skype, podcasts, and so on.

The Yeti sound has taken a bit of getting used to, and is less 'bright' to my ear than the Mac's, but is richer and warmer and better overall I think. (The sample is probably a bit harsh and even clipped.)

This brief episode is brought to you courtesy of the Blue Yeti. I think that it'll take a bit of effort to use well, eg getting gain and positioning right for my desk, and finding space to store it when not in use. But so far I'm happy with it.

Look in the show notes on this episode's page for the earlier samples, and a bonus sample or two when I get the opportunity to put the Yeti through its paces.

There's more on my "Earth Notes" Web site at Earth.Org.UK.