Welcome welcome welcome. It's jane gardner again and it's step in front of the camera again, tips and tricks. So today we're gonna talk about the blue yeti microphone. I'm going to be using pictures because I don't want to move my microphone, but I use the blue yeti.
It is a stereo condenser microphone and so it is great for , it has a usb cable on it. So it also, so you can put it into the computer, so make sure you have a usb connection available. So let's have a look at the front of it. I took a picture and let's have a look where are we here? Oh there we are.
So on the front, the front of the blue yeti um you have your volume for your micro mike, sorry for your speaker. So your headphones so you can connect your you're obviously your headphones into your microphone and always listen to what you're saying in terms of what it's producing for you.
You can also do the recording out through it to listen through the headphones and of course the button, the mute button flashes when you're muting and it's a steady red glow when you're recording and it's on. So that's always good to check because I've many times had it off when I should have it on.
But basically, the blue yeti has been really good for me. I haven't really had to do any volume changes in terms of my once I do a recording, but let's look at the back of the blue yeti. So we've got a nice label here and we're going to talk in depth I guess a little about what everything is now gain is basically what you need controls the amount of audio that you want to capture or the level audio that you want to capture on your blue yeti.
And then the pattern button has the pattern of how the microphone takes up sound. So we'll go over gain and the pattern. So you really have to do some recordings and test your you're a microphone when you get it to see what you like the best in terms of gain. If it's always in the same position in the studio and it's real close to your voice.
Then you can probably put it low but until you try and test it, you won't really be able to tell what settings you want for that but for the pattern that is pretty obvious. So let's go over the patterns. So we have the stereo mode and so it's multipurpose it's good for lots of different types of recordings.
If you're not sure what mode you need to record in, then you can just put it on stereo mode and try it out and put a real on the recording and see if you like it or not. The next one setting is omni directional. So it's a complete circle uh symbol on the microphone. And the blue yeti will actually capture audio from a 360° angle all around the microphone.
So it's useful. And let's say you want to record a conference and you can have various people speaking around the table. And you can actually capture this, there's voice because this actually tries to catch the sound of their voice from whenever they're sitting or whatever sounds there are in the in the space and you can hear most of what people are saying, even if they're sitting around a table. So it's good for conferences or when you want to record in any direction.
Now in a studio setting, I don't think it will work for you because you don't want to catch the sounds of the computer as much either or any, clocks or whatever else in the room. So it's best to not use omni directional if you're trying to do a screen casting or recording of a video.
So the third one is cardio mode and it gives the best quality of audio, it's meant for podcasting or for recording voiceovers and it will only be recording the audio from right in front of the microphone right above where obviously the mute button is. So if you switch it to cardio mode and you speak right in front of the microphone, you do well.
But if you speak and from behind the microphone, it's very weak. So you want to be able to be up nice and close at a standard distance away from your microphone. And if you're doing screen casts, I would recommend using the cardio mode because it gives the richest quality of audio. But of course you can't really tell until you set up your studio and do a little quick recording and see if you like the sound.
So the next and last option is bi directional. So it's similar to cardio to stereo, but it's strictly captures audio only from the front and the back. And this is useful if say for example, you're doing an interview and the other person is sitting in behind in front of you so that the back of the microphone as well as the front of the microphone is capturing the voices.
And so you can place the blue yeti right in the middle and I will capture both your audio and the person that you are interviewing. If there are people on the left and right, technically speaking, it won't be capturing that audio but you could always see if it does or not. But it's going to be pretty noisy if you're trying to capture all for directions.
So it's probably best not to do that. So there's four patterns to the blue yeti and basically it's kind of difficult to show you the difference because it all depends on your own studio environment. But I'd recommend either trying the stereo or the cardio this pattern. And of course you're going to have to check your gain and see which you like the most.
I've been trying it quite a bit and I haven't really found the one that I really like yet and when I do I market on the microphone so I can always get back to that setting. So there you go. Maybe we should actually talk a little bit more about all those types of things like gain and just so they understand it a little bit more, so do better because at some point we're going to have to talk about editing your sound and making the best it can be in terms of your videos.
So yeah, I might be good to talk about game next time or if we need to talk about gain. It depends, it depends on using audacity whether or not you need to understand gain and certainly the volume of what you're speaking, you always have to you know, stop your recording and then go listen to it and see if the the volume of the voice is loud enough.
Ah this one may not be because I've been trying to gain but anyway, that's for next time.