The Blue Yeti Microphone

The Blue Yeti microphone is a great sounding condenser microphone. Intended for those who want to sound as close as possible to professional studio grade microphones, the Blue Yeti is the best sounding microphone that isn’t going to cost an arm and a leg. The Blue Yeti is a USB powered condenser microphone. This microphone is typically used for people who are starting out on YouTube doing “let’s play” videos in which a person commentates on video gameplay and through the commentary gives a feeling of comradery towards the viewer. It is also greatly used for people who are just starting out with music, voice acting, and podcasts. Because the microphone is relatively small and comes with a removable desktop stand, it also becomes a great portable microphone.

The exterior of the Blue Yeti gives a very professional look with its grey paintjob and desktop stand. On the front of the microphone, indicated by the “blue” logo, there is the mute button and the headphone volume knob. On the bottom of the microphone there is the USB power import, a 3.5mm headphone port, and a screw if you want to mount the microphone on standard microphone stand. On the back is knob for the gain control and another small knob for switching the sound pattern modes. It has four modes that have very specific uses when recording audio. There is stereo setting, which allows audio to be recorded from the front and sides of the microphone, allowing refracted sound to bounce from behind. The second is cardioid, this allows sound to be recorded from the front of the microphone. The third is omnidirectional, which allows for sound to be recorded from all sides of the microphone including the back. The last pattern is bidirectional, which allows sound to be captured from the front and the back of the microphone to be recorded. Overall the Blue Yeti microphone is very user friendly, even the user manual is easy to use, and even gives advice for getting the best audio quality possible.

The only two small flaws with the microphone are that it is very sensitive to the sound and the desktop stand’s rubber bumpers tend be vibrate, even when placed on a rubber mousepad for support. The sensitivity of the microphone is a bit of a double edged sword, on the one hand you need that sensitivity and have control over the gain’s sensitivity. On the other hand, if the environment you have isn’t ideal, without any noise in the background, the microphone will pick it up.

The solution to the sensitivity would be to simply get padding for the environment and to lower the gain as much as possible without losing the essential audio for your audio track. The vibration of the mount can easily be solved by removing the desktop mount from the microphone and screwing the microphone into a proper microphone stand or boom mic arm.

Since the launch of the Blue Yeti microphone there have been four other microphones. There is the Blue Snowball microphone, a cheaper, somewhat lower quality microphone used for those on a budget. There is the Blue Yeti Blackout, which is a black version of the original Blue Yeti with a foam bottom instead of a rubber. The Blue Snowflake is a very tiny microphone which is meant to be extremely portable and have a decent audio quality. Lastly, the Blue Yeti Pro, has the same capabilities of the original Blue Yeti as well as the added feature of a socket that allows you to use external recording equipment instead of just reverting to software which can cause a delay while listening to the audio live as it is being recorded.