5 Simple Microphone Upgrades to Make Your Videos Sound Pro (No Studio Required)

One of the best upgrades you can make in your own home studio or your office area is your sound. A lot of people use the little onboard microphone that comes on their laptop or maybe on their desktop. (Are other people still using desktops…?) One of the upgrades you can make is just improving your sound with some form of external microphone.

One of the simplest ways is to use an external webcam like a Logitech Brio, which has a little condenser mic. Usually it sits up on the monitor, straight ahead of you, and it sounds pretty good. It's not amazing, but it's pretty good. 

Then if you're ready to kind of take that next step, you can do a couple of things: 

• Pencil/Shotgun Microphone—Also called a shotgun microphone, these are about 12 inches long when it's all said and done. This gets put overhead just out of the frame. I recommend the Sennheiser MKE 600. It’s about $300 and there’s also one that’s about $800. At the end of this kind of microphone is an XLR—an actual microphone cable. This is a plug that a performer would use. You get a microphone cable that plugs into this microphone and then on the other end, it plugs into what's called an audio interface—something like a Focusrite Scarlett Solo or Elgato's got some great stuff as well. Basically, the XLR goes into it and then there's a USB cable that comes out of that that goes into your computer. 

• USB Microphone—Another microphone upgrade that a lot of people can make is to just go with a USB microphone like a Blue Yeti. Shure has some as well. 

TIP:  But here’s a simple secret I recommend: A lot of people put that microphone where you can see it because they like to get it really close to their mouth and that sounds really cool. But honestly, unless you're trying to show that you are in charge and you have the microphone, it's a good idea if you're trying to connect with people to get that microphone off screen. I recommend booming this overhead, which is a shorter distance to your mouth—thus better sound. It’s also less intimidating for your conversation partners!

• Wireless microphone—The other thing that you could do is you could get something like the DJI microphone. This is a wireless microphone and this would just input into your computer or your phone. It plugs in or clips to your shirt, or I've seen people hold it if you really like to hold a microphone.

• Your phone—It's actually got a pretty good microphone on board already, so it's going to be an upgrade over your webcam. It won't sound as good as a boom overhead or even a USB condenser microphone, but it’s still better than the laptop microphone. Bonus: You can also use this as your camera. 

Bottom line: If I had to choose out of all of these and you had some money to spend on sound, I would highly recommend you go with a shotgun microphone or a condenser microphone. 

Need help deciding… or setting up your home studio? Contact me here and I'm happy to help you sort through that! Sound is really a huge difference maker, and I think you're going to really be glad that you made that upgrade.