How To Sound Amazing On Zoom?

Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Tip where I will be showing you the best settings and equipment to use for recording great audio on Zoom.

Now I'm sure you're doing a lot of zoom meetings, probably too many zoom meetings, and I'm sure you've experienced instances where the people you're talking with, they're sounding really echoey, or it's really hard to hear them, or maybe you've had feedback from other people that you too are sounding distant, echoey and difficult to hear. Now good communication is so important especially when we're doing video conferencing calls, so making sure that our voices are coming across loud and clear is extra important, because having the screen there... you know it's lready removing that layer of engagement we would normally have face to face, so it's important to do what we can to get great quality audio.

Now I guess before we even get to a microphone the base, base level is to wear headphones with a built-in mic such as this one, so simple smartphone headphones still not the best quality, but it's still better than no headphone. Bluetooth headphones can work, but I have found that when other people have used them sometimes they can come across a bit fuzzy as well and not super clear. Those headsets with the headset mic, they can be quite effective, however, I have heard people breathe quite heavily on them which can also be off-putting and if you don't have a headset mic right now, good luck getting one because they're all sold out, they're very difficult to get. So your next best option and this is what I love and recommend because of course it doubles as a podcasting mic, is to get a separate USB mic. Now it's very important when your mic shopping to get a mic that is called a USB mic, so this is the same one here, this one in particular is the Swamp D USB mic, we use and recommend this mic because it's very affordable it's only 80 bucks, there from an Australian company Swamp they're very hardy, they're not gonna... you could probably run over them with a truck and they won't - they won't get ruined.

And these plug directly into your computer, so they come with a core like this, one end goes into the mic and the other end is a USB that goes  straight into your USB port. Now of course if you are a fancy MacBook Pro user and you don't have a... you don't have a USB port you will need to get one of those adapters which is what I'm using here as well. These mics also come with a little stand like this, I am not a fan of the stand just because they are quite low, they're not really tall enough so that it's gonna sit down here, so what I would normally do or advise people is to pop it onto a shoebox, or a box to prop it up like this, you know we got to hack things wherever we can.

What I'm using here is a desktop stand, I'll show you... So this is a stand I got from Amazon it's adjustable and as you can see it brings the mic all the way up to my face, which is where we want it to be when talking into it. Now I also have this shock mount which is not a hundred percent needed for zoom calls, but for podcasting really important because it stops any knocks on the table, or the stand from going into the mic. Now as you can see I'm speaking quite close to the mic and you might be able to hear that my audio is quite clear right, now if I move away from the mic or to the side, you may notice that my voice starts to fade away, and that's because this is a directional mic and it takes audio going straight in, and it tends to cut out surround sound, not completely but it does eliminate a lot of that and collects the sound going straight in.

This is another great reason why you might want to get a dynamic microphone

Because... and if you're going- if you're having any sound that's happening outside your office then it's going to remove a lot of that, ensuring that your sound that your listener is hearing is really nice and crisp. Now with zoom I'm going to show you here on my screen, once you've plugged your mic in you need to select it, so as you can see on my screen if I go down here to the bottom left and I click on this arrow, you'll see that Swamp D USB mic is selected. Now if I was to unplug this mic that would disappear off the menu, so it's not good enough to just plug your mic in, you need to come over here and select it.

Now sometimes your mic won't show up here, it might require you to plug it in before you open zoom, so you might need to do a bit of technical troubleshooting. So that's a fun way to get started even if you're not going to do podcasts, look get yourself a mic, I'll pop the link to where you can get this in the comments below. It's... we don't get any affiliate commission from this, it's just the mic that we use and like and recommend. So all the best with your zoom meetings and I hope that this video has been helpful for you. I would love to hear your tips for getting great audio with zoom calls as well, please leave a comment below I would love to hear from you and to continue on this conversation with you as well. All right take care and all the best with home isolation everyone.

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