Best mic for voice over

I want smooth and clear voice over for my video project.

I dont want to spend more than $50. Is there anything thats decent and do I need to have acoustic padding or anything in my room to maximize the quality.

Sorry I am a total noob at sound.

Heya,

I did research on this recently in the $50 range and everything pointed towards the Blue Snowball. It's $50 new everywhere, its a condenser microphone, ideal for voice over. I put a pop blocker in front of it. It's USB powered and the input is USB on the same cable. I installed it onto a retracting lamp arm so that I can move it out of the way and position it and stuff. After that, it's $100 for a Blue Yeti, and prices go up from there.

Blue Snowball iCE LINK

Or, here's a full setup with the arm, pop blocker and snowball mic: LINK

The decent things you can do that are free is learn about microphone placement relative to the sound you want to hear (position matters a lot, it can sound more bassy or more nasal depending on placement). There are lots of videos with audio examples to show how that stuff works on YouTube.

For room treatment, real room treatment costs way more than the microphone and equipment, but ideally, you want to be in a room that has dampened sound so that there's no obvious echo or massive reverb and of course minimal to no ambient noise leaking into your recording. You can buy inexpensive sound dampening foam and make a little "booth" if your ambient sound and room you're using is really bad (such as a room that echos real bad, or has room gain for certain frequencies, etc). If it's a basic room with carpet/rugs and minimal to no windows, or at least curtains over the windows, you should be fine for general stuff.

Here's my setup for voice overlay for my tutorials (I'm totally satisfied with the snowball for voice overlay):

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/T6sJ​Ec

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/T9TW​nc

Thanks for your reply

I will look into that one and see what it sounds like.

Do you have any of your own work you can share?

That snowball looks great!

I throw in the Zoom H2 Handy (No the H2N, its a newer model).

The Zoom H2 can be had used (its not made anymore) for a reasonable price, and is an AWESOME recorder/USB microphone.

https://www.ebay.com …RS0&_nkw=zoom+h​2&_sacat=0

If you wanted to spend the extra, the H2N is an improved model, but honestly.. the H2 is epic as it is!


HTH,
Andrew

PJmak wrote in post #18526630
Thanks for your reply

I will look into that one and see what it sounds like.

Do you have any of your own work you can share?

Here's a recent one with that exact setup, recorded both inside and outside in the yard with it.

https://youtu.be/G-41RMTCdTE

Very best,

I use the Zoom H2N (that records to a memory card) with a Lapallier mic Rhode smart Lav (around $40).
If you are on a budget, the Zoom H1 plus the Rhode Smart Lav should keep you around $100.
The idea of using a lav mic is that it is very close to your mouth, so you can keep the level very low and get rid of background noise

Another cheaper solution is to use the Rhode smart Lav with a smartphone acting as a preamp

I saw this thread a little later on but you might want to have take a look at the ATR2100 mic. Last time i checked it cost something betweeen $40-60 on amazon. It's a USB mic, a friend uses it for his podcasts and he likes it a lot!