Fifine Metal USB Condenser Recording Microphone For Laptop Windows| Cardioid Studio Recording Vocals Voice Over,YouTube-K669

    

 It wasn't that long ago that I did a video about the newer NW 800, which is an XLR condenser microphone. In the time since I realized that was sort of a strange comparison because the fact that it's an XLR microphone means that you need some other kind of mixer or interface for it to work.

So maybe that's not the least expensive, most practical choice for some people.

If you're looking to just jump in and start recording with a better microphone than the one built into your computer, a USB microphone might be the smarter way to go. I found this one right here, the K669.

So we're gonna see if this microphone is great, not so great, or just fifine. (jazz music)

And let me tell you how happy I was that this brand is for Fifine, because as soon as I saw that,

I knew I could make that joke. but also some of the cheaper USB microphones were like not even worth mentioning 'cause they're more for things like, in a conference room on a weird call or something like that, not a weird call, but a different purpose than trying to get high-quality audio for a stream.

So I bought the cheapest microphone that is listed as being specifically for podcasts and live streams.

You can even see it specifically says and YouTube videos right here on the side, but to be fair, and I don't know how to pronounce the name correctly, but for Fifine, I've heard great things about them. I've never used one of their microphones. I've gotten recommendations in previous videos

that I should check out. So let's see what you get for your 35 ish dollars. I don't normally do a lot of unboxings, but I think it's interesting when something is in the budget realm, just to see what you get. All right. We got a user manual and we get the microphone, of course.

Oh, this is kind of like a heavy. It's nice it's smaller than I expected. It's more compact than I expected it to be, but it feels well built. It doesn't have any scratches or issues or anything like that.

And it does have a volume knob, which feels nice on the front of it. There's no mute button, no other controls, nothing like that. The claim is that this is just a plug-and-play microphone.

So it does have a mount built into it. Although it's really like, oh, it's loose,

so I need to tighten that up, there we go. So you can loosen this bottom part here and then position the mount wherever you need it to, and then tighten it back up. Now right away one thing I'm noticing,

which is potentially a problem is that the cord is built into the microphone so if something happens,

you can't just replace the cord, you have to replace the whole microphone. And then it is also a USB type, A cord. So obviously that's not as convenient as like USB type C would be,

or the ability to just swap out the cord with something of your own, 'cause you also then can't change the length of the cord, but this is a pretty good length. jumping into a USB microphone, this seems fine.  ( using best hosting for your website plz click here)

I do wish you could swap out the cord though. So let's put it on a mic stand and see if it's outstanding. So there we go we've got the microphone on the mic stand, important to note that as a condenser microphone, or at least with listed as a condenser microphone, this is a side-address mike.

So you wanna speak directly into the front of the microphone.

You can see the capsule inside the microphone a little bit, and you can see that it faces the front this way. So that's where you wanna be directing all of the audio

that you wanna capture. And do we have any? Oh, you know what?

I didn't even see this was in here, which is my fault for not checking first. We don't need my mic stand

because it comes with a little mic stand. And there's nothing else hidden in the box.

So just those things there. I knew when I bought it, it said it came with a stand, but I just totally forgot, so let's see. That means right out of the box, you don't need anything else to get up and running

and that's awesome. So you don't need a stand. You don't need anything like that.

Usually, these tiny little tripod kinds of things are a little cheesy. This one doesn't feel that bad.

I mean, you could break it if you wanted to, but if you're just not hawking out on your microphone

all the time, I think it'll be fine. I'll be testing this out with my Mac book pro.

So I'll use the USBC adapter plug in the microphone, and I guess it's on, there's no light or anything to let me know that it's on, but we'll just have to test it out and see. Let's plug in some headphones to the computer. So I'm in Adobe audition right now. And if I go to my audio hardware,

make sure that output are my headphones and the input is there it is, it shows up plug and play.

So I'm gonna go ahead and hit record in Adobe audition right now. And we're gonna see how this microphone sounds. The volume knob on this microphone, since it's a USB microphone is the gain control. So typically on other mics that I've used, the recommendation is to start at about 11 o'clock

and then adjust it increase it, or decrease it depending on the sound of your voice. So let's turn it to 11 o'clock and switch over to the Fifine microphone right now. (snaps fingers)

This is the Fifine microphone right now. And I think it sounds pretty decent.

There's like a weird little delay in my headphones. So it's kind of strange if I increase the gain up, you can hear a lot of peaking. And if I turn the gain down. But here really and looking at Audition this does seem to be the case may be about 9:30, 10:00 is kind of where I need to be

And this is also speaking, I mean, I don't know a foot away from the microphone almost.

If we get closer to the microphone, then obviously I can turn that down

9:00 position.

And you can hear my entire, you can hear everything plosives, Peter Piper pitched a podcast.

And if I wanna go away from the microphone, I can increase the gain and still have it pick up my voice, of course, especially 'cause it's a condenser microphone, it's picking up a lot more of the room sound.

It's not so much a directional microphone, but here is the basic sound quality that you're getting

from this Fifine microphone. And really, I think that this sounds pretty darn good.

I am happy with $31.99 for this. The positioning is a little bit strange. It would be more convenient to have it on a boom arm where you can get it exactly where you want it to be.

tabindex="0">Especially if you're doing like a live stream or a podcast or something like that. Its small, compact size is actually kind of nice on the desk because it gets out of the way.

So it's not like I have a giant thing. Like here's my Blue Yeti. This is the first USB microphone I ever got. It's significantly larger (laughs). It takes up a lot more space, both in the frame

and just in my world on the desk. Let's do a comparison between these two actually because the blue Yeti is sort of the OG USB microphone that I think a lot of people associate USB microphones with.

And even though there are other options out there, and even though there are arguably better options out there, I still think that the Blue Yeti is an incredible-sounding microphone

and a versatile microphone, especially for the price. It is $31.99.

Other a hundred dollar USB microphones have similar functions built into them,

but this is the blue Yeti, which again, I know it's been around for a long time.

I'm still pretty happy with the results of it, but here are the plosives Peter Piper pitched a podcast.

Peter Piper pitched a podcast. This is the Fifine microphone. Listening back to that audio.

I think these are pretty darn close. I think the Yeti sounds great.

I do think the Yeti sounds slightly better. It's almost like it's isolating my voice a little bit more.

There's a little bit more echo with the Fifine microphone, but this sounds more than Fifine to me.

I'm impressed. This is such a usable thing.

And the beauty of it is a USB microphone is that that's all you need to get up and running.

You don't need another mixer or an interface or anything like that.

You just buy this, plug it in, and then you are all set and ready to go. It doesn't even have to go into a computer. You can plug a USB microphone into an iPad

or any tablet that has the correct input. Now the biggest downside to USB microphones is that you really can't use more than one at a time with a computer setup. I'm sure there are ways to get around that limitation, but in general, like right now using Adobe audition, I have to go in and I can only select one audio input source. It's either this microphone or that microphone, it's not both.

So obviously the more time you wanna spend learning the microphone and working with it,

the better results you're gonna get in the long run. So great job, Fifine.