Blue has become famous for its striking microphone designs, and the retro-modern Yeti is a worthy addition to the company's product lineup.
The first thing you'll notice is what a beautiful, well-designed object this is. The Yeti has a solid custom desk stand that provides a bit of built-in cable management for headphone and USB cords. Despite its outdoorsy name, the Yeti is not the ideal choice for recording in the wild -- it's really big and heavy. That said, the swivel-stand arrangement allows you to rotate the body of the mic upside down into the base if you do need portability. (Unlike Blue's higher end studio mics, no travel box or road case is included, but at this price point, that's not a surprise.)
On the front: a mic mute button and headphone volume dial. On the rear, mic level control and a pickup pattern selector. The dials are just a bit jiggly and plasticky for such an otherwise elegant design. On the bottom are the zero-latency headphone jack and mini-USB connector. The swiveling body makes accessing the USB and headphone ports a snap. Another thoughtful addition down-under is a 5/8 inch threaded hole that allows you to remove the base and mount the Yeti on a standard microphone floor stand.
The Yeti houses a trio mic elements to offer stereo, omnidirectional, cardioid, and figure-eight pickup patterns. The selections give the mic a versatile bag of sound tricks, whether you're recording a solo podcast, taping an interview or meeting, or laying down some vocals in GarageBand. The headphone amp doesn't exactly go to 11, but the mic delivers a pretty respectable output level. We're talking 16-bit USB audio, so the Yeti doesn't have quite the full warmth and sonic detail of a "real" large-diaphragm condenser like Blue's pro studio models, but the sound is surprisingly good for a USB mic, with much less noise than similarly-featured competitors like the Samson G-Track.
No drivers needed -- just plug in the included USB cable. On a Mac, select "Yeti Stereo Microphone" for both input and output in the Sound control panel of System Preferences. Configuring Yeti in GarageBand's Audio preferences is a snap, too.
To avoid P-pops and breath sounds when working up-close, you might want to invest in a pop screen of some kind, though it seems a shame to put a big foam hat on top of such a beautiful head.
Did we mention how cool The Yeti looks sitting on your desk? The streamlined aluminum styling matches the finish of Apple's current product lineup quite well.
The Yeti's sound quality and multiple pickup patterns raise the bar for USB mics, and leave even Blue's much-beloved Snowball playing catchup. For the price, a product that looks and sounds this good is going to be pretty hard to beat. Highly recommended. Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone
The latest addition to my desktop is the most flexible recording device I've yet found: The Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone. Long known for their line of high-end condenser microphones, Blue is increasingly known for their computer-ready USB microphones, like the Snowflake and the Snowball, and the Yeti is their latest and certainly greatest computer-ready microphone yet.
Advertised as the first fully THX-compliant (a standard devised by Lucasfilms) microphone, the Yeti is a large (12" tall on its removable stand), hefty, multi-pattern microphone suitable for recording, podcasting, or any other computer-related audio activity. It features four switchable patterns- omni, carodid, figure eight, and stereo- a built in headphone amplifier, gain control, headpohone volume, and a mute button. For even more flexibility you can remove it from its desk stand and mount it on a standard 5/8"microphone stand or boom.
And it sounds great, too- even better than their well-regarded Snowball series. I've been using it for recording music practice, building tracks with Audacity on my Windows and linux boxes, and with Apple's GarageBand, and making calls with Skype. The ability to record in full stereo or mono is a real plus. Up to now I've been using a variety of microphones together with various microphone preamps and an A/D converters- a mass of cables and power supplies that bad enough on the desk, but a real hassle when trying to use with a laptop away from home. The Yeti has it all in one package. It may not sound quite as good as a multi-thousand dollar condenser microphone and vacuum tube preamp, but for the money it simply can't be beat.
I purchased this mic from Amazon recently and am absolutely impressed with the sound quality. The package came in way faster than expected under the free shipping arrangement plus Amazon had a great price on it. :-)
The mic at first looks big and kinda heavy - once you get over that - you connect it to your favorite laptop or desktop and start your trials.
I tried several different combos - from close to the mic to singing from a distance of about 2-3 feet - using the 4 polar patterns - and in each case could hear the difference in the sound output in crispness and depth. For the first time ever, I liked my own voice from a mic!
Ease-of-use : The desktop stand provided with the mic is ideal only for podcasts or speech based recordings. For singing vocals, I'd recommend getting a mic stand along with shock mount. The mic itself has very easy controls and the convenience of a headphone jack from the mic itself is a big advantage (plus the huge advantage of 0 latency of output to the headphones). The mute button is just a click away. Once you set the gain level and polar pattern in the back side of the mic, you are set. I prefer using either the cardioid mode or the stereo mode for singing vocals.
Sound quality : At 48khz sampling rate 16 bit mode, this is fairly high quality - studio recording mics typically range in the 96 Khz sampling at 32 bit mode but in the end what matters is the audio playback equipment's ablities - most receivers run at 48Khz. The frequency response range is impressive - 20 hz to 20 khz - most cardioid mics in this price range have a smaller range between 50hz and 15Khz - makes a big difference in the crispness, depth and quality of sound capture. The sensitivity of the mic is another measure of its quality - 4.5mV/Pa at 1 Khz is another indication of high sensitivity at 1 Pa (pascal) - it has a high ratio of sound waves at the diaphragm converting to electrical signals. The Max Sound Pressure Level (SPL) at 120db refers to the pressure the mic can take at less than 1 inch from the mic to the performer's mic before it distorts and at a THD (total harmonic distortion) ratio of 0.5% at 1 Khz this mic is a great bargain. Most other mics in this range have standard 74 to 94 db max SPL. Many manufacturers use different measures to depict sensitivity and this is often very confusing.
Ease of thread mount to a stand - I had trouble finding a mic stand that can handle the wider thread mount (typically found in European mics) - most thread mounts are smaller so I needed to get an adapter from Guitar Center.
Hope you find this review helpful - [...] - Usb Microphone - Blue Microphones - Microphone - Mic'
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