Maybe it's my speakers, or me - but I could hardly tell a difference on both tests. If anything, the ball made it sounds slightly more muffled/less full on the second.
I played it back on my studio monitors and it sounds just the way you described; it made the RE20 sound more distant and "fuzzy", kinda like an SM7B. I feel like it would only improve quality on a condenser microphone that naturally picks up WAY too much high frequency sound
@rlistek I was actually surprised that it cut down on reverberation even slightly, or at least it seemed like it did for me. Because it doesn't quite agree with my understanding of how microphones work. But in turn not surprised that it doesn't work satisfactory. Another not surprising trait is that the signature changes that it causes are just... horrendous.
I feel like the RE20's high frequency response is right where it should be, so muffling it just compromises how audible speech and consonants are. MAYBE it would be useful on a condenser that's naturally sibilant, but Booth Junkies did a review of these and wasn't impressed either.
Uh…it is a muffler. Have to eq the 2-2.5khz back into it for the closed consonant sounds. I little bit of room treatment would certainly be better and less restraining of the high frequency.
Pro tip: You can make your own acoustic panels out of rockwool, acoustic neutral cloth, and scrapwood/1x1s/1x2s/whatever wood you want to use for fairly well cheap. Far cheaper than one of those Eyesores, at any rate. Just sayin'.
There was a channel where a lady built acoustic panels using different sound proofing materials. TL:DR Fiberglass (the fluffy kind) worked a LOT better than rockwool, and for a lot cheaper too. Especially if your making them for full room coverage.
Dear god, I was thinking this thing looked neat, and then I read this comment, wondering 'eh, how bad can it be? 40?' I was not expecting *nearly two hundred dollars*.
I much prefer the mic without the eyeball. It didn't sound awful in the garage with everything you have in there. It's too muted with the eyeball on it.
Due to how much bass your voice carries, it didn't sound bad but it definitely sounded "better" a.k.a more natural without the ball on both cases and I didn't notice that much more noise cancelling when using it. Overall, great video and comparison. Love it!
It really depends on the room and what you're trying to accomplish, huh? I have an RE-20 that I used for years with a foam pop-filter, primarily recording singing and voice-over. Nowadays, for streaming, I prefer the RE-20 on it's own and at an angle so I'm not sending plosives directly at it. As you said, it does have great room rejection, so for my purposes a foam piece like this just muffles the sound. Now, a small metal-mesh pop-filter would be a different story! Thanks for these audio-centric videos, they're super helpful!
i think it works "fine" for dynamic mics but for condenser (especially when yelling or recording loud vocals) some reverb from behind you will slip in :(
It's kinda hard to tell the difference it makes, because the open room actually sounds alright as is. Not perfect, but fairly acceptable by TH-cam standards. I think if the garage was properly empty the difference would be stark. Flat empty walls are the worst for reverb, but you've already got a lot of shelves with irregular shapes in them around the room. Those irregularities cause the sound to bounce more randomly and this reduces the overall volume of the reflections reaching the mic. The next best thing to proper sound treatment is just tons of hard angles and round curves.
I re-listened on better speakers. I still feel mostly the same. The ball seems to warm up the sound a bit, but that could just be from sheer proximity to the mic. I can't really tell if it's eating up a lot of extra reverb. There's just not enough reverb to begin with.
While the condenser with the eyeball sounds great, it just absolutely kills all the high and mid-high frequencies which is what gives you this "muffled" sound. High frequencies are the ones that give that wide and airy sound. To bring them back you would probably have to adjust them in post by applying an EQ.
Definitely sounds like it either boosts the low end or deadened the highs(its the second but the bass is so pronounced in the eyeball that it sounds like he added low range gain to it to me). Your voice sounded much "bassier" while using the eyeball.
Microphones in shots look weird as is, this makes it look that much worse. Sitting and gaming for example would cover most of your face and maybe get in the way. So if you are going to use one for voice overs why not get a full on Isolation Shield? They cost less too, Neewer for $50 vs this for over $200.
All of these tests in untreated "bad" rooms already sound great to my ears in the "before" recordings. I have a really bad room, so I would like a test in a really bad room! I would not complain or use anything on the mic if it sounded as good as it does in the before here!
"just how reverb-y and echo-y this space is now" what? first, the EV mic is a dynamic which already has a lack of sensitivity, and your rode on the camera is a shotgun. both of these microphones are great at blocking out unwanted sound sources... that is the entire point of them. not only that... but there's A LOT of stuff in your garage that is definitely scattering and absorbing sounds in different ways as your condenser test demonstrates. you really need to be in a bare space, or at least a very reflective space, for a better demonstration. I'm not arguing for the product, I'm simply making an observation that this isn't exactly a good demonstration as the space you were in was already suitable for a decent recording.
Nothing on the walls and an incredibly “wet” space overall. I don’t think appealing to people in a cave really benefits the majority of viewers. Also shotgun mics are TERRIBLE indoors when reverb is present
@@EposVox well the main point is that you've effectively misplaced the purpose of the product. if you've ever been to an airbnb with wooden floors and glass cabinets, or an empty office space, that's what it's supposed to be for. it's for environments you can't control and usually with nothing in them.
Really it's all about application. If you're just recording voice for a stream, a simple close-mic technique/position and/or the foam ball filter is fine. Just be aware of what's behind you and where the mic is pointing. If you're on the go or streaming or recording your voice in a room that is less than ideal and that you have no control over (being on-site, or recording mobile, etc.) the foam ball is absolutely fine. I mean, you don't need to spend $3K in acoustic panels for simple close-mic voice recording. But if you're tracking musicians, then you absolutely want the room treated (and probably soundproofed as well by either constructing a wall around the wall, or adding panels of Hemasote with a viscoelastic layer between it and the drywall...whatever it takes to increase the STC rating to around 60). Though I can see some use for the foam balls in maybe further isolating sources when recording multiples in the same room to avoid bleeding into other mics in the room. Might be useful for the drum mics and the bass and guitar cabinets (which I would actually be putting in the two side rooms on either side of my space). Something to consider. And, if you have the mic end set back away from the hole the filter slots into.....you don't really need the filter anyway. Plosives are more a problem when you're right up on the mic grill. Further thought: depending on the density and gas flow of the foam material, it may or may not do a great job of reducing low and low-mid frequencies. And with the pop filter slightly dulling the voice, you might consider using just a little bit of a HPF with the mic signal. Probably not much, maybe roll off 2 or 3 dB, with a high-pass starting around 200Hz, adjust for optimal vocal quality and your own voice. And maybe a slight high-shelf boost around half to 1dB starting north of 8KHz, again, adjust to your particular vocal quality if you want to add back a little airiness or crispness. Or just set the foam ball further out so the mic sits further back and ditch the pop filter. This is not a new concept. Back in the early-mid 2000's we'd take one of those cheap fabric cube things, cut a hole in the back, line the inside of the cube with decent high density foam, and feed the mic cable through. It's not a perfect solution, but it's okay for dealing with less than ideal spaces you don't really have any control over, and improves isolation somewhat.
off axis response from microphones is a big part of the sound, you can hear how lifeless and blanket it sounds when its inside this foam ball. Its also like $200 for a $20 foam ball, which is ludicrous. And if you have to turn your gain up, you're putting more noise in the chain anyways.
Seems to help slightly but can’t imagine trying to live stream with that thing on my mic. Now, how much for that Baby Bottle? I started a Blue mic collection and that’s going to be my next purchase. Love, Dad
Yeah, it all-around sounded "worse", but your testing scenario wasn't bad enough to show what It can do. It's for when you have no control over the room acoustics, and they aren't good. "Better than nothing" tool for those reverb and echo chambers, for when the echo itself takes the forefront.
Hey man! I was wondering what dynamic mic you would recommend (200$ budget) for gaming. I tried the AKG D5 but i felt it didnt have the presence i needed or wanted... My voice is kinda bassy and dark in a way? Cheers!
NO. PLEASE TREAT YOUR ROOMS. NO SHORTCUTS. NOTHING BEATS REAL ACOUSTIC TREATMENT. THOSE FOAMBALLS MAKE ALMOST NO DIFFERENCE. Sincerely, An audio engineer
@@CRANEREVIEWS You don't need to invest in full room treatment. I rent as well. You can buy acoustic blankets and hang them up. They work just as well.
I think he says at the end that this would just be a solution for public places rather than a home setup... In any case, how do you hang up your blankets? My lease says to "only use small picture hangers." I don't even have a high quality microphone. Just want to isolate the sound in my living room from my neighbors and vice versa. I've considered soundproof window film (which apparently exists now,) soundproof blinds, soundproof curtains, using blankets as curtains, and maybe a room divider with soundproofing panels... by which I mean sound-absorbing. The difference between the two gets brought up a lot when it comes to this stuff...
Honestly I think most people will prefer the brighter sound without the foam even if it has more room noise. I also watch on my phone and I couldn't hear the room noise anyway.
It's just an open cell polyether reticulated foam. They make it by the cubic metre for ventilator filtration units. Anyways my point is that $200 buys you a lot of foam (a sheet roughly 3m by 2m by 50 cm thick when I approached a manufacturer in Europe was about $500) and I bet if you did a blind A/B test with aquarium filter foam you couldn't discern any difference, despite one being a sphere and the other a cuboid. Acoustic treatment and Aquarium products have this much in common: a company buys a dirt cheap product, cuts it into a fancy shape, slaps some colourful packaging around it and then multiplies material costs X 10 for market. In the UK we even had some jokers claiming that a shaped foam made for a better aquarium filter because of its 'surface area' when in reality cutting the foam to shape just means you have less volume of foam and therefore its worse by however much foam you removed. Buy yourself some sheets of rockwool, a few cotton duvet covers and some 4" by 3/4" wood for the frames - $200 would treat most bedroom setups and even a room the size of your new studio wouldn't cost that much if you DIY broadband traps.
Blue sent me this great mic to review a year or so ago! I didn't review it, but it's great so I kept it anyway. Here you see it while I review something completely different. 😂
I can tell a difference but couldn't say which I preferred. Shame you didn't test keyboard strokes and mouse clicks on the condenser mic to see if it helped with that.
I own both an Eyeball and the cheap 'knock-off' version that only cost 40 dollars (vs 200-300 dollars) and they are exactly same quality and make exactly the same difference. So get the cheap one - then you can also brute force microphones into it to make them fit better from all angles and all shapes.
Rather than this thing, I'd suggest getting the proper WS-PL2 windscreen & Auray shock-mount for your RE20, the NoiseAssist plug-in for the MixPre Mk. II, & use either the Fairlight dynamics in the ATEM Mini Pro or an ART Voice Channel to shape your sound further. The Eyeball is awful on the RE20; the RE20 sounds much better without it. The Eyeball is eating all the 'air' (i.e., higher frequencies') out of your voice with both the RE20 & the Blue Bottle. It seriously degrades the perceived timbre of your voice.
thanks for the comparison! would have liked if you could also test it in a slightly more reverberant/echoi room ... I feel like that room was already somewhat good (although I still think the difference was quite notorious)
Just doing a quick revisit. My opinion stays the same. This test is fairly inconclusive since the space you are in is not nearly reflective enough to suit the intended use case. Just a quick reminder that you don't need specially designed acoustic foam or furniture to dampen or spread-out reflections in a room. Quite a lot of people in home studios just use drapes, tapestries, rugs, bookshelves, blankets... if it's soft or has a lot of different shapes and angles, you bet it will positively affect the sound and it's cheaper than spending big Ks on precision made and crafted defusers or acoustic foam. high frequencies are easy to absorb with practically anything so trust me there is plenty of stuff in that garage dampening the reflections.
Not a significant difference IMHO. I would've chosen a more noisy place to really see this product do it's job. If the testing place is too quiet, there's not even the need for such a product.
Seems like someone could get "crafty" with some sound foam and achieve the same thing. Couldn't you just glue together some budget sound foam and "carve" out the shape? Or maybe buy a bulbous light fixture and fill it with sound foam panels?
2013 - video "$18 DIY Mic Shield Eliminates Reverb!" by Indi Mogul - aka Cone of Silence. They simply stuck a piece of eggcrate foam into a plastic trash bucket, not the solid kind, but the coarse mesh style. I don't think it will work ideally if the structure behind the foam is a solid material, because polar plot of a microphone isn't formed by occlusion, but by pressure subtraction at the opposite sides of the membrane.
To treat echo you need to place foam screens on the back and sides of you, not the back of microphone. These screens presented on the market is absolutely useless and too expensive for what they can do.
i bet that lewitt condenser mic is the elgato wave 1/3 template.is it made out of metal or plastic? i bought a wave 3 and i was pretty dispointed because it's made out of plastic. (it's well made but still plastic).
It’s a completely different microphone from the wave. Lewitt only made the capsule for the wave, and that’s also completely different from this mic. The LCT440 Pure is not plasticy
Love the new Space BTW!!! I find, listening with studio monitors, that with the Eyeball cuts some of the high end frequencies from the microphones you tested.... a little too much for my liking. Now, one thing that I am curious: is the polar pattern affected when you have it on? Typically, if you place a ''surface'' within less than 2 inches from a directional microphone, you risk transforming it into an Omni (kind of like having a rapper in show shocking the bottom of the ball on his SM58... and the sound guy ripping his air out because his mic now goes into feedback because it is now an omni because he is blocking the rear of the mic #TrueStory). If you do the test with he Eyeball, I would love to know. I agree with you... nothing beats proper acoustic treatment. The room I record my vocals in has 2 out of 4 walls covered in acoustic panels (to remove parallel reflections) and I do not get any reflections... I made my acoustic panels using a Paint canvas, SONOpan or Owens Corning yellow insulation (don't remember the model number) in the cavity of the canvas, and I glued some B-Stock Auralex panels on it... this way you can mount your panels on the wall like a painting... and it makes it easy to remove if you ever need to make your room live or not.
I understand this is coming up on a year old but decided to pitch in my opinion as someone who doesn't stream and isn't an audiophile listening through some cheap pc speakers from the 90s. I heard a difference but it wasn't worse or better in my opinion.
This doesn't really make a lot of sense as far as my understanding of the microphone physics - fouling the space near the microphone usually leads to issues, and the polar plot of the microphone is generally formed not by occlusion, but by counter-pressure at the back of the membrane, so by putting close by obstacles or absorbers, you would generally make the directivity worse. Its diameter is about 20cm, which makes for a wavelength of 1700Hz, so below about 850Hz, the sound can normally just walk about an obstacle of this size. That being said, it surprisingly appears to work more or less as described, it does cut down on reflected or ambient sound. But it also, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, makes for a pretty terrible signature.
I’m wearing quality headphones and not hearing much room echo, so as far as I can tell, no improvement in echo dampening using these eyeballs. However, I can tell there is a noticeable reduction in the mid-high to high-end amplitude and detail. So based on this test, there is no trade off to worth considering. Maybe a test with more pronounced room echo would illustrate a case where a trade off might be considered, but this was not the example that would convince me.
By having to be closer to it, it presents this notion that it's working better, but if you stand further away, I wonder if it makes that much of a difference. I can't think of a use-case where this makes any sense. You're not going to want this thing in a video and you won't be able to see your script if you're doing voiceover. Simply being closer to your mic has similar effect.
The ball sounds worse which is no surprise. Dense foams like that are going to accentuate low/low mid frequencies because they only absorb frequencies above around 250hz. I would also wager that the isolation isn't any good below 250hz either.
@@EposVox Any chance to do new 1440p/H264-CPU/medium/slow preset OBS stream benchmark? I am not sure what AMD CPU to get for my 1440p YT stream (want to change from nvenc to H264 because od sharpen crispier picture), last time you mentioned that some 24-core Ryzen can barely handle that presets on OBS, however we got bunch of new CPUs from AMD since then.... Tnx! :)
You don't need a flathead to tighten your stand dude, bettin you already had some change in your pocket... Just use a penny or a quarter if you get lucky and get have a slot wide enough
Shotgun microphones shouldn't usually be used indoors - the side lobes make for weird coloration of close reflections. They're great at rejecting very distant audio, even if it's loud, so they work outdoors, in castles, soundstages, etc. There's little that can be done about it without turning it into a cardioid-ish pattern, and nothing beats a half-decent dynamic at that. The most powerful source of noise in a shotgun is the rear lobe, so mount some absorbing material about 50cm to 1m behind the microphone, if you have to use one.
@@SianaGearz That's a great idea! I do a lot of on location interviews and sometimes I have no control over the ambient noise like HVAC etc. Thought something like this would help
Maybe it's my speakers, or me - but I could hardly tell a difference on both tests. If anything, the ball made it sounds slightly more muffled/less full on the second.
Hey, it's Mr. RL Craft!
I played it back on my studio monitors and it sounds just the way you described; it made the RE20 sound more distant and "fuzzy", kinda like an SM7B.
I feel like it would only improve quality on a condenser microphone that naturally picks up WAY too much high frequency sound
Speakers are bad to judge reverb, which wasn't too bad to begin with, since reverb of your room gets added in. You should try headphones.
that would be the speakers. I can tell a pretty substantial difference with my regular old headphones
@rlistek I was actually surprised that it cut down on reverberation even slightly, or at least it seemed like it did for me. Because it doesn't quite agree with my understanding of how microphones work. But in turn not surprised that it doesn't work satisfactory.
Another not surprising trait is that the signature changes that it causes are just... horrendous.
With that ball I think it sounds worse, more muffled.
My thoughts exactly.
Unless you have a really bad room and you can't sound treat it for whatever reason I'd say nothing might be better.
I feel like the RE20's high frequency response is right where it should be, so muffling it just compromises how audible speech and consonants are. MAYBE it would be useful on a condenser that's naturally sibilant, but Booth Junkies did a review of these and wasn't impressed either.
The foam absorbs tons of high frequency content, and it should be mostly evident in the indirect reverb sound.
Agreed.
Uh…it is a muffler. Have to eq the 2-2.5khz back into it for the closed consonant sounds. I little bit of room treatment would certainly be better and less restraining of the high frequency.
imagine some news reporter whipping that out while interviewing someone
*please sir , put your ball away , thats super inappropriate in public
I hope they catch on JUST for that reason!!!😂😂
wait until you see a shotgun mic with a wind sock attached...
it really sounds muffled.
just put a carpet in your room if you have reverb and adjust your mic settings then it should be no problem
Pro tip: You can make your own acoustic panels out of rockwool, acoustic neutral cloth, and scrapwood/1x1s/1x2s/whatever wood you want to use for fairly well cheap. Far cheaper than one of those Eyesores, at any rate. Just sayin'.
There was a channel where a lady built acoustic panels using different sound proofing materials.
TL:DR
Fiberglass (the fluffy kind) worked a LOT better than rockwool, and for a lot cheaper too. Especially if your making them for full room coverage.
I love this organic Addie we are getting.
The naked mic sounds the best in your current room setup
Wait for the $20 Chinese version
This lol
Dear god, I was thinking this thing looked neat, and then I read this comment, wondering 'eh, how bad can it be? 40?' I was not expecting *nearly two hundred dollars*.
@@WarMomPT Exactly lol. That's WAY too much for what it is.
Can make one from a foam soccer ball.
@@ellisgl lol you bout to put them outta business 😂 make them and I’ll buy one from you instead of them 😂
I much prefer the mic without the eyeball. It didn't sound awful in the garage with everything you have in there. It's too muted with the eyeball on it.
Due to how much bass your voice carries, it didn't sound bad but it definitely sounded "better" a.k.a more natural without the ball on both cases and I didn't notice that much more noise cancelling when using it. Overall, great video and comparison. Love it!
This video convinced me the Baby Bottle SL is just really good at rejecting room noise for the style of mic it is. Wasn't much for the eyeball to do.
Can't wait to use this with my favorite lav mic!
If you use it on a Twitch livestream, your viewers won't be able to see you anymore with that giant ball. XD
It really depends on the room and what you're trying to accomplish, huh? I have an RE-20 that I used for years with a foam pop-filter, primarily recording singing and voice-over. Nowadays, for streaming, I prefer the RE-20 on it's own and at an angle so I'm not sending plosives directly at it. As you said, it does have great room rejection, so for my purposes a foam piece like this just muffles the sound. Now, a small metal-mesh pop-filter would be a different story! Thanks for these audio-centric videos, they're super helpful!
i think it works "fine" for dynamic mics but for condenser (especially when yelling or recording loud vocals) some reverb from behind you will slip in :(
It's kinda hard to tell the difference it makes, because the open room actually sounds alright as is. Not perfect, but fairly acceptable by TH-cam standards. I think if the garage was properly empty the difference would be stark. Flat empty walls are the worst for reverb, but you've already got a lot of shelves with irregular shapes in them around the room. Those irregularities cause the sound to bounce more randomly and this reduces the overall volume of the reflections reaching the mic.
The next best thing to proper sound treatment is just tons of hard angles and round curves.
I re-listened on better speakers. I still feel mostly the same. The ball seems to warm up the sound a bit, but that could just be from sheer proximity to the mic. I can't really tell if it's eating up a lot of extra reverb. There's just not enough reverb to begin with.
While the condenser with the eyeball sounds great, it just absolutely kills all the high and mid-high frequencies which is what gives you this "muffled" sound. High frequencies are the ones that give that wide and airy sound. To bring them back you would probably have to adjust them in post by applying an EQ.
Which might bring back some of the unwanted sound
shortcuts always have downsides. good for a portable studio but not a full substitute for a dedicated setup
Definitely sounds like it either boosts the low end or deadened the highs(its the second but the bass is so pronounced in the eyeball that it sounds like he added low range gain to it to me). Your voice sounded much "bassier" while using the eyeball.
Microphones in shots look weird as is, this makes it look that much worse. Sitting and gaming for example would cover most of your face and maybe get in the way.
So if you are going to use one for voice overs why not get a full on Isolation Shield? They cost less too, Neewer for $50 vs this for over $200.
All of these tests in untreated "bad" rooms already sound great to my ears in the "before" recordings. I have a really bad room, so I would like a test in a really bad room! I would not complain or use anything on the mic if it sounded as good as it does in the before here!
I think these work better on a condenser in a bad room than a dynamic mic
This video seemed calmer than most of your other vids, Its like the energy has changed :P you seem more chill.
bro it def helps with the reverb in room BUT god damn sounds really muffled "woom woom" box sound. Need EQ for sure
Well, I couldn't hear the difference in short on second channel 😂
"just how reverb-y and echo-y this space is now"
what? first, the EV mic is a dynamic which already has a lack of sensitivity, and your rode on the camera is a shotgun. both of these microphones are great at blocking out unwanted sound sources... that is the entire point of them. not only that... but there's A LOT of stuff in your garage that is definitely scattering and absorbing sounds in different ways as your condenser test demonstrates. you really need to be in a bare space, or at least a very reflective space, for a better demonstration. I'm not arguing for the product, I'm simply making an observation that this isn't exactly a good demonstration as the space you were in was already suitable for a decent recording.
Nothing on the walls and an incredibly “wet” space overall. I don’t think appealing to people in a cave really benefits the majority of viewers.
Also shotgun mics are TERRIBLE indoors when reverb is present
@@EposVox well the main point is that you've effectively misplaced the purpose of the product. if you've ever been to an airbnb with wooden floors and glass cabinets, or an empty office space, that's what it's supposed to be for. it's for environments you can't control and usually with nothing in them.
@@EposVox but lets not talk about the mass of blankets right next to you and all the stuff on those shelves.
Even Alpha Gaming is having it's Studio now. Damn good TH-camrs are getting to the next level
I didn’t know you had to put the actual mic in the foam part. I thought the foam was the mic 😅
Really it's all about application. If you're just recording voice for a stream, a simple close-mic technique/position and/or the foam ball filter is fine. Just be aware of what's behind you and where the mic is pointing. If you're on the go or streaming or recording your voice in a room that is less than ideal and that you have no control over (being on-site, or recording mobile, etc.) the foam ball is absolutely fine. I mean, you don't need to spend $3K in acoustic panels for simple close-mic voice recording.
But if you're tracking musicians, then you absolutely want the room treated (and probably soundproofed as well by either constructing a wall around the wall, or adding panels of Hemasote with a viscoelastic layer between it and the drywall...whatever it takes to increase the STC rating to around 60). Though I can see some use for the foam balls in maybe further isolating sources when recording multiples in the same room to avoid bleeding into other mics in the room. Might be useful for the drum mics and the bass and guitar cabinets (which I would actually be putting in the two side rooms on either side of my space). Something to consider. And, if you have the mic end set back away from the hole the filter slots into.....you don't really need the filter anyway. Plosives are more a problem when you're right up on the mic grill.
Further thought: depending on the density and gas flow of the foam material, it may or may not do a great job of reducing low and low-mid frequencies. And with the pop filter slightly dulling the voice, you might consider using just a little bit of a HPF with the mic signal. Probably not much, maybe roll off 2 or 3 dB, with a high-pass starting around 200Hz, adjust for optimal vocal quality and your own voice. And maybe a slight high-shelf boost around half to 1dB starting north of 8KHz, again, adjust to your particular vocal quality if you want to add back a little airiness or crispness. Or just set the foam ball further out so the mic sits further back and ditch the pop filter.
This is not a new concept. Back in the early-mid 2000's we'd take one of those cheap fabric cube things, cut a hole in the back, line the inside of the cube with decent high density foam, and feed the mic cable through. It's not a perfect solution, but it's okay for dealing with less than ideal spaces you don't really have any control over, and improves isolation somewhat.
1:54, I counted 60 tabs, with 4 more google and da vinci opened at the back. are you PC still alive? 🤣
I wouldn't say that's worth getting makes you sound worse with then with out I would say the blue baby bottle mic sounds decent with it
It completely eliminated the background noise while making your voice sound more full and focused.
it took this man 4 minutes just to put the ball on the mic and talk into it
off axis response from microphones is a big part of the sound, you can hear how lifeless and blanket it sounds when its inside this foam ball. Its also like $200 for a $20 foam ball, which is ludicrous. And if you have to turn your gain up, you're putting more noise in the chain anyways.
"more noise in the chain?" There's not an audible noise floor in the digital world, so no.
$200 for $20 worth of foam to make your mic sound lifeless is a bad deal in every way possible.
Seems to help slightly but can’t imagine trying to live stream with that thing on my mic.
Now, how much for that Baby Bottle? I started a Blue mic collection and that’s going to be my next purchase.
Love, Dad
Yeah, it all-around sounded "worse", but your testing scenario wasn't bad enough to show what It can do.
It's for when you have no control over the room acoustics, and they aren't good. "Better than nothing" tool for those reverb and echo chambers, for when the echo itself takes the forefront.
thanks for your review.
Hey man! I was wondering what dynamic mic you would recommend (200$ budget) for gaming. I tried the AKG D5 but i felt it didnt have the presence i needed or wanted... My voice is kinda bassy and dark in a way? Cheers!
SHURE SM57 + AW81S windscreen. ftw It sounds like a less dead SM7B (which means Better imo)
RTX voice ftw!
NO. PLEASE TREAT YOUR ROOMS. NO SHORTCUTS. NOTHING BEATS REAL ACOUSTIC TREATMENT.
THOSE FOAMBALLS MAKE ALMOST NO DIFFERENCE.
Sincerely,
An audio engineer
Real room treatment is prohibitively expensive and many rent or don't have dedicated room for it either.
@@CRANEREVIEWS You don't need to invest in full room treatment. I rent as well. You can buy acoustic blankets and hang them up. They work just as well.
I think he says at the end that this would just be a solution for public places rather than a home setup... In any case, how do you hang up your blankets? My lease says to "only use small picture hangers." I don't even have a high quality microphone. Just want to isolate the sound in my living room from my neighbors and vice versa. I've considered soundproof window film (which apparently exists now,) soundproof blinds, soundproof curtains, using blankets as curtains, and maybe a room divider with soundproofing panels... by which I mean sound-absorbing. The difference between the two gets brought up a lot when it comes to this stuff...
Dude this is really cool. I'm in a camper. I need a mic set up. This is appealing. Thank you.
Honestly I think most people will prefer the brighter sound without the foam even if it has more room noise. I also watch on my phone and I couldn't hear the room noise anyway.
It's just an open cell polyether reticulated foam. They make it by the cubic metre for ventilator filtration units. Anyways my point is that $200 buys you a lot of foam (a sheet roughly 3m by 2m by 50 cm thick when I approached a manufacturer in Europe was about $500) and I bet if you did a blind A/B test with aquarium filter foam you couldn't discern any difference, despite one being a sphere and the other a cuboid. Acoustic treatment and Aquarium products have this much in common: a company buys a dirt cheap product, cuts it into a fancy shape, slaps some colourful packaging around it and then multiplies material costs X 10 for market. In the UK we even had some jokers claiming that a shaped foam made for a better aquarium filter because of its 'surface area' when in reality cutting the foam to shape just means you have less volume of foam and therefore its worse by however much foam you removed.
Buy yourself some sheets of rockwool, a few cotton duvet covers and some 4" by 3/4" wood for the frames - $200 would treat most bedroom setups and even a room the size of your new studio wouldn't cost that much if you DIY broadband traps.
Blue sent me this great mic to review a year or so ago! I didn't review it, but it's great so I kept it anyway. Here you see it while I review something completely different. 😂
I have things still on my “to review” shelf from 2015. That’s what happens.
sounds noticeable better without the foam ball thingy
Great video , best one I seen. My mind is finally made up
I can tell a difference but couldn't say which I preferred. Shame you didn't test keyboard strokes and mouse clicks on the condenser mic to see if it helped with that.
That served to tell me I don't need the eyeball. Weight? No. Sound? No. Looks? No. Thank you for the comparison.
I paid $200 buck for a pillow that can do the same thing. Only difference is I sleep on that everyday. Not sure if I'm getting the same value here.
I'm waiting for a streamer to use the eyeball on a Shure with some coplay material to make it look like a GIANT microphone lmao
Personally I would probably want something that sounds partway in between the results you got with it on and off.
I agree with below thumbs down on the ball and re20 and the Blue :)
Only buy this if you live in the Times Square in a apartment block.
I own both an Eyeball and the cheap 'knock-off' version that only cost 40 dollars (vs 200-300 dollars) and they are exactly same quality and make exactly the same difference. So get the cheap one - then you can also brute force microphones into it to make them fit better from all angles and all shapes.
Could even create one from a foam soccer ball.
Lolol great advice
SubZero sz-isoball is the name.
@@hiawrj ty
3 rings for the oven kings under the sky...
The "Eyeballs" sounded muffled to me. Liked the sound without them.
I thought that things was a gag at first. That is the silliest looking thing, ever.
Rather than this thing, I'd suggest getting the proper WS-PL2 windscreen & Auray shock-mount for your RE20, the NoiseAssist plug-in for the MixPre Mk. II, & use either the Fairlight dynamics in the ATEM Mini Pro or an ART Voice Channel to shape your sound further.
The Eyeball is awful on the RE20; the RE20 sounds much better without it.
The Eyeball is eating all the 'air' (i.e., higher frequencies') out of your voice with both the RE20 & the Blue Bottle. It seriously degrades the perceived timbre of your voice.
I have a SM 58 to record bamboo flutes, thinking about to get a NT1..
I record in a Not treated room.. Do you think is worth to switch or not???
thanks for the comparison! would have liked if you could also test it in a slightly more reverberant/echoi room ... I feel like that room was already somewhat good (although I still think the difference was quite notorious)
Just doing a quick revisit. My opinion stays the same. This test is fairly inconclusive since the space you are in is not nearly reflective enough to suit the intended use case. Just a quick reminder that you don't need specially designed acoustic foam or furniture to dampen or spread-out reflections in a room. Quite a lot of people in home studios just use drapes, tapestries, rugs, bookshelves, blankets... if it's soft or has a lot of different shapes and angles, you bet it will positively affect the sound and it's cheaper than spending big Ks on precision made and crafted defusers or acoustic foam. high frequencies are easy to absorb with practically anything so trust me there is plenty of stuff in that garage dampening the reflections.
I bought the Alctron PF8 for $30. It improved my podcast audio so much! Then I bought two more.
Ok adam thank you, I want this now lol. Also what is your camera?
Not a significant difference IMHO. I would've chosen a more noisy place to really see this product do it's job. If the testing place is too quiet, there's not even the need for such a product.
Seems like someone could get "crafty" with some sound foam and achieve the same thing. Couldn't you just glue together some budget sound foam and "carve" out the shape? Or maybe buy a bulbous light fixture and fill it with sound foam panels?
2013 - video "$18 DIY Mic Shield Eliminates Reverb!" by Indi Mogul - aka Cone of Silence. They simply stuck a piece of eggcrate foam into a plastic trash bucket, not the solid kind, but the coarse mesh style. I don't think it will work ideally if the structure behind the foam is a solid material, because polar plot of a microphone isn't formed by occlusion, but by pressure subtraction at the opposite sides of the membrane.
To treat echo you need to place foam screens on the back and sides of you, not the back of microphone. These screens presented on the market is absolutely useless and too expensive for what they can do.
Muffled, the only difference I hear is muffling your voice with both. It's worse with the condenser. Both sound worse with the Eyeball.
if you cover the re-20 holes, it becomes an omni.
Thats a really expensive foam ball
IMO it dose sound better but I don't think that is comparable to a sound treated room.
i bet that lewitt condenser mic is the elgato wave 1/3 template.is it made out of metal or plastic? i bought a wave 3 and i was pretty dispointed because it's made out of plastic. (it's well made but still plastic).
It’s a completely different microphone from the wave. Lewitt only made the capsule for the wave, and that’s also completely different from this mic. The LCT440 Pure is not plasticy
@@EposVox thx a lot! who did the caapsule then? i can't imagine elgato making a good sounding mic on their first try.
Lewitt made the capsule as I stated in the previous comment lol
@@EposVox im dumb or tired sorry
Try adding a counterweight!
200$ for a sponge ball?
no thanks
less detail but i could actually tell the difference in noise when cranking up the audio a little bit
great video
i want a mic now. just cuz that shit looks cool!
What I learned from this video is the key to having good sounding voice audio is to have a good voice lol
Technique!
Rode was very muffled and Blue slightly muffled.
That just looks absurd though. No way I would want that.
It’s not really for on camera scenarios
Love the new Space BTW!!! I find, listening with studio monitors, that with the Eyeball cuts some of the high end frequencies from the microphones you tested.... a little too much for my liking. Now, one thing that I am curious: is the polar pattern affected when you have it on? Typically, if you place a ''surface'' within less than 2 inches from a directional microphone, you risk transforming it into an Omni (kind of like having a rapper in show shocking the bottom of the ball on his SM58... and the sound guy ripping his air out because his mic now goes into feedback because it is now an omni because he is blocking the rear of the mic #TrueStory). If you do the test with he Eyeball, I would love to know. I agree with you... nothing beats proper acoustic treatment. The room I record my vocals in has 2 out of 4 walls covered in acoustic panels (to remove parallel reflections) and I do not get any reflections... I made my acoustic panels using a Paint canvas, SONOpan or Owens Corning yellow insulation (don't remember the model number) in the cavity of the canvas, and I glued some B-Stock Auralex panels on it... this way you can mount your panels on the wall like a painting... and it makes it easy to remove if you ever need to make your room live or not.
Tbh these balls just take away the dynamics of vocals and muffles it
Maybe a counterweight to help with the mounting problems.
I understand this is coming up on a year old but decided to pitch in my opinion as someone who doesn't stream and isn't an audiophile listening through some cheap pc speakers from the 90s. I heard a difference but it wasn't worse or better in my opinion.
Lol I see the Blue Snowball in the background.
If your landlord won't let you put soundproofing on your walls, this might be nice
soundproofing prevents sound from entering/escaping, not bouncing/reverberating
@@voicehead so this product should do nothing, then
Just sing in your garage for a echo effect
This doesn't really make a lot of sense as far as my understanding of the microphone physics - fouling the space near the microphone usually leads to issues, and the polar plot of the microphone is generally formed not by occlusion, but by counter-pressure at the back of the membrane, so by putting close by obstacles or absorbers, you would generally make the directivity worse. Its diameter is about 20cm, which makes for a wavelength of 1700Hz, so below about 850Hz, the sound can normally just walk about an obstacle of this size.
That being said, it surprisingly appears to work more or less as described, it does cut down on reflected or ambient sound. But it also, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, makes for a pretty terrible signature.
I’m wearing quality headphones and not hearing much room echo, so as far as I can tell, no improvement in echo dampening using these eyeballs. However, I can tell there is a noticeable reduction in the mid-high to high-end amplitude and detail. So based on this test, there is no trade off to worth considering. Maybe a test with more pronounced room echo would illustrate a case where a trade off might be considered, but this was not the example that would convince me.
is there anything that would fit the wav 3 ?
It is makes everything sound boomier, probably because you’re right up on it. Proximity...
Better off with a deadcat less obnoxious!
By having to be closer to it, it presents this notion that it's working better, but if you stand further away, I wonder if it makes that much of a difference. I can't think of a use-case where this makes any sense. You're not going to want this thing in a video and you won't be able to see your script if you're doing voiceover. Simply being closer to your mic has similar effect.
The ball accentuates the proximity effect. It's not a nice sound.
yo is that bearded cdawgva
200 for a foam ball.... pass
The ball sounds worse which is no surprise. Dense foams like that are going to accentuate low/low mid frequencies because they only absorb frequencies above around 250hz. I would also wager that the isolation isn't any good below 250hz either.
Great respect for your videos. it seems you lean in more with the foam balls mounted....
Well yes, that’s literally what using it requires.
@@EposVox fair point but it also makes your voice more present and I like it.
@@EposVox Any chance to do new 1440p/H264-CPU/medium/slow preset OBS stream benchmark? I am not sure what AMD CPU to get for my 1440p YT stream (want to change from nvenc to H264 because od sharpen crispier picture), last time you mentioned that some 24-core Ryzen can barely handle that presets on OBS, however we got bunch of new CPUs from AMD since then.... Tnx! :)
You don't need a flathead to tighten your stand dude, bettin you already had some change in your pocket... Just use a penny or a quarter if you get lucky and get have a slot wide enough
I haven’t carried change in years lol
@@EposVox Well keep it in mind for future reference, the weirdest things can turn out to be handy tools when you might need them
Great thumbnail, though, not gonna lie.
Is there something similar for a shotgun microphone?
Shotgun microphones shouldn't usually be used indoors - the side lobes make for weird coloration of close reflections. They're great at rejecting very distant audio, even if it's loud, so they work outdoors, in castles, soundstages, etc. There's little that can be done about it without turning it into a cardioid-ish pattern, and nothing beats a half-decent dynamic at that. The most powerful source of noise in a shotgun is the rear lobe, so mount some absorbing material about 50cm to 1m behind the microphone, if you have to use one.
@@SianaGearz That's a great idea! I do a lot of on location interviews and sometimes I have no control over the ambient noise like HVAC etc. Thought something like this would help