 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here today talking about one of my favorite subjects, increasingly my obsession. And this is videography. I'm one of the most important aspects of videography being collecting audio from the field. And I wanted to talk about a microphone I picked up earlier this year. And that is, I'm going to put up my screen here, the Shure PGA 48, which is a microphone from Shure that comes in at only $41 on Amazon, which seems like a steal, right? Shure is a quality manufacturer. And I don't think that Shure make bad microphones. I'm pretty sure that even there or this was my rationale for purchasing two of these guys was, you know, well, even a basic Shure microphone is going to be a solid thing to have in my audio bag. Now, the reason I bought two of these was because as I'm getting into videography and this YouTube channel and so on and so forth, I wanted to have a two microphones so that I could do a two person interview. Let's say two people sitting on a couch, each person has a microphone. And because my pro camcorder, which I shoot on my videos with now, the Canon XA40 has two XLR ports. You don't actually even need a mixer in order to capture two wired XLR mics directly into the camcorder. So that's what that's what I bought two of these microphones for. Now, they're actually a really, really good. It's a really good microphone and I've done a couple of videos where I have sort of sound comparisons and even a couple of my friends who are involved in the world of videography and photography. The only time people have asked me what microphone are you using was actually when I did interviews with the Shure PGA48 and they were kind of shocked that a $40 microphone delivers such decent sound quality. Now, the title of this video is going to be Shure PGA48, good for an interview mic or something like that. And I'm going to explain why, unfortunately, for handheld and interview application, it's not the right microphone. But before I do that, I want to just show you what a better choice might be. It's something that I kind of didn't really pay a lot of attention to when I was ordering this microphone is I thought, well, I need an XLR microphone. I need something that looks like a reporter's mic or a handheld mic or an interview mic. And I think I probably put something like kind of, you know, XLR dynamic microphone into Amazon and just found this one from Shure. And I was like, that's great. But you actually have to pay a little bit of attention to how the microphones are marketed, right? So this says dynamic microphone, handheld mic for vocals. And that's kind of the key word that you need to be on the lookout for. Now, if you think about it, a microphone that's intended for vocals, right? Let's say a stage microphone, you've got someone singing into it, let's just say, right? So that microphone is going to be sitting the whole night in a some sort of a mic holder, right? Therefore, handling noise doesn't really need to be a big concern because it's not going to be actually handheld, right? It's going to be sitting in a stand. Now, if we go into the Shure PJ48 and this is what I would do if I were looking for this microphone again, is you can actually go into this very useful feature in Amazon where you can search product info, Q&A and reviews here. And I just popped in interview. Now, the first reviews actually positive. They said it's great for red carpet interviews. I'm a bit surprised about that. I feel like if you're shooting celebrity interviews or red carpet interviews, it's probably worth using a microphone that's a bit better than a $40 mic. But if you get to the third and fourth one, you can see here, since I plan to use a mic for handheld interviews, I found it necessary to to return it. However, if you're simply putting this on a mic stand and talking into it, then you'll be fine. Now, by the way, this would actually be fine for podcasting. You can see the way I'm using this microphone, the Audio Technica AT2020. It doesn't have handling noise. But if it did, it wouldn't be a concern because it's just stationary. Now, this is the telling review. This one here from Hayden Anderson. This person says, I bought this for street interviews and I cannot use it for such due to the handling noise. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this microphone. Maybe I'll use it in the studio on a stand. Let me show you guys the handling noise to which these people are referring. This is the interview I shot just the other day with Noga, who is someone involved in my industry and we talked about impact investing. And you can see the setup I have is I shot this on the Canon XA40. I actually got my wife to work as the camera operator and she did a great job. And we're just using one microphone. So this is actually the Shure PJ48 in my hand. And I'm just passing it over to Noga every time she speaks. Now, I marked up my timeline with mic pass because I want to I want you guys to hear the handling noise that people are complaining about. Now, when I actually edited this interview on Friday, I had to literally cut out every single mic pass so that handling noise didn't come into the final cut, so I'm going to shut up and listen to the audio. In response to that sort of broad question, where are we with impact investing in Israel right now in well, almost 2023? OK, so first of all, thank you for having me. OK, so you can hear firstly, you know, the microphone audio quality I think is pretty decent, but it's just this place here. If I go over the timeline, 2023, OK, and you hear that noise as I pass the microphone out. You know, you could do what I did in post-production and just edit this out. I'm just going to give that one more playback almost 2023. OK, but it is definitely quite noticeable. It's not coming from the cable. It's coming from the microphone. So that is unfortunately why it's not a great interview mic. Now, just before we wrap up, not to not to end this on a negative note. So I put into the videography subreddit, which I highly, highly recommend if you are also learning about videography and you're looking to get advice from other people. I asked the Reddit community, well, what is a good XLR handhelds mic that is suitable for stuff like Vox Pop or or even this kind of a thing I was doing with Noga where you're interviewing somebody and you want to pass over the microphone. So in that kind of an application, handling noise like the one we heard is not acceptable, right? And that was me handling the microphone very carefully, right? If you're in the in a street and you're, you know, a bit less, you can imagine it would be very problematic. So a few recommendations from Reddit that are now going on to my never ending video wish list. So this is what they recommended for a sure interview mic. It's the Sure SM63L and you can just see how differently it's described for handheld application on stage broadcast, recording and TV studios. So at $180, you know, this one's quite a bit more expensive than the PGA48, but they're explicitly saying it's, you know, workable for broadcasting, so you're not going to get handling noise on a microphone. So if we just come back to the listing for the PGA48, you can see it very specifically says it's a handheld mic for vocals. And again, that's where the problem comes using it as an interview mic. A couple more suggestions and I'm going to have to have a think about which one I want to invest in next. I'm going to use my PGA48, but probably only for video podcasting, right? Where each microphone was sitting in a stand and therefore that handling noise wasn't a problem. It's not the end of the world to edit it out. But you know, if you can, if you're looking for a good XLR wired interview mic, it's, you know, definitely worse spending $60 more to get something actually designed for this job that's not going to have this obvious flaw. So the second option here that Reddit recommended to me is the Audio Technica 80804L that comes in at 110. And finally, a classic, the Sennheiser MD46. And you can see here again, just to kind of emphasize the kind of nuances you might miss in product descriptions, if like me, you're new to buying microphones, high quality dynamic microphone for rough use in live recording and broadcast environments, especially tuned for interview situations, special design avoids wind and handling noise problems. So again, that's being very, very clear that it's intended for interview use. And it's not going to have any issues with handling noise. And that microphone from Sennheiser comes in at 200 at USD. And it is a XLR with a dynamic cardio cardio pick up pattern. So the summary is that while I think the Shure PGA48 is a relative bargain at $40, if you're looking to use it for interviews, vox pop broadcasting, field recording, the handling noise is problematic. It's worth spending between $60 more for something like that audio technica mic or $150 more for the Sennheiser MD46, which is a really solid choice and probably the microphone I'm going to pick up next time I am over in the USA. Hope that was useful. And if you do want to get more videos from me about videography, audio, other technical subjects, do consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.