 Oh yeah, it's not recording. Right, so I'm now recording on laptop. I'm recording on my ZV-1. Let's give it a little straighten. Got camera two over here. Hello, camera two. I don't know which microphone should I use for my YouTube videos. This clip on Le Valier lapel microphone. Or this podcast style USB microphone. There are pros and cons with both. And more importantly, I am very, very indecisive. So for this video, I'm recording with both. And I'm going to flip between the two microphones. You'll probably notice that down at the bottom of the screen there. I am recording a lav mic and a USB podcast mic at the same time to compare them side by side along with you to help you decide lapel mic or USB mic. Hello, my name's Neil Mossy and I'm a development producer, helping high achieving creators and performers just like you as a left handed five to go because of this, to help you get ideas out of your head and outs onto here on YouTube to make the world a happier place. I know that the world will be happier with your videos out there instead of in here. And I'm sharing my journey on here so that you can avoid all of my pain and all of my mistakes or most of my mistakes. This is a strange video for me because I've got this in my face for a start. So let's meet the contenders. This is the Road Lavalier Go. It's a wear on clip on lapel lav mic. I hate the word lav. I really do. It sounds like something that Sid James would say in a carry on movie over here in the UK. I've got the Road Lavalier Go. I've got it connected directly into my Sony point over here, it's just in the way into the Sony ZV-1 camera or ZV-1 camera. So that's running straight into the camera. Now that is significant. This might be part of my assessment criteria of whether to go for this or this. And the second microphone is this, obviously. It's the Road Podcaster USB podcast mic. And I'm recording this into my MacBook Pro on QuickTime. So this is the first time that I have made a video that I'm actually going to release with this microphone in shots. I think if I were recording something for radio or for a podcast, I would have no problem with this here in front of me, but it's really distracting with the camera right there. So let's start with the lapel mic. I absolutely love lapel mics. They are small and discreet. And I feel like I should be doing as much talking as possible just so you get an idea for how a lav mic or a lapel mic sounds. By the way, there's obviously a link in the description. I'm an Amazon affiliate. So if you buy this microphone from there or anything else, that would be extremely helpful. And I own money for qualifying purchases. But that's not why I love lapel mics. They're physically close to your mouth. But my biggest love for this microphone and this type of microphone is that I can just plug it straight into my camera. And that gives me such confidence because I know that you are hearing me. I know that I'm recording sound right now because I can see it on the screen, on the camera right now. I can see those audio levels going up and down. The downside with a lapel microphone and the whole reason why I wanted to try out something like this is that it doesn't feel very full. I want to be booming. It's like I'm recording in a room. And although the sound is good, but there's my chair, by the way, that is my chair. Maybe I should be testing out chairs, not microphones. But it does sound like I'm recording in a room. I don't have that really nice, warm radio audio sound. But it always seems to, it's not just because I'm wearing T-shirts, but it always seems to be pointing just over my shoulder. It seems to be capturing everything over there rather than everything here. Whereas with a USB microphone, I'm capturing just my voice, it seems. So I wondered how different the two types of microphone would sound. It's obviously better than the on-board camera microphone. This is how the mic sounds actually on the Sony ZV-1 camera. And I'm sure your camera would sound something not dissimilar to this when compared to wearing a lapel mic. So that's the difference between a camera mic and something that is right close to you right here. It's not quite as warm and deep and dark and huggy as this microphone. So let's just stay on this microphone now and talk through the positives of a USB podcast style microphone. This is the Rode Podcaster. Again, that link is in the description if you wanted to check it out for yourself. I can't touch it because it makes an awful sound. So I will touch it just so you can get a bit of a closer look. I actually love how this looks, even though this particular microphone does look like something that you would pick up in a shop in London Soho, or that you might find in the back of a top drawer, if you know what I mean. There's just something about it that I find ever so slightly off-putting. No offence, Rode Podcaster. It's just the color, I think, and the ribs on the side. And obviously this microphone is great for video podcasts and interviews. Oh, I've knocked the mic again. We haven't got to the cons yet. This microphone is great obviously for video podcasts and podcasts and interviews, or interviews over Zoom, which is something that I do a lot on my YouTube channel. I'm gonna put some headphones on now because the other great thing with this particular microphone is that you can plug in headphones, but maybe it's because of my giant bald head. I don't really like how this looks. I completely, whoa, I completely understand why Jocko Willing does his video podcast in black and white. I think maybe I need to do a bit of that while I'm wearing the headphones. But there's just something about it that looks like giant ears, or that sort of emphasizes my shiny paint. So maybe we should go to the downers with this. I'm gonna keep the headphones on. I'm gonna commit to this. So my biggest downer with this microphone and this style and type of microphone is that I'm very much tethered to the spot, which is weird because with a lapel mic, you are literally tethered to the camera, but I feel that I can move around while I'm wearing this and I can move around in the shot. But if I do that with this microphone and I might lean in for emphasis or lean back, any kind of body movement and chair noise, any kind of body movement tends to throw you off the microphone. And so subconsciously, quite psychologically, I feel I've gotta be pinned to this spot to get the right sound from this microphone. I better answer that. The other problem that I've got with this microphone is that there is more to go wrong. There's another potential point of failure by having it recorded on a MacBook or some other computer device. You could lose power. There might be a poor cable connection. You can run out of storage. The recording might stop. And I would be completely unaware of that because it's out of my eye line. So this is an experiment that I've always wanted to try out, or always, ever since I've been thinking about USB microphones. I have got a cable running out from the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and I've got the cable running all the way directly into my Sony ZV-1 camera, 3.5 millimeter microphone input socket. And how does it sound? I've tried it once before and the sound was a bit hot and I was getting clipping from the microphone. So I will put my findings on screen now in the edit. So I'll put words on the screen to say whether or not I think this can work. And as a backup, I've still got my recording on the MacBook Pro. Just as a side note, because I've seen this in a lot of comments and I had this question myself, you can't plug this into a phone charger or just some other USB supply and then use the headphone jack. It doesn't work. What happens is you get a red LED light which tells you it's not functioning and I tried it with headphones. Nothing seems to come out of the headphone jack if this microphone, this particular microphone isn't plugged into a Mac or a Windows computer. Let's go back onto the lapel microphone. This is what it sounds like on a lapel microphone. Back onto the USB. This is how I sound on the Rode Podcaster USB microphone. Back onto the lapel mic again. This is the Rode Lavalier Go microphone. And back onto the USB Rode Podcaster microphone. This is the difference between the two sounds. So which one, this is the big question. Which one do you prefer? Which one do you think would be right for you if you could afford either option? I think for me I am besotted. I was gonna say in love still. With my lapel microphone, I'm besotted with it. I love its versatility. I love the ability to be able to go outdoors with it. But most of all, I love just being able to plug it straight into the camera, see on my monitor that it's recording and to be able to just edit this one video file and not have to import and sync another audio file. So I think I'm going to stick with my lapel microphone for now and use this as a really useful addition to my range of audio options. I think I'd love to use this microphone for my podcast, the Great British YouTubers podcast. Here's a little plug for it here. And also this microphone will come in for any voiceover work. Sometimes I have to voiceover footage for which this microphone would be absolutely delicious. There's just one more slight issue with this microphone. I'm sure you've noticed this already. And when I mention it, you won't be able to unsee it. But the biggest problem that I've not mentioned is that this microphone makes my teeth look yellow. It makes my, maybe this is something that only affects British podcasters and video podcasters but it makes my teeth look really grim. Maybe my teeth are this shade of yellow but I don't think I need a reference white image right next to them just to confirm how bad my teeth are. If this were audio only, pretty much what it was designed for, then it wouldn't be so much of an issue. Both microphones are listed in the description. There's a link there to their Amazon pages. And why not hit the thumbs up button just to let me know that somebody reached this point of the video. I'm trying to get to 10,000 subscribers. It's a very long journey. I'm looking at another three years from now before I hit that milestone. So thanks so much if you are awesome enough to take me one step closer to that goal. And here, right here is a video all about the microphone that I use the most. Thanks for watching.