Blue Yeti

Blue Microphones

A brand that is now owned by Logitech, Blue Microphones creates condenser microphones that connect via a USB instead of an XLR. This saves users the hassle of a soundcard. The quality of their products is at a professional level of audio. Their known USB microphones include Snowball and Yeti.

The Blue Yeti

A sturdily built microphone, the Yeti is all metal. Comparatively the buttons on it seem a tad flimsy, so use with care. The base has two ports, one is the USB that powers it and also sends the audio signal to the computer and the other is a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones. This latter feature makes it very convenient to hear yourself while recording. Along with the ports, there is also the shock mount thread, although a shock mount is not included and is available separately at Blue. On the face of the Blue Yeti, there are two controls one is for the volume and the second is for mute. On the back is another control for gain, along with a pattern switch.

Audio quality, pattern

The recording quality is great overall, with a little extra sensitivity. One has to position the microphone well and take into account ambient noises as the sensitivity picks these up. The sampling rate is 16 bit at 48 kHz, which is pretty standard.

The Blue Yeti has a feature that makes it quite a versatile device, it has four different patterns due to its tri-capsule technology. The three condenser capsule's signals are processed in different ways to achieve this. This lets you select the type of picking patterns the mic is accepting an audio signal from. The patterns include cardioid, bidirectional, omnidirectional & stereo. This alone would save a user money as generally mics are built with a specific pattern only.

THX certification

This is the first microphone in the world to adhere to THX standards that were set by JBL many decades ago. This means the device is tested and truly does recreate the whole frequency range as it should. This microphone has no colouring like other mics may with certain frequencies, it picks and recreates as is.

Comments

The downside with the Blue Yeti is the non-standard thread size which means one has to buy the shock mount from Blue or find one that fits. Despite this, it is one of the most used microphones in the vlogging and podcast era. It is even used in home-studio setups often. Another plus point is the ability to plug-n-play. Overall the Blue Yeti has earned a great reputation and is available for a nominal price point given the quality of audio it can generate.