In this segment of his free Ableton Live 12 music production class, J. Anthony Allen offers practical microphone buying guidance for recording vocals, podcasts, voice‑over, and live room capture. He highlights the Shure SM7/SM7B as an affordable, noise‑rejecting option ideal for dialogue and singing, noting its roughly $200 price point. He then discusses the Blue Yeti, a USB‑compatible condenser mic with an XLR adapter, praising its sound quality and versatility for both USB and interface use, while warning about its high sensitivity and suitability as a room mic. Allen also cautions against over‑investing in high‑end studio condensers for a home setup, recommending the budget‑friendly Shure SM58 (~$150) as a solid starter mic. Throughout, he emphasizes matching mic type to recording environment, the importance of audio interface choices (USB vs XLR), and cost‑effective solutions for home studios.
Chapters
Let's say you want to record vocals and maybe you want to do like podcast stuff. Podcast stuff, voiceover work, anything like that. The kind of hip thing to do right now and for a kind of good reason. If you watch video of people talking on a podcast, they're using one of these a lot. This is the very fashionable microphone to use. This is an SM7. Like I said, I think this is an SM7B. I don't remember the price point on these right now. I think it's around $200. So it's not crazy. They're a great microphone for dialogue, for talking, They're a great vocal microphone for singing in general. They really filter out background noise a lot. So if you want to do podcast stuff and have 200 bucks, this is a great one to get. Now, if you're not going to get an audio interface and your only option is a microphone that is a USB microphone, then I have a hard time with recommendations because I don't have a lot of experience with USB microphones. But I do have experience with this one. This is the blue YETI microphone. The thing I really liked about this one and the reason I bought it is because it does have a analog output, so I could use my audio interface if I wanted to. It's got this special five pin thing, but it comes with an adapter cable to get it into a normal XLR three pin cable. But it also has a USB out and it sounds pretty darn good. This is a condenser microphone. It's very sensitive. It's gonna pick up a lot of stuff. So it's a great, like, room mic. Like, if you just want to record everything that's happening in a room, like a band rehearsal or something, this is a really good one for that. The Blue company actually makes really great mics. They have a really cheap version of this called like the Snowball or something like that. Like, I have one somewhere actually. Those are, you know, not so good, but this one's great. Okay, so that's my mic buying advice. Something like this one that I held up, don't buy one of these. The only reason you should buy one of these is if you have a recording studio and money to burn. I'm sorry to say they're great and they sound great, but if you've got a home studio and you're recording a few instruments here and there, you don't need something like that. You need, you know, 150 bucks for an SM58, and you're going to be up and running and doing just great. Okay, let's get back to live and talk about how we record stuff in live.
