- The first question we need to answer is who exactly makes the B20 streaming microphone?
EPOS sponsored this video. And in a nutshell, they're the result of a previous
joint venture between Demant and Sennheiser that is now its own independent brand.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at this thing.
Definitely A-plus for product protection.
That is some fine, fine packaging.
Here, let's see if it's any good. No, I won't, sorry.
I'll be good, I'll be good. I'll be good today, David. All right, let's pull out our microphone.
Oh, interesting, so it's got like kind of a side ARM.
The ARM rotates 360 degrees and is 3/8ths threaded.
So you should be able to mount this to pretty much any audio equipment that you would want to.
Okay, if you don't want to mount it to an ARM, it does come with a base.
And then presumably, there's also, oh yes, oh, okay.
Yep, that makes sense, yeah. Oh wow, all machined aluminum.
Super, super rigid. And what else have we got included?
My bad.
Like I'm just trying to show you the thing. A quarter inch threaded bolt.
And then, we've also got a USB type A to type C. That's nice, everything should be USB type C at this.
It is a little bit more complex and a little bit more costly
to implement into the product. But it's got clear benefits,
even if you're not taking advantage of all the features like, you know, super high power delivery
or whatever that obviously a microphone wouldn't need. And one of the big ones is just look at that.
You plug it in any way you want. And perhaps more importantly, it's really, really durable.
We actually did a test where we unplugged and re-plugged it 10,000 times.
And USB-C held up to the challenge, whereas micro B did not.
Wow, I never thought a microphone could be so dangerous.
This is the safety guide. I've never actually read one of these.
Always include this safety guide when passing the product onto third parties.
Ah, no way. I was trying to assemble it wrong and they won't let me.
I've wanted to put it like this just to show that, like, oh yeah, make sure you don't assemble it wrong.
But the one end of the oval is flattened out.
So you can't put it in the wrong way. More products should be designed to be lined as proof.
For all the linusesses in your life. Don't be a Linus.
Do you know Linus is slang for penis? - [DAVID] What? - Let's take a closer look at the microphone.
So it appears as though the intention is for it to be addressed.
I'm going to guess the side with the mute button
and the volume knob and not the side with gain
and pickup pattern. It's got four pickup patterns. So you've got stereo, omni-directional,
cardioid, and bi-directional. So these are useful for all kinds of different applications.
Cardioid, you want to use if you're getting real up close and personal with your microphone
if you like that kind of sound. You want to block out ambient sound.
Omni-directional would be if you just want to put it in the middle of a conference table
and be able to hear everyone, everything that's going on. Bi-directional would be great for conducting an interview
with someone across the table from you. So you don't pick up some of that nearby side noise
but it picks up both of you really well. And then stereo would be if you want to make
a stereo recording, I guess. It doesn't come up very often
in like a podcasting context. But, hey, you know, I'm sure someone has use for it
for, like, art. On the bottom, the last thing that I didn't show you guys yet
is that there's a headphone Jack. So it's pretty typical for these USB microphones
to have both an audio input
and an audio output that goes through them. Which allows you to monitor yourself with zero latency.
Because if you try to monitor yourself through the computer, there can be a bit of a delay.
So you're talking. And then you hear yourself a little bit later. And it can be extremely distracting.
I actually hosted Rancho like that for years.
All right, that's a little loud. Okay, we're going to have to, whoa, we're going to have to lose some gain here.
I'm a bit of a hot boy, like from a,
like a audio, microphone perspective. I tend to talk really loud.
Man, you know what, I kind of want to, I kind of want to up a little bit. I usually prefer to have my mic a little closer.
Now while I get this dialed in, EPOS doesn't actually say whether this is a condenser type or a dynamic microphone.
But most USB microphones are condensers. And particularly, the ones with adjustable pickup patterns
are generally condensers. And the main benefit of a condenser is that you get
better frequency response and sort of generally more accurate inputs.
But it does come at the cost of more background noise.
Whereas with the dynamic microphone, you got to get real in close and personal with it
otherwise you're going to be hearing everything from your AC to your neighbor backing out of their driveway
and everything else in between. Now of course, if you did want to hear some of that stuff, let's have a listen to what one of the other pickup patterns
sounds like on this. Here's omni-directional, hey, David, how's it going?
- [DAVID] Great. - Yup, I can hear you. And then if I flip back to cardioid.
Whup, that's the wrong dial. There we go, ah, David, how's it going?
- [DAVID] It's going good. - Yeah, it doesn't matter what your name is. Little bit of handling noise.
Generally speaking, you shouldn't be rubbing your microphone while you're using it anyway.
That's not, that's not recommended. In terms of table bumps, bumping my elbows a little bit.
There's a little bit, but not bad. If I flip back to omni-directional, you guys are going to hear.
Yeah, that's quite a lot worse. I mean, these are the main concerns when you're using something for gaming, right?
Because you're actually, you're moving around. You're sliding your hands around.
So, you know, you've got keys going kind of clickety clack.
This is another example of why in a gaming or podcasting setting, whether you're taking notes
or just playing a video game, you don't really want omni-directional.
An omni-directional pickup battle is not really the best. Hello, hello.
Yep, it's muted, turns red. Subtle, but easy to see.
There we go, that's back. Based on my experience with it so far,
I would definitely recommend, like, with many microphones,
the use of a pop filter. You can definitely pick up some breathing and some plosives.
But it's far from the worst I've ever encountered by a long shot. And oh, of course, they've got their software,
the EPOS gaming suite microphone. Oh, this is really cool.
We can actually see in real time, the profile of my voice.
It's not that high pitch. I'm really heavy in the kind of 250 to 500 Hertz range.
You know, that's a higher voice compared to, you know,
a really bassy man voice. Hi, I'm Batman.
Yeah, that goes a little lower. Oh, interesting, I had actually noticed
it didn't have a high pass filter or a low cut built into the microphone.
It looks like you can configure that in software though. Ooh, voice enhancer, should we try the warm voice?
- [DAVID] Yeah. - Hello.
Do a quick test recording. Let's see what I sound like in the warm voice enhancer preset.
Probably a little too warm, I think, for my tastes.
Now, we are listening to the clear voice enhancer preset.
Now, we are listening to the clear voice enhancer. I think we're going to stick with off for voice enhancer.
Of course, you can create a custom one if you want. Just be like, look, there's not enough bass in my voice.
I need to crank the bass. This is the ultimate bass version of my voice.
You know, Nicki Minaj, this is super bass, super,
I'm going fishing super bass. This is the ultimate bass version of my voice.
You know, Nicki Minaj, this is. Yeah, that's intolerable.
Moving on to noise cancellation. This sounds like a feature where it uses the microphone
to, you know, get rid of annoying ambient sounds
in the headphones. But that's not what it does. It actually is supposed to just clean up
your digital recording. So we're going to start at zero and record for a little bit here.
Then we're going to step it up to 50, where theoretically, we should get a bit of a cleaner sound
to the recording. But as we move all the way up to a 100, it's also possible that we'll get
a bit of a reduction in naturalness. It's not the sort of thing I would typically turn on.
But it's up to you. A thing I would typically turn on but.
Yep, somehow I managed to describe exactly what was happening without even having listened to it yet.
50 is all right, a 100 is definitely too much for me. So that's it, that's the EPOS B20.
It comes in at $199 US. And you guys can check it out at the link down below.
Thanks again to EPOS for sponsoring this video and thanks to you guys for watching ShortCircuit.
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