Editors Keys SL300 Studio Microphone Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,705 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to an unboxing and overview of something that's a little bit unusual
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for us this is the SL300 condenser
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microphone it's part of the studio series available on editors keys.com and
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the idea here is that it is a relatively lowcost USB microphone it's driverless
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it works on Mac PC or Linux and
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according to at least one testimonial on their site which is of course the least
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biased source of information possible about a product it is comparable in
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terms of audio quality to $2,000 microphones which I mean I guess we'll
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let you guys be the judge of whether it is better at least than a couple of
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other microphone Solutions we have that are similar in price so inside the very
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well- packaged box that has nice soft foam for protecting the gear when it's
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in transit we have the SL300 which is I
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mean I guess they're just kind of targeting sort of a very clean
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unassuming look because people will be using it as a podcasting mic so they
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talk about using it for podcasting as well as for vocal recording and
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instrument recording it does have a low pass switch here so you can eliminate
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any sound recording under around 200
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Herz or so so you don't pick up too much bass and then it also has a minus 10
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dbel switch which might be useful so we don't have to do any leveling in post if
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uh you know Luke and I for example are recording in two of them next to each
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other cuz I tend to talk a lot louder than him other than that you find a usbb
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interface face on the bottom and that is pretty much it you also get a nice
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Supple USB A2B cable as well as a shock
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mount that just uses your standard mounting mechanism to mount it to
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whatever you want it's got some foam along the inside as well as elastic cord
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around the outside so that you're not going to well so that it does what every
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shock mount does all right now we did got a couple of accessories with it so
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we got a dual layer pop filter this is I think a $30 Adder is what we sought it
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for and then we've also got the portable local Booth Pro now we do some
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voiceovers for the pre-roll ads that we run before our videos and what we've
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noticed is that um aside from having issues with the p the P
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sounds that cause unnecessary harshness
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in the recording so we got the pop filter for that we also found we're
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getting a lot of echo because we don't have an optimal recording environment so
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this supposedly will help and we're going to give you guys some before and
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afters of how all of this stuff is working for us right here in just a
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moment I guess I should also mention a couple of other things it has a 5-year warranty and it has dual 34mm internal
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shock mounted diaphragm so that's something I also meant to mention as
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well all right so now that we've actually set up the entire editor Keys
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setup the pop filter is actually fairly
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rudimentary just comes with a standard tension mounted clamp down here so you
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can affix that to the stand that the microphone itself sits on you can affix
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it to this bracket right here or here wherever the heck you would want and you
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can reposition it with pretty much infinite flexibility so you can tighten
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this to adjust the the tension here to make sure that it doesn't accidentally
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slip around and other than that yeah that's pretty straightforward next up
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we've got the shock mount so it was pretty easy to slip the microphone into
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it it's just you know a standard sort of foam insert and then it's also got a gap
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in the back here so it just stretches wider to accommodate the microphone and
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it's just pressure mounted like that so you don't actually have to clip anything into place if there something I was
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going to complain about because overall we've actually already done our
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recording test so we're filming this after we had already done it um sounds
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quite nice if there was something I was going to complain about it would
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probably be that this is a little bit flimsy right here and I would like to be
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able to tighten it and have it really stay in place a little bit more easily
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than that um I think we're going to go ahead and take a short break here so
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that I can show you guys how this guy works well I guess I can show you from
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the ground so the stand it comes with is very robust we were actually impressed
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with the quality of the stand so you've got nice plastic feet right here you've
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got nice attention to detail and things like the loosening and tightening
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mechanisms it doesn't feel it doesn't feel cheap at all so that's really nice
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to have there's also a lock here so you can keep it from accidentally you know
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slipping or something like that evidently and then the construction of
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the portable booth has kind of a metal backing on it so that's a perforated
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metal backing it's got little uh sort of
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foam feet on the bottom I wouldn't call them rubber feet but little three little
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foam feet on the bottom so you could set it up on a desk if you want if you don't
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want to set it up on the stand we actually had to remove one of the feet
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in order to attach the stand to it so that comes off just like that and then
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the stand screws into the bottom and then it has acoustic pyramid foam all on
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the inside the whole thing actually folds up so you can loosen these two
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feet a little bit right here and then you can fold the thing up like this if
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you did want to transport it or take it anywhere with you so actually I guess
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that's all they're pretty much is to say about it and it's going to come down to
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how does it actually sound so now it's
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time for our microphone test I know we don't have a whole bunch of other Studio
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mics to compare against but if nothing else we can give you guys some idea what
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we wanted this thing for aside from a more podcasty style show that might be
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coming stay tuned for that by comparing it to some of the other microphone
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technologies that we have available to us so for comparison we have a
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reasonably I'd say mid-range wireless lav mic so this is an e w00 G3 from
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Sennheiser with the stock lav we've also got an ntg2 so this is a fairly
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well-regarded Road mic pardon me red mic
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so that's a shotgun microphone we've got a sure beta 58a which is an iconic
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microphone for recording vocals and you'll even see some famous stand-up
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comedians using it's an old design but tried and true and then finally we have
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the SL300 which has a very satisfying blue LED now that we've actually hooked
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it up in its little portable recording studio thing and we're going to be
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positioning ourselves pretty close to it because we're going for that AM radio
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deep sound whether it's a podcast or a pre-recorded message in front of our
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videos so in order to give you guys some idea of the difference in the recording
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quality we're going to record this in four different ways and it is my VPN
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Hotspot Shield pre-roll that I do in front of some of my videos so first up
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we're going to take these three mics all at the same time because that's pretty
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easy and here we go Hotspot Shield VPN
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6:34
now to learn more Hotspot Shield VPN service makes your browsing experience
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safer more secure and more private click now to learn more Hotspot Shield VPN
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service makes your browsing experience safer more secure and more private click
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safer more secure and more private click now to learn more so in order to be fair
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to the other microphones we wanted to try this one with out the benefit of the
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recording studio thing that actually costs about as much as the microphone so
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here we go guys Hotspot Shield VPN service makes your browsing experience
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safer more secure and more private click now to learn more and finally because we
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tested the other microphones without a pop filter which we didn't have before
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let's go ahead and take a crack at that with this one as well Hotspot Shield VPN
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now to learn more I'll leave it to you guys what's actually better and which
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sound you prefer but if nothing else this has been a little bit of an
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interesting investigation into how different microphones will produce
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different sounds even with the same voice doing the same thing over and over
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and over again thank you very much for checking out this video online as Tech
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tips click like if you liked it click dislike if you disliked it and as always
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