Transcription:

Hey there, Internet fans! It’s Ryan Perry. I’m out front of the office today, shooting next to a busy four-lane road, doing a microphone test for cellphones.

I’m shooting on my LG4, and I started this shoot-off using a wireless microphone. This is the Azden PRO-XD. This is the unit right here. The nice thing about it, it has a sending unit and a receiving unit. One of the real pros about it is the fact that the lapel mic is attached to me, therefore I can really control the sound quality even though I’m around all this traffic. The other nice thing is, I can walk away and my voice doesn’t drop off because the mic is actually staying with me versus just using the microphone on the camera or something like this.

The RODE VideoMic Me, this is a great little mic that actually plugs right into the camera. It actually can rotate, which is nice. So, if you’re doing the forward-facing camera, the back-facing camera, you can actually flip it, depending on which person you want to talk to. The one downside is that the farther you walk away, the voice is going to fall off.

The other thing I forgot to mention about the Azden that I’m recording on right now is the fact that it actually has volume controls. So I can actually adjust the amount of volume going into the camera. I can bring it down or I can bring it up depending on the device, so you can actually fine-tune. So, I’m going to end this video, I’m going to plug the RODE in, and let’s see what the sound quality is with this device.

Now, I’m at the same location, we got traffic going by, now I’m shooting with the RODE Mic Me. This is about a $60 unit. It’s a great device. The other thing that’s really nice about it is you can get one of these. This is called a Dead Cat, and what it is, it’s a windscreen, so that if you have a lot of wind going by, those type of things, it’s going to diffuse that sound, so you don’t hear it. It is a directional mic, so you want to make sure that you do point it. However, since it is a microphone, it’s designed to pick up voices close to it, so as you start walking away, the voice and the sound is going to drop off very, very quickly.

In fact, I’m not sure how much of that you actually notice, but you should have heard the sound dropping off as I walked away, and then it gets progressively louder, as we get together. So, one of the downsides is, if you’re going to have multiple people, you want to make sure that they’re all pretty much within equal distance of the microphone, and that they’re facing the microphone itself.

Now, the last test I want to run is on the actual cellphone which has a built-in microphone. So, let’s go check that out now.

This is using a built-in microphone on my LG4. Now, typically, as most smartphones, the microphone is relatively good. However, typically if you use something that’s aftermarket such as this RODE or the Azden Wireless, your sound quality is going to be that much better. Now, typical problems that you’re going to run into with the cellphone is that, if I walk away, the voice is going to drop off. And again, I don’t know how much you’re actually hearing. I have no idea how much you actually heard there, since I walked way.

The other problem is, right now, I’m shooting this video on the front-facing camera, which limits me to 720 DPI. That’s still high def, but it’s not true 1080. If I was on the other side of the camera, on the back side, I would actually get full 1080P. And the problem is, there’s no microphone on the other side, so the sound quality would be horrible. And that was a garbage truck driving by. I’m sure you heard that pretty well.

This concludes the test of the three different microphones. One being the built-in microphone on the LG4, the other one being the RODE Mic Me, and then the Azden PRO-XD, a wireless mic. We’d love to know your thoughts on this video. What did you like? Be sure to share it, like, and comment below. Take care.