Best settings and setup for Blue Yeti microphone

Lango-Django · October 2021

Hello all,

Upon Buco's recommendation, I just bought a Blue Yeti microphone... so now I'm looking for tips on how to twirl all the knobs and dials on the side of the thing to make it sound best for recording my acoustic guitar... anybody have any suggestions..?

Thanks!

Will

Buco · October 2021

Yikes, put me on the spot...gotta run now but I'll chime in tonight...

Buco · October 2021

Ok I have a very basic understanding here and am of philosophy "experiment until you like what you hear". Main controls are the gain and the different patterns. With gain on any device I've had it's always the same, play your guitar as loud as you will during the recording or a live performance and adjust the gain to make sure the signal isn't clipping, it stays in the green zone, below 0db but gets close to 0db when playing loud. In other words strong and clean but not too loud.

With polar patterns I have just a basic grasp. It's all about what you want the mic to pick up and equally important what you don't want mic to pick up.

So if you start with omnidirectional pattern, the mic will pickup equally in 360 degree. Could be a great way to record your acoustic but depends a lot on the acoustics of your room. Also good for a whole band recording. But it would probably be bad to use in a concert because it would be picking up the unwanted noise from the audience.

That's when you use cardioid pattern because it's only picking up in front so if you are using it in live setting it would be picking up less audience noise if there is some. Also good to record in your room.

Then you have a bidirectional pattern or figure 8 which works as it looks, it's picking up in a to the front and rear. So it'd be nice for two instruments or guitar/vocal duet and such.

And there is, this was news to me, a stereo pattern, records the left, right with some overlap in the middle. This confused me a little so I looked at how it's built and it has three separate capsules inside and two of them are set in XY configuration. This could work for a nice single acoustic instrument recording but would probably get better use if recording a band in which case you'd want to make sure to leave plenty of space between the mic and musicians, 6-8-10 feet to get the feeling of space and separation in the recording.

Seems like they have a pretty informative brochure inside too. But all that aside, just set the gain and try recording the same piece of music covering using every pattern and see-hear what you like the best. Or let us hear them all and we'll pick favorites.

As far as where to place the mic, most common is aiming at where neck meets the body about a foot away. Same here, change, experiment and see if you find something with more magic.