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Tired of people complaining that you're too soft or that your voice is hard to understand? Up your audio game with the Neat Skyline USB Desktop Microphone from Turtle Beach and you'll move to the head of the pack! This review includes a demo of both the built-in webcam microphone on a Gateway PC laptop and, of course, the Neat Skyline USB Microphone so YOU can hear the difference.
Check out the Skyline mic at: https://amzn.to/3EsNBfw
Check out Dave's Q&A Web site at: https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/
#microphone #usbmic #skyline #turtlebeach #askdavetaylor
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0:00
You will definitely sound better with this desktop microphone. Let's check it out
0:12
Dave Taylor here and I'm checking out this. This is the Neat Skyline USB Directional
0:18
Desktop Microphone and it's pretty sweet. As you can see, it is a free-standing microphone
0:25
with a handy mute switch on the front. And basically you plug this into your computer
0:30
Mac or PC, and you point it to yourself. You adjust the gain on your computer so you get the
0:36
optimal volume and you're good to go. This is going to work with Zoom or Skype or gaming or
0:43
really you can record yourself, anything you want to do, conferencing, streaming, podcasting
0:50
it all works. Now, from a specs perspective, it's a 24-bit 96 kilohertz audio recording system
0:57
using a cardioid condenser mic and it's 122 decibels sound pressure level. So lots of numbers
1:04
basically what it hears, it records, I'm sorry, what it hears, it picks up and then gives to
1:11
your computer and then you can do whatever you want with it. You can certainly record it and
1:15
I'll do that in just a second so you can hear what it sounds like, but it can work with really
1:20
almost anything. Mac, PC, Linux, Chrome, has a USB-C plug on the back and if you can plug it
1:28
into something else, odds are pretty good it's going to work. Now, it includes this really long
1:33
USB-C to USB-A connector and the reason it's so long isn't because they want you to have all this
1:42
extra wire when you plug it into your laptop, but so you have flexibility with your desktop computer
1:48
So you can run the wire however you want, as long as you plug it into the back, you're good to go
1:54
It is plug and play, so there's no hassle with installing drivers, thank goodness. I really hope
2:01
that with Windows 11 and stuff, we're past all the driver stuff that we've had to suffer with
2:06
but basically I'll plug this in and I'll just show you that that mute switch becomes green and
2:14
if I press it, now it's red to show me that it's muted and I push it again and it's green
2:20
I have to say, it's kind of a weird, it's a sort of soft rubbery button. Somehow when I saw this
2:26
I thought, oh I'm going to get a click, click, right on and off. No, it's sort of this squishy thing
2:32
I'm not sure why they chose to do that, maybe it's a slightly more environmentally durable
2:38
I don't know, but it might surprise you a little bit the first time you push this and you're like
2:42
oh what's that, that's weird. So that's a six foot cable and it's an illuminated mute button
2:50
and let me give you some dimensions and then I'll give you a demo. So it is 7.8 inches tall
2:55
the base is 4.8 inches long and two inches wide and it's from Turtle Beach by the way
3:03
so it is called Neat. They have their own line of microphones now, but I don't know why they're not
3:09
using the Turtle Beach brand. Be that as it may, let's do a demo. So I got my old, my classic
3:16
gateway here and it's running Windows 11. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually go into
3:22
settings, system sound input and I'm going to make sure that this is the one that's chosen
3:27
and it looks like it is and then I'm going to go and just use voice recorder on the PC
3:35
So what I'll do is I'm going to switch my audio from this microphone to this microphone and
3:42
assuming everything's working, you're now hearing my voice through the Neat Skyline USB directional
3:50
desktop microphone and it's probably not a fair comparison against this because this is a different
3:56
kind of microphone. So let me stop this and let's hear what it would sound like if I was just
4:01
talking through my regular webcam microphone. So we're going to stop this and now I'm going to
4:08
switch inputs and now I'm going to record again and this time what you're hearing is you're hearing
4:16
my voice from the built-in microphone on this relatively budget gateway laptop. So hopefully
4:23
you can hear a significant difference but I'll leave that for your decision and your ears
4:29
And now I'm back on this microphone. So we sort of bounced around a little bit there but that
4:35
should be something pretty interesting and it really gives you a sense of how this microphone
4:40
can really up your game. Now they say you should be like six to ten inches from the microphone
4:46
I feel like that's pretty close personally. So that's something again you can mess with the gain
4:53
or input volume and Mac and PC both have that option and then you can get that to be a good
5:00
volume level given where you want the microphone to be positioned. Now I'm a big fan of these external
5:07
microphones because when you have things like a webcam built into your computer, their real challenge
5:12
there is space and size but when you get to something like this they can really sort of say
5:18
whatever. We don't have to have so much anxiety about the size or the amount of power it draws
5:23
We're just going to make a really good microphone and this will up your audio game and it's definitely
5:28
one to check out if you're tired of people on zoom saying what I can't hear you. That might be
5:34
because you're muted. You couldn't actually tell on here whether you're muted or not. That's easy
5:39
but if you're just tired of like gaming and stuff and not having people complain that you're really
5:45
soft or whatever then this can solve a lot of those problems. So really pretty slick. Only thing
5:51
left to talk about is the price and before that I will tell you it comes in black or white. I am
5:56
partial to the white but if you have mostly black peripherals and accessories you can match the
6:02
color scheme and this is the Neat Skyline USB Directional Desktop Microphone and it's $69.99
6:11
at Amazon.com. One worth checking out. It's a good simple way to up your audio game. That's all I
6:18
got. I'm going to go back to doing some more recording which means I'll have to catch you
6:22
in my next video
#Audio Equipment