Remote work vNext — Level up your home office setup
By: Chris Kirby
Tags: Home Office, Remote Working, Gear, Streaming

Sound matters

Sound through Meet, Zoom, Webex, etc has been a mess for years. Conference rooms have those awful pucks, mics on most devices are omnidirectional, meaning they pick up sound in all directions, and then you have room acoustics and background noise to deal with. Now meeting software has attempted to deal with some of this, with proprietary background noise filters, but that won’t improve the actual quality and clarity of your voice. That one is on you, and I’m sorry to say that your pair of noise-canceling headphones or AirPods, aren’t going to get you there. Don’t get me wrong, built-in mics on laptops, phones, and headphones will get the job done, they just won’t help you sound smarter :). Smarter or not, clarity helps in every conversation, so if you have some money to invest, this will help guide you to some solid options for your home setup.

Sound In

No filters here, just maximize those sweet pipes you were born with. The answer here is pretty simple, get yourself a good entry-level preamp with a USB audio interface, a vocal or podcast tuned dynamic mic, adjust the gain and go. Simple! Technically what I said is true, however, it really matters what you choose here or could easily end up sounding worse or be barely audible at all. Looking at what podcasters use is a great start. What you’ll want is a preamp with a high amount of gain to power even the most gain hungry dynamic microphones…looking at you SM7B! Most importantly, a USB audio interface / DAC that will allow you to use it as a live input on your computer. Most work with both Mac and PC and my specific setup would work with either.

preamp

Based on my research, which included many blog posts and reviews, I started out with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen 3. It met all of my requirements, with one input to spare, and only costs $170…sounds high, but these things can get really expensive. While the Scarlett is great, I ended up moving to the more expensive Clarett 2Pre USB, which allowed for more inputs and outputs along with better software and control. I would recommend either depending on needs and budget. I’ll suggest a few alternatives as well.

microphone

There are quite a few options here, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you are not an audio engineer. Should you be looking for a USB mic or an XLR mic, then a dynamic mic or a condenser mic? I found that focusing on my use case helped me quite a bit here. I wanted to focus on vocals, specifically talking/podcasting. I also wanted both USB mic for travel & portability and an XLR mic for my permanent setup. I started with a Blue Yeti X mic, which is a very good and customizable streaming and podcasting mic, that also sounds great. I would recommend it if you can control your background noise and keep it away from typing and other related sounds. Condenser mics, this one, in particular, pick up everything. For my needs, it did not have sufficient noise isolation and I didn’t care for the Logitech software. Still a great mic and I highly recommend giving it a shot. I then focused on XLR dynamic mics, which is a very popular category for podcasters and YouTubers. The most common mic you’ll see is the near-ubiquitous SM7B, which is a well tuned vocal mic from Sennheiser and it’s priced at a hefty $400 bucks. I may buy one someday, but you can get similar quality mics for 1/3 that cost. I landed on the MXL BCD-1 podcast mic, which sounds great with no tuning required and has excellent noise isolation. On the USB side, I’m currently using the Elgato Wave:3, which is similar in many ways to the yeti, but I prefer the sound and software.

considerations

Above I mentioned finding an amp with plenty of gain power. Now while these amps sound great, for the more power-hungry mics, you’ll find your gain dial all the way turned up. The best and highly recommended accessory to solve this is buying a Cloudlifter, which will add another 25db of clean gain to any amp. It was a game-changer for me, but they are not cheap. Your amp will also need Phantom power, which both the Focusrite amps do, to power the Cloudlifter. This will also limit your ability to use a Phantom-powered condenser mic. I’m using the Cloudlifter CL-2 for $249, but you can opt for the CL-1 for $149 to save some money.

Buy some quality balanced XLR cables to interconnect your amp with your cloud lifter and a longer cable for your mic. I’m using these Pig Hog cables, but any premium cable should be fine.

I highly recommend getting a boom arm if you are using a dynamic xlr mic. They like to be close to your mouth and too much gain can start to introduce noise. There are plenty of options here, just check out Amazon to find one that fits your desk and works for you. For the times when you want some space between you and the mic, you can start to look into quality shotgun mics, which are expensive, or do what I do and switch to a good USB mic. If you are feeling next level here and are happy to spend 1k on a mic, then by all means pick up a Sennheiser Pro Audio MKH416-P48U3 shotgun mic. I would love one, just can’t justify that….yet :)

Sound Out

Speakers

Now that you have your preamp, it’s time to invest in some good self-powered studio monitors. You don’t have to go crazy here to get some decent sound for your home setup. I started with a pair of these highly-rated PreSonus Eris Studio Monitors. They are pair of 3.5" speakers and I think they sound great for their size. Small footprint as well. PreSonus does make more powerful speakers, but I can only vouch for the small ones. I eventually moved to a larger set of Yamaha speakers, the HS5I Studio Monitor…the smallest in the series. I also wall-mounted them, so opted for the model with the mounting points.

considerations

Depending on your speaker choice, you want good balanced TRS (amp to speaker) cables or TRS (from amp) to XLR (speaker) cables. Check Amazon, plenty of affordable options, just read the reviews. I’m using these Pig Hog cables, which you can also find on Amazon.

Add a subwoofer. If you have a powered sub that you are not using or can repurpose, then you can add that to this setup. Yamaha also makes a matching subwoofer to complement the HS monitors. I happened to have a sub I wasn’t using, so I just added a TRS to RCA adapter, added the sub to my mix on my preamp, and I was good to go

Wired headphones

Depending on where you land on the Audiophile scale, there are quite a few options here. I do recommend getting a decent pair that you can use with your Preamp to both monitors your mic/mix and that are comfortable to wear all day. I use a mix of room monitors and my headphones depending on house noise and the need for privacy. I’m currently using the very affordable and respectable Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro. They come with low, medium, and high impedance options. Given that most preamp headphone amps are fairly weak, including both Focusrite models above, stick with the lower impedance. The more Ohms, the more power is required to crank up the volume. Stick with the 32 or the 80 OHM models unless you plan to use a dedicated headphone amp with more power. 32 if you plan to use them with your laptop or phone as well. Those who know what the heck I’m talking about will know what’s right for them or they already have a killer pair of headphones with a DAC :)

If you want to step it up, check out What Hi Fi, or other great audiophile sites that keep a maintained list of current models.

Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro ($170)

wireless headphones with active noise canceling

I’ve owned nearly every high-end headphone in this category and would only recommend two pairs. If you’re all in on Apple, then the Airpods Max are the way to go. I’m currently using them and am very happy with that choice. If you use any non-Apple devices, then the Sony MX4’s is where it’s at. Both have stellar audio quality, good microphones, active noise canceling, transparency modes, buttons/touch controls, and support lossless audio over Bluetooth. I’ve owned and returned the Bose 700’s (sound, microphone), the Sennheiser Momentum’s (microphone, weight), the Bowers and Wilkins PX7 (microphone, noise-canceling). All $300 plus and all good and many things, so if you have them, keep them. There are in-ear models as well to consider, but my recommendations would stay the same for their in-ear counterparts the AirPods Pro and the Sony WF MX4.

considerations

I did add a dedicated headphone amp, which supports HiRes audio and a wide variety of codecs to level up my music listening experience. It sounds amazing with the right pair of headphones and more importantly the right audio source. I’m using the FiiO K5PRO $150, which has a wide variety of inputs, including USB, up to 768K/32-bit decoding, and selectable gain for plenty of power. It’s great for what I use it for but definitely shop around. There are some great portable options if you want to use a dedicated DAC with your phone as well.