> I imagine you've experimented with mic placement such as talking into the barrel of the mic more directly?

Yes but I don't think I experimented enough. You are right tho, I mainly did that to minimize plosives and breaths. The AT2005 is really sensitive to that (as you can see in that "pick of the week" video).

I ended up playing with it last night and you know, putting it a little more direct like that other video does make a huge difference for the better. Almost in an unbelievable way. Things went from sounding a little muddy and boomy to pretty even and clear.

What I ended up doing was positioning the mic 100% vertical, putting it about 1 inch below my chin and then I pushed it out to be maybe 3 or so inches past my face (in between my monitor and face). Then I tilted the mic about 15 degrees towards me. At this point my boom arm is almost 100% extended and I can't tilt it anymore without the mic falling out of position due to gravity (I have a cheap $15 boom arm).

In any case, this is really promising. My next video will be like this. I may tinker with it a little more before recording but with this new set up, the mic is almost out of frame. About an inch of it sticks out from the bottom in the middle of the screen.

I can't pull it down any lower because then the mic gets too far from my mouth and it starts to pick up echos from the room and also starts to sound thin, but I think as is this is a pretty big improvement.

> I didn't realise at the time how much hardware and software processing people use.

Yeah. It's a lot of effort. Although if you go out of your way to buy near silent computer fans (cpu, case and power supply) that helps a ton for cutting room noise. My next build will have that for sure, since it's a pretty cheap investment (maybe $30 in fans) to make a noticeable noise floor reduction of the room.

For comparison I recorded this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeSD17YRijk almost 3 years ago with the AT2005 directly connected to my computer over USB using a $10 pop filter in the same office. Since there's no webcam video, I had the pop filter covering like half my face with the mic positioned more like that pick of the week video.

There's no Scarlett, DBX or any processing in software other than running Camtasia's noise filter. So the total all-in cost here was $80 for the mic, and zero time spent processing it afterwards in software. I just pressed 1 button and waited a few seconds for the filter to apply.

I haven't listened to this in a long time and it for sure sounds less boomy than my current videos. It almost sounds maybe a little too thin but that could also be due to being pulled back a little bit since I put about a fist's width of space between the mic and pop filter, and then I was a good inch or 2 from the pop filter.

But, long story short, I think if you could kill the room noise you could get away with a set up like that where you just plug in a USB mic and go.

> Not saying this is true of you, but I think a lot of people go through phases of buying new mics when really they just need to learn how to place and adjust the one they have better.

I haven't gone off the deep end yet with mics but I've spent a stupid amount of time generally researching audio components. Prior to this mic I was using a Blue Yeti but got rid of it because it was too sensitive. It picked up everything. Then I went on a Youtube review binge quest on audio gear / microphones and learned about dynamic mics.

Some of my really old videos from 2016 use the Yeti such as this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKVyePLmFM, but I also used to run it through REAPER in real time and did a ton of processing on it so it's not a fair comparison. Back then I had no idea wtf I was doing, and looking back at these old videos make me cringe at how overcooked my compressor was (I almost sound wispy and robotic). But to be fair, back then I had crappy Sennheiser HD201 headphones so I couldn't even hear anything and over time about 100 people who took the course mentioned they really enjoyed the clear audio so who knows.

> that's an end-address mic; you should be an inch closer to it

The crazy thing is, for dynamic mics that 1 inch makes a massive difference haha.

I'm not an audio expert but if you want to post some of your videos, I wouldn't mind having a listen and we can talk about your set up. If you don't want to do it openly, feel free to email me too. I don't know when HN stops letting you reply to comments due to nesting, so we'll probably end up hitting that point soon anyways here.