Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

If you’ve put off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the choices you need to make or are panicking because you feel you lack the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll need to fulfill your video creator dreams.

If this is your first time here, we have a 

 that aims to educate you on your YouTube journey. And if it is your plan to grow your channel, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our latest tips, tricks, advice, and news.

How to Start Your YouTube Channel: 10 Top Tips

We promised 20 tips to kickstart your YouTube channel, so let's start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the 

. All the tips are covered in this video too:

So amazingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking of starting a YouTube channel and have been for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, ready or not, start now. And I'm not telling you this as a New Year's resolution. Every moment you hesitate or procrastinate, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and gobbling up all your potential audience. You don't want that.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn't matter if it doesn't end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, getting behind the camera, using your editing program. You need to start creating content to find out whether or not you enjoy making videos before you know whether or not you enjoy being a YouTuber.

Tip #2 Learn How YouTube Works, No Seriously:

The chances are, that the first video you make is going to absolutely suck. Fantastic, you've made a video. You've made the first step, and in six months’ time, you'll look back at that first video and think yeah, that really was terrible, but you've gotta start the journey somewhere. And with that, you've gotta start your YouTube channel somewhere as well, even if you're not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don't have to publish it, that's the important thing.

You need to gain experience going through the workflow of uploading videos. The last thing you want is having a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don't know how the YouTube system works. Again, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don't have to publish it.

Tip #3 Develop a Strategy you Will Actually Follow:

While getting some practical experience behind you is obviously a good thing, you also want some form of strategy. So, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube

, and when you're answering this, try and answer it from a viewer's perspective, not your perspective. So I don't want to hear about hitting 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you're in it for your own self-gain, they will see through it and immediately switch off. Viewers want to know what they can gain from the content, and you want to sell that as much as possible in your videos.

 Again, try and be as specific as possible. What age range? What gender, if you are going to a particular gender? What type of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who's going to watch your content.

 There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everybody else who's already on YouTube making content? You need to disrupt the status quo, not join it, because you'll never be seen.

how are you going to deliver this content?

 Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a particular time of the day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much YouTube they can watch per week, and then tailor your content to those watching habits, and think about whether you're going to do video on demand, live streams, what's going to be best for you and your audience?

Tip #4 Find Your Niche and Build the Hell Out of It:

live streams, you'll know this one off by heart. Niche down. Let me give you a quick example. What's your channel about? If you're giving an answer such as, "My channel's about beauty, and it's about travel, "and it's about vlogging," then it's about too many things. 

. It should be about one specific topic, when you start your channel, because you need to appeal to a very specific audience.

Once you've grown your channel, and you've got millions of subscribers who fall in love with you, you can take them on a journey wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try and remember that. It's a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you first start out on YouTube.

Once you've thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice little present, called your value proposition. This is your elevator pitch. Try and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in around about six words.

. It tells you the who, YouTubers, video creators, and why they should watch, because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we've managed to do that in four words. Now it's your turn.

Tip #6 Invest in the Right Audio Equipment:

If you've just started out on YouTube, and you're wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it is 100% audio, and here's why. Bad audio is so much more distracting than bad video, and everybody hates onboard microphones. 

So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera,

 and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Tip #7 Create a Formula with Template Videos:

Videos need structure, so when you make your next video, try to think of how you will develop a show formula, that you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook. An introduction, a teaser to what's going to be going on for the rest of this video. Then we have the branded intro, followed by an introduction to who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jumped into the meat of the content where we are right now, and at the end of this video, you'll see how we round this all up.

Your show formula will take time to structure, and it will evolve over the course of your YouTube journey. Try and keep an eye out for this when you watch your favorite YouTubers. As rough and as random as they might appear, there is always structure and story behind each video, and that's why you watch them.

Some people love analytics, others hate them, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep an eye on, whether or not you want to look at that analytics. The first is 

This represents how enticing your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I'm not going to give you all of the same target to reach. Check what your current click-through rate is, and whether it's two, four, six, or eight percent. I want you to try and improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in so many more views.

The other metric, as it always has been, is 

. Generally speaking, the more watch time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. But if you make shorter videos, that doesn't necessarily mean you must make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.

What I will say is maximize the value of your watch time in the videos that you have. That's by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not, and try and improve the relative audience retention. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60, 70, 80%, you're doing really well, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails. We've got a video here on how to do it.

Tip #10 Create an Engaging, Interesting Channel Banner:

If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills in the channel banner when we do channel audits, I'm going to rip out my hair.

10 more tips or creating and growing your YouTube channel

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Members of the vidIQ family that have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access to the Academy 

 so you can kickstart your YouTube success today! Access to the exclusive vidIQ academy will give you a huge advantage over your competitors from the get-go. 

Kick off your YouTube dreams with the tools you need to launch YOUR channel. We've got the top tips just for you!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

I've got a question for you. What are all of the unique things you create for every single video, whether it be thumbnails, titles, descriptions, and tags? And the reason I ask you that is because some things you probably never change when you upload your videos and are always working in the background. But are they working smartly for you?

YouTube Default Uploads: Check Your Settings!

When you are logged into YouTube, you should see your channel logo in the top right-hand corner of most YouTube screens. We're going to start with something you should all review every couple of months and those are your upload defaults. Click on Settings in the left hand navigation bar and then, choose Upload defaults. When you begin the process of uploading a video to YouTube, elements of that upload will be pre-populated with what's currently in your Uploads default fields.

Starting with a title, it's probably best to leave this one blank as each title should be keyword specific and emotionally relevant to the video you upload. But if you are an educational or how-to channel, there may be specific phrases you want to include here.

On the other hand, you're description is where you want to pre-populate some stuff. Firstly, we have a top paragraph here that indicates the viewable description preview when people are scrolling through YouTube. It's a second opportunity to include keywords and grab the viewer’s attention. Imagine you are writing an old school tweet with 140 characters. Make it as compelling as possible.

Now, underneath all of this stuff you write about each video upload, you should also include new viewer information, such as who you are, what you do on YouTube, answers to common questions about your channel, links to whatever is important to you, and hashtags at the very bottom of the video description if you intend to use them.

A question you may be asking is, how do I use hashtags and should I be using hashtags on YouTube? Well, we do have a useful video that covers that topic and you can 

. And of course, always set you videos to ‘Private’ or at the very least, ‘Unlisted’, so that YouTube has a chance to process it properly, including giving warnings about monetization and so that you can set it to ‘Public’ at the exact time you want it to go live.

There are three tabs at the top of the Upload defaults screen, the second one being Extras and featuring tags and ad placement. Much like the title and description, your tags should be very specific to each uploaded video. We've got a couple of very broad default ones here and we usually delete as appropriate per video. And of course, once you have 

, you will be offered hundreds of tag and keyword suggestions to help optimize your videos along with loads of other tools, too!

if your channel is monetized, you’ll want to make sure you are serving up ads on your content that maximize your potential earnings. Imagine if you've uploaded 50 videos with default settings that haven't been set correctly - that's a lot of potential revenue down the drain.

Now, I'm not suggesting you stick as many adverts as possible on your videos, but, consider this. If you make longer videos, of say, 15 to 30 minutes or more and you have high audience retention, say, 70 to 80%, I think that gives you permission to put adverts in the middle of your videos. After all, you deserve that little bit of extra income.

YouTube Advanced Settings: What to Update

One more tab to look at now and that's the Advanced section. Unless you're happy for people to use your content for free, make sure your videos are set to the Standard YouTube License.

The ‘Category’ drop down can help you to advertise as much of your content to the correct target audience. And it just so happens we've got a dedicated video on YouTube categories you can check out for more information:

The ‘Video Language’ option helps YouTube to share the correct language captions to the right viewers.

Caption certification only applies to videos that have been broadcast on U.S. television, and community contributions allows viewers to submit captions for your videos.

Finally, you can manage how comments are posted on your channel, whether you want to allow all comments, review each one, or disable them. If you are a channel that includes children in your content or appeals to a very young audience, you may want to check this every week to make sure YouTube haven't disabled this, although they should tell you in an email if they do.

How to Change the YouTube Settings of Published Videos

Making changes to your Upload default settings will affect all the videos you upload in the future. But what about those that are already on YouTube? Well, you can make changes to them on an individual basis.

From the new Studio Dashboard, click on the Videos link in the left-hand navigation bar to list all of your videos. Next, click on the video you want to adjust and on the first page, you will see the title, description, and tags you can change, along with many of our vidIQ tools. At the top of this screen, there is an Advanced tab where you can adjust all the other settings found in the default upload page, along with additional options, such as video location, age restriction, and even more monetization options.

Next on the list are channel keywords. To get to those, go to settings once again in the new studio and click on Channel. On the first tab labeled Basic, you will find channel keywords that apply to your whole channel, not just individual videos. Historically, channel keywords helps YouTube to understand the content and audience of your entire channel. Now, I say historically because if you were to ask me today how important channel tags are, I'm gonna be upfront with you. I have no idea. YouTube themselves have been stressing for a long time that video tags are no longer as important as they used to be and we did some tests 

And if video tags aren't very important anymore, I would imagine channel tags are even less important. Take this as an example. We inserted this rather strange and unique tag into our channel keywords to see if we would be able to search and find our channel through that tag. We couldn't. The end result we did come up with was this channel. And I've gotta be honest, that kinda leaves me feeling a little woozy.

Next up is your YouTube branding watermark. To change this in the new studio, go to Settings and this time, click on Channel, and go to the final Branding tab. By setting this correctly with the right image, you can increase subscribers you get from this feature by over 500%. Yeah, you heard me right, 500%.

Going into Settings and then, Community will allow you to review a few things, including the management of your moderators for live streams. Blocking people from commenting on your videos and creating a list of words that, if picked up in comments, automatically send them to your held for review section.

When it comes to blocking words, obviously, you can use it for inappropriate language. But what you can also use it for is those damn annoying comments when people say, "Sub for sub. "Subscribe to my channel. "Hey, check out my channel."

When you upload your videos to YouTube, there may be a few settings that you're taking for granted that could have a huge impact on the success of your video. So, let's take a look at them.

YouTube Settings You NEED to Know

If you want to change your channel icon, it's relatively simple to do on your desktop, but a little more tricky to do on a mobile device. Let’s walk through both options.

Changing Your YouTube Profile Picture on Desktop

On YouTube, click on your profile picture to access your Channel page

Click on your Channel icon and ‘Edit’ (double-check you’ve selected the right Channel)

Changing Your YouTube Profile Picture on a Mobile Device

From the YouTube app, tap on your profile picture then tap on ‘Help and Feedback’

The ‘About Me’ section will open and give you access to your profile image

Now you are on the about me section, where you can tap on your profile picture and update

A couple more things to remember about channel icon images. YouTube are fairly generous in what type of images they will allow. That includes jpgs, bmps, pngs, and, even gifs, although they will not be animated.

The image can be up to 800 pixels by 800 pixels, which is fantastic, but do remember that you're likely gonna see this as a tiny little circle on most YouTube screens. So keep it relatively simple.

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Want to quickly update your YouTube profile picture on a desktop computer or mobile? We show you how.

How to Change Your YouTube Profile Picture via Desktop, iOS or Android

Congratulations everybody. You've all subscribed to PewDiePie and he has hit 100 million YouTube subscribers. And this is exactly when he finally did it.

Now, I've got to be honest with you. I didn't think we were going to be able to capture this landmark event because YouTube are supposed to abbreviate all subscriber counts over a thousand. Att the time of the announcement, PewDiePie's subscriber count was slugging along in the mid-ninety millions, and it didn't look as if he would hit 100 million until the end of the year.

That is, until he started playing Minecraft. Almost over night, PewDiePie doubled both his daily view, and daily sub count. He has now pumped half a billion views into the revitalized Minecraft topic on YouTube, which is currently more popular than Fortnite. That particular story deserves a video in it's own right, which we've already done, and you can watch it here.

But the good news is, for real-time subscriber counts, PewDiePie has made it before abbreviations have kicked in. All of which brings us back to the early hours of Sunday, August the 25th 2019. The day PewDiePie reached 100 million YouTube subscribers.

Let's slow things down to real time, and watch the very moment PewDiePie hit 100 million subscribers. Yep, you saw that right? A jump of 70 subscribers in a single second. No doubt caused by thousands of people clicking the subscribe button at exactly the same time, to try and be the 100 millionth PewDiePie subscriber. Though how anyone is ever going to prove that, is beyond me. Anyway, that is your official date and time recorded in history for all to see. But of course, no subscriber count ever stays static for long. Now, the actual relationship between PewDiePie and YouTube has been somewhat strained over the past couple of years, due to controversies on PewDiePie's channel. But credit where credit is due for YouTube, who tweeted out this 

More good news for you PewDiePie fans. While T-Series may have been the first YouTube channel to 100 million subscribers, PewDiePie is the fastest channel to 100 million subscribers. PewDiePie, Felix, 100 million congratulations on your success, on what must be the single greatest week of your entire life. You directly, or indirectly, have influenced a generation. Tens of millions of video creators, to pick up their camera, and share their message on YouTube. And this, in the last decade, has impacted the world in a way we've never seen before. You have led the way to this, so that we all know it's possible.

PewDiePie just smashed through the 100 million mark to become the most-subscribed-to individual creator on YouTube ever! Read about the moment it happened.

PewDiePie: The Moment He Hit 100,000,000 YouTube Subscribers

Nobody likes nor wants to read sub4sub comments so here is how to block them from your channel.

Click on your YouTube profile picture in the top right hand corner of your screen

Click on ‘Settings’ in the left hand column

On the screen that pops up click on ‘Community’

You’ll see a screen that shows your channel moderators, people you've hidden from your channel, and a section at the bottom called ‘Blocked Words’

Add the list of keywords you want to block here

The Blocked words box works very much like video tags. You type in a word or phrase, press enter, and that will create the blocked word. You can use spaces as well to write complete phrases, such as, "Subscribe to me." You can remove blocked words by either clicking on the cross next to the phrase or by pressing the backspace key.

To help you get started, this is the list of blocked sub for sub words we use at vidIQ

You can also automatically place comments with sub4sub content, or other hashtags and links in them to be held for review. To view and review these comments, go to the ‘Comments’ page in the Creative Studio and you will see three tabs at the top.

 is YouTube's automated attempt to filter out comments such as, "Sub 4 sub?" Which sometimes it gets right, while other times it filters out completely legitimate comments.

 is where you will find those comments that have been weeded out from your blocked words list. Oh, and if you're wondering why some of our comments are blurred out, it's because they contain foul and abusive language, so feel free to add such words and phrases to your blocked list too.

You have several options on how you can deal with these comments, you can:

Permanently hide the user from your channel, so you never see any of their comments again

Now, while we're on the subject of comments, vidIQ has a cool little tool that allows you to create comment templates, so instead of typing the same response out many times, to the same question or the same comment, you can do a couple of clicks and it automatically places it in there for you. Saves me tons of time, every single day. And if you're wondering what that one tool is, it's all part of the vidIQ Chrome extension ⬇️

Sub4Sub comments on YouTube are beyond annoying so here's a way to block them completely - for good!

How to Block & Remove Sub4Sub Comments on YouTube [Block List Included!]

When it comes to video, viewers will put up with a lot such as shaky camerawork, and bad lighting, but bad audio is just way too frustrating. If the sound if off, the viewer will be quick to give up and simply move on to the next video. But 

creating better audio is an art form in itself

, and a brand-new language for creators to learn. Understanding terms like cardio, patters, and gains is just the start of understanding this technology so we can buy and set up the right equipment.

Welcome to this week’s episode of TubeTalk where we are going to break down all your audio requirements. So, where do you start? When you look online, equipment is either really, really cheap or really, really expensive with everything in-between. So, how do we know what to get, and more importantly, how do we get the right microphone that's going to do the job for the application that we want?

We’re joined by Laura Davidson, the Marketing Development Specialist at 

, and she is here to give us all of the answers of every possible question we've ever asked about mics. Laura Davidson has been in the audio industry for over 13 years and has honed her skills as a product demonstrator, specialist, marketer and singer/songwriter. In this podcast you will learn:

Why and how mics differ depending on exactly what you need them to do

The difference between a cardioid and an omni-directional mic

Why you might choose dynamic mic over condenser mic

The right mic for changes in broadcast frequency and bandwidth

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

How to Choose the Right Microphone for Creating YouTube Videos: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Laura, welcome to TubeTalk. Can you give us like a two-second overview. Where do you fit into the picture with Shure? Who is Shure?

Laura Davidson: So, Shure has been around for 94 years, so a little bit of time. We've always been a U.S.-based company. We're based outside of Chicago, and got our start in broadcasting and PA systems when they started to get too big for people to be heard on like stages and venues got too big.

We made mics that actually amplified people without feeding back horribly, so that was kind of what we became known for. We've since gone on to create some of the most legendary microphones that you've seen. Elvis used our mics! Our SM58is kind of our industry standard dynamic vocal microphone. And so, we make that, but we also make wonderful other things for podcasters and content creators and people who like to listen to music. We make headphones and earphones. Not many know that. So, my job is to kind of go out into the world and tell people about the brand who might not be familiar, and those who are, let them know that we make a full range of other cool things.

Liron Segev: Okay. So now, let's put ourselves in the driver's seat. I know I need better audio. Okay. I've listened. I've heard you. You've convinced me, but where do I even start? Because I see on your website, you've got this little wizard at the top saying, "Hey. What do you want your mic for?" Is there really such a difference in the mics depending on what you're going to be using them?

Laura Davidson: There's a few things to take into consideration. The application is where you want to start, which is why we made our website the way that it is, where you can say, "Okay. I'm going to be using it in performance and production, voice or speech or with an instrument. Each one of those applications is going to require a different type of mic, and we make microphones that can capture several different types of things.

We also have a podcast mic option if you want something that is going to be able to capture the human voice very well, so the frequency response is going to be nice and tailored for that. And we can get into that in a bit because that's a little geeky.

But, if you know that you want to use a mic for speech, you want something that's not going to have, especially for podcasting, not a lot of plosives, so those Ps coming through. And so, what I'm talking through right now is something called the SM7B, and you're talking through one as well, I believe.

And it's a microphone that's been around since the '80s. Michael Jackson recorded Thriller on this microphone. And here we are today still using it because it's got this amazing response that captures the details and richness of pretty much everyone's voice. It's kind of insane, actually.

Liron Segev:	The application is critical. So, if I know I'm going to be recording music, or different things. If I'm going to be recording just purely us chatting, that's the application. If I'm going to be recording my YouTube video clips and maybe I'm mobile, well, that's a different mic altogether.

Liron Segev: So, do we have to start with what? Basically, asking ourselves the question, "What's the primary usage of this mic?"

Laura Davidson: Yes. That's a great place to start.

Liron Segev:	Okay. So, assuming I now know that, so let's say I want to capture lots of audio, but I don't want all this background music. I'm going to be doing it on the go. So, I'll be at events, and you know events are buzzing with Wi-Fis, and everybody else's chat, and lots of noise. How do I make sure that I'm going to be able to capture the person I'm interviewing or me doing my vlogging style? I believe that there is some sort of patterns I need to look out for?

Laura Davidson: Yes. So, the polar patterns are what that's called, and we have some great videos that you can go online and find just about mic basics. But, essentially the polar pattern is how the microphone picks up the signal - the cardioid pickup pattern is the most common, and it’s called cardioid because it's shaped like a heart. So, think cardio.

That particular mic is directional, so what that means is it's not going to pick up all things coming into it. It's going to pick up what's coming into the front of the mic. But once you go off axis or behind the mic, it's not going to pick up. So, that one's really great for doing things like this where we're talkinrectly into the mic, not moving around a lot, but it's also great for stage use because it's so directional. It's not going to pick up the band or the ambient sound as much as something like an omni-directional mic, which picks up as omni implies, all around or everything.

You have to take that into consideration so that you know how close you're going to be micing your source. That's the second thing to taken into consideration. After you figure out what you're going to use it for, you figure out how you're going to use it in the field or based on the source that you're using it on, how close you need to get to it.

The most common is your cardioid mic, and then omni-directional is typically used in a lavalier mic, which is one that you would clip onto your shirt to do interviews.

You use omni-directional lav mics for interviews or in a theater setting for instance. We make a cool series called TwinPlex, which just came out, which everyone should Google if you're using any sort of micing any sort of theater applications. It's unbelievable.

But there's also super cardioid, which is an even tighter pickup pattern than the cardioid, and that one's really great for vocals and stage vocals because it's even more focused so you get even less bleed from the stage or the ambient noise and more focus on the source going directly into it.

There's also a hypercardiod, which goes one step further than that. And there's a little bit of bleed that goes out the back of that because it's hard to explain, but if you think of the cardiod or the pickup pattern as kind of like a balloon. If you squeeze the balloon in the middle, a little bit is going to shoot out the bottom, right? So, two tops and the bottom. So, as you tighten your balloon or your pickup pattern, some of the pickup pattern shoots out the back, and that would be kind of like the hypercardiod. So, that one's great for stage, but it can be more prone to feedback, so you just have to take that into consideration. If you are using it in a louder, band scenario, it's not always the best, but it is amazing on the voice.

And then, bi-directional, which you're familiar with, with the MV88+, which essentially has two directions, so you have one microphone with two surfaces of pickup, the front and the back of the microphone, and that's handy for interviewing. Definitely interviewing in the field, especially, so you don't have to bust out two mics. You can use the MV88+ and get you on one side and me on the other.

Liron Segev:	Yeah. So, thinking your balloon kind of example, it's almost you're squeezing the middle.

Liron Segev:	And you get some on the left and some on the right and we both come across beautiful and clear.

Laura Davidson: Yes, exactly. And there's also different types of microphones, too, which we can get into as far as dynamic and condenser. Bi-directional is just a great pickup pattern for capturing two sound sources from one mic. So, you won't have independent tracks of said audio but it's just a great thing to use if you don't want to lug a bunch of equipment around.

Liron Segev:	Yep. So, like a grab and go. This is perfect. I have personally used this many times, the 88+. I've stuck it straight into my phone. I've shot interviews in the field. Had an opportunity to interview a very high-profile individual, and there was simply no time to go and set up and get equipment. These people are on the go. You either do it on the spot, or you lose the opportunity. I set this thing up and within seconds, I was ready to go, and the quality was unbelievable. So, definitely two thumbs up in endorsement of that one. Absolutely.

Liron Segev: So now, we have the patterns.You mentioned condensers and boundaries, so it gets even weirder?

Laura Davidson: Yes. So, that's the actual type of microphone itself. Changing sound into an electrical signal, essentially.

So, the dynamic is the most common, and that's like our SM58 stage microphones, handheld microphones. Those are dynamic, and the way that it works is there's a diaphragm, a very thin piece of material. You speak or sing into it, and it makes it vibrate physically from the sound waves coming from the source. It’s then attached to a magnetic coil that's centered around a magnet, and when you move it with those sound waves, it moves the coil up and down around the magnet creating a magnetic field, which then transfers that signal down the cable to your board and into your dock. It's pretty basic, but it's actually kind of complex when you get into more of the nitty gritty.

A microphone is a transducer, and a transducer is just taking signal or sound and creating an electrical signal. It's transducing it, changing its form, so that's the one way of doing it, the dynamic way.

The other type of mic that is most common is condenser. A condenser takes the magnet out of the equation, and uses a very thin diaphragm, even thinner than the dynamic. And it's surrounded by, instead of the magnet, electrically charged plates. So, you sing through or speak through the microphone, and it will move that thin diaphragm and create this electrical charge which goes through and typically requires phantom power to get the signal transferred into an electronic signal.

Liron Segev: I want to understand this because the more we understand it, the better choices we're going to make. This is why I love what you say. I want to know the difference. Why would I choose dynamic over condenser or condenser over dynamic, or would I choose one or the other?

Laura Davidson: Yes. You would choose one over the other. Condensing microphones tend to be more sensitive. Because they don't require as much sound to move the diaphragm, and because they don't have that mechanical weight of the magnet in there to physically move, they're much more sensitive. So, condenser microphones tend to be used more in studio application where they're in a controlled environment because they're more sensitive. So, you don't want to bring them out, and you don't want to upset them. You don't want to use what we call a high SPL, sound pressure level, like micing up drums with a condenser you can do, but you'd tend to want to use a dynamic because it can take a lot more punch down through it without distorting or hurting the diaphragm. So, something to consider in that.

Liron Segev: So, in a controlled environment where it's going to be on a mic stand. It's going to be permanently mic’d up. You're not moving it around too much, the condenser microphone is going to be a better option. And dynamic, would I use that maybe as my field recording?

Liron Segev: Okay. And then, going back to the patterns, couldn't you get a condenser that's cardiod or a condenser that is omni?

Laura Davidson: Yes, absolutely. Yes, you can.

Liron Segev: So, the two are actually separate. So, patterns is one thing, and then, the type of mic is actually something separate. So you pick the best application, the best mic, and whether you're mobile or stationary, and all of those things come into effect. And now, together, you make up a combination of the best possible solution that you could get.

Liron Segev:	But then, you did mention something called a phantom power, and I did see that some mics require it. Some don't require it. What is this phantom power?

Laura Davidson: The phantom power is just giving direct current to microphones requiring electric power. So, it can either be done through a battery in the mic, which not many mics use those anymore, but we still have some that do. Or, through DC power, is provided by your mixer or your preamp, and it's delivered to the microphone through the cable. And so, but that's why sometimes you'll see "requires phantom power," and you'll see a +48V, and that just means that it's typically needing 48 volts of power to get the mic enough juice and signal so that it can be heard.

Liron Segev: Because dynamic don't require phantom, right?

Liron Segev:	So, some condenser mics require phantom power some do. And the ones that do, are we saying if I don't give it that phantom power, is the mic essentially just useless and off, or is it going to be at very low levels?

Laura Davidson: It won't work, essentially. Because remember how we talked about how condenser microphones have those electrically charged plates instead of magnet?

Laura Davidson: So, it's providing that electrical charge.

Liron Segev:	That's what it is. So, I have power. I now have a condenser mic. I have chosen cardioid, and I'm going to be recording this amazing sound and quality. But then, I look at the back of the mic. I'm about to plug it in, and then I see I've got something called an XLR, and then I've got a USB option. Which one do I go for?

Laura Davidson: Well, that's, again, use case scenario. I tend to recommend going with an XLR just because it's just more versatile. I can plug it into my Apollo Twin. I can plug it into a soundboard and use it in live scenarios. I mean, if it is a condenser mic like you said, you're going to be using it in the studio, but you need to just determine what you're going for. So, if you know you're going to be mobile, then I'd say, "Go with a USB connected mic like our MOTIV line of mics."

Those are all made for creators who want to be able to capture great sounding audio without a mixer, without any other devices. They want to plug right into their phone or their computer and be good to go. But if you want something that can do that through your Apollo Twin or through your interface of choice, then go XLR.

Liron Segev: Okay. So, we have the USB option. We can stick into our computer. I have the XLR. I can stick it into something, but you also mentioned something called a preamp. What's a preamp?

Laura Davidson: So, a preamp is kind of exactly what it says, preamplification. So, it takes a weak electronic signal, and basically boosts it so that it can be amplified and converts it into a signal that's going to be loud enough or strong enough for further processing.

Liron Segev: And this is where the whole gains things come into play?

Laura Davidson: Yeah. So, you plug in your microphone into your interface, and I adjust the preamp by touching the preamp button and turning up the signal, turning up the gain of the microphone so that it has more power going into my workstation, into my recording software, such as GarageBand or Cubase, whatever you're using. The higher quality preamp you have, the more effective the microphone is going to work better.

Liron Segev:	If I’m in my studio I can control the environment completely, and now I understand the kind of equipment I need. However, when I'm out in the field, I've got my mobile recorder. I want to go and do interviews on site. Do I go wired? Do I go wireless? What's my best options here?

Laura Davidson: Well, if you're going to be changing your locations all the time, I would recommend sticking with a wired microphone if you can. Reason being, when you're going wireless, there's a bunch of things you have to take into consideration to ensure that the microphone is going to work. One of them is line of sight, which in your application would be fine because you'd be standing in close proximity to whomever you're interviewing or whatever you're doing. But if your line of sight is impaired, it will cause dropouts because the mic and the receiver need to see each other, so to speak.

But then also, depending on where you are, if there are other frequencies in the area that are taken up by television stations. This new 600-megahertz crunch that all the mobile devices cram their way into, will have less bandwidth and frequency bandwidth options to broadcast in. So, let's say you're traveling all over the country. Those frequencies change depending on where you are. So, you might be broadcasting and getting your audio fine, and then a TV station could jump in there. Or, you might not know that the emergency band transmits on the band that your microphone is currently transmitting to. So, it's just a lot more complicated. If you're going to be going out and interviewing people and you want to be able to just get set up and ready to rock, wired is a great way to go.

Liron Segev: I prefer hand holding my mics, and I know that where I'm pointing at, that's where it's going to pick up the best signal.

Liron Segev: So, if I'm handholding a mic, what is a good robust mic from the Shure range for that? What's a good field mic that I should be looking at?

Laura Davidson: SM58, definitely. It's famous for its durability - there's videos of people hammering in a nail and then plugging it in, and it still passes audio. We've done beer tests where we've left it sitting in a glass of beer for days, and it still works. I mean, we don't recommend these things, but it's just really durable. It has this amazing internal shock mount that reduces handling noise, so you don't have that rustle when you're moving things around between you and your subject. And it's just because of that tight pattern. Like we said earlier, you're not going to pick up a ton of the other things around you, but you'll still get that context, so it doesn't sound too sterile.

And there are other microphones that we make that are specifically for interviews, and those are great, too. But I just, I love the 58. I love the price point. I loved the durability and the ease of use and form factor.

*Liron Segev: And durability is key because you want to throw something into your camera bag. You want something that's going to hold up against the test of time, and the last thing you want to do is arrive on site and then know that something is broken. So, durability is pretty key, and you also mentioned a shock mount. Now, can we just explain what that is? *

Laura Davidson: So, a shock mount is something that holds the microphone in the studio, free of being attached to the stand itself. It kind of suspends it in air so that it's only going to accept the signal that's going into it as opposed to any sort of external vibrations or stimulus.

Liron Segev: Essentially, whenever you bump kind of your table or whenever you're going to make some external noise, you want none of that to transfer through to your audio, right? And I cannot overemphasize enough how this is important. I have seen interviews literally being deleted and burned simply because the interviewer wasn't holding the mic in a certain way, wasn't stable with it, and all you hear is finger tap, finger tap, the mic's moving up and down, and that's pretty much that's done. I mean, it's literally you cannot salvage that.

All right. So, Laura, as we're kind of wrapping things up, my head is full of knowledge. I now know what I'm going to do, or I think at least I know what I'm going to be looking out for. Are there any other tips or tricks that you can give us newbies before we push that buy button, before we hit your website, to know what we're going to get?

Laura Davidson: Yes. I would say the best tip is to go and try the microphones if you can. Just like any instrumentalist tries a million guitars before they settle on the 20 that they're going to have, you need to go out there and see how it feels, how it reacts to your voice, and try it around the store if they'll let you with your field recorder.

Because you want to make sure that it's picking up the way that you want it to pick up, and not every microphone sounds the same on every voice. You can read recommendations where it's like, "Oh, I sounded like Barry White after using the SM7B," or so whatever. But if you want to sound like Barry White, you want to sound brighter than that. So, every mic reacts to the voice differently. There are some that are tuned specifically for voice, but I would just say try before you buy if you can.

Liron Segev:	Okay. That's a great tip. As we all do, we all read reviews. We watch YouTube videos, and this is why some people would swear by a certain kind of mic, and the exact same mic will get a different response from another person. But essentially, it could just be boiled down to the person themselves. They might just sound horrible on a certain mic because that's just the way they sound.

Laura Davidson: Right. And certain mics are made to react or tend to perform better for female vocalists as opposed to male and the same goes for speech as well. So, something to take into consideration.

Liron Segev: Okay, cool. So, that's a great, great, great tip. It's a great idea. Test your voice on a mic before you finally commit to one. It is a tool at the end of the day. It's a tool like your camera is. It's just a tool, but you want to get the right tool for the job that you want to do.

You also mentioned at the beginning that some mics can do multiple jobs - they are very good at doing the one thing, but will they also be okay and more than okay to do other kinds of jobs? Or, are we going to be purchasing three, four, five different mics depending on what we're going to be doing?

Laura Davidson: No, you don't. You don't have to. If your budget is limited, there are some mics that'll perform multiple tricks, so to speak. For example, the MV88+, it's a video kit. It has selectable polar patterns, and that's what makes that one really fun because you can, for example, set it to cardioid pickup pattern, do an interview. Set it to stereo pattern, and it will pick up the context of where you are because it's stereo dual channel, picking up all the ambient sounds. And then, you are lucky enough to get that interview, so you switch it up to bi-directional.

And then, you're in one channel, and your subject's in the other. So, it's like three. There's actually a fourth polar pattern, too, called raw mid-side, but you have three microphones, essentially, in your pocket. And so, that one's not a one-trick pony. And that, I tend to recommend to most content creators who want to be able to have flexibility in a number of different situations.

Liron Segev:	And again, I can attest that it does work like it says on the box. You literally swipe on the app, you're swiping to the left, swiping to the right. It dynamically changes the pattern instantly, and you simply hit record. It's just ridiculously simple, which is what I love about that.

Audio can make or break a video but if you're a beginner how do you choose the right microphone for creating the type of videos you make? Find out on this week's TubeTalk.

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