Don't Buy a Yeti | Hacker News Reader

Don't Buy a Yeti

dontbuyayeti.com

39 pointsuptown42 comments

Interestingly, NYTimes' Wirecutter still favors the Blue Yeti.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-usb-micr...

I don't always agree with them, but have generally found their reviews reliable. Their audio reviews in particular have been on point IMO, although microphones are something I don't know much about so I can't judge them there.

This doesn't mean anything definitive, but it's useful data, and unlike "dontbuyayeti.com" Wirecutter's reviews give a very thorough rationale for their decision.

I thought the wirecutter was basically paid advertising, is that not the case?

If you read their review on USB microphones (the one that Yeti wins), they link to audio recordings of all the microphones so you can judge for yourself. I have no comment on whether they are considered "paid advertising", but I agree with the OP - their audio-based reviews are thorough and come across as unbiased.

Good news: it is not the case.

They make money from (in no particular order; no idea what their revenue split is)

1. Referral links to retailers such as Amazon

2. Direct subscription payments via NYT (Wirecutter is now like an add-on to your NYT subscription)

This is of course, not perfect. They are incentivized to try and get you to buy something and, ideally, more expensive things because that would result in higher referral commissions. But this is orders of magnitude less sinister than being "paid advertising" and having a financial incentive to get you to choose one brand over another.

I think they are generally pretty responsible about not trying to upsell you to more expensive products. When they do a roundup, they generally compare products within a given price range (e.g., "speakers less than $500") and because the products are similarly priced, there's no incentive to simply steer you towards the pricier one.

There are some times that I find their reviews ridiculous. I wanted recommendations for bedsheets the other day and they all seemed to be like... > $200? lol, no thanks

But generally I find them excellent.

I've owned a Yeti mic for several years, and when the pandemic hit and we went home to work, it was my time to shine. I knew that I would have the best-sounding audio in meetings.

And then the complaints started rolling in. I don't know if it's the mic or just that my desk setup at home was not proper for audio calls, but I got to the point that I stopped using it. Now I stick with my AirPods, and no one complains.

Not that I'm saying one should use AirPods (or equivalent) for high-quality audio, but I was shocked that the Yeti turned out to have a lackluster performance.

IMO it's a pretty good mic _for certain situations_, but those situations are rare and it does not set you up for success in actually achieving them.

You need a quiet, ideally treated room, and you _definitely_ need it closer to your mouth than the included stand could possibly achieve, and away from your desk noise which again the included stand can't do.

By the time you consider all that's needed, you're almost certainly better off with a different setup entirely.

I did end up buying a boom stand, but the mic is kind of heavy for that and kept getting in the way. Now I'm learning toward getting rid of the Yeti and shopping for something more versatile for my home setup. No big deal; live, learn, and implement!

There are several issues that can come up. It can pick up so much background noise, that you need a high and low pass filter, and maybe even a noise gate. Further, a lot of meeting software has issues with echo cancellation when the mic and the output are on different interfaces.

In my home office I use an LCT 441 Flex, but my office is dead quiet.

Yeti is the opposite of what you want.

I use the RE320 which is perfect. The properties of the mic make it naturally pick up background noises only faintly.

Rather basing a decision and telling people not to get a microphone based on emotions, I prefer comparisons which this site fails to show.

Is there a detailed comparison of a Yeti and a Shure in audio quality?

Frequency response graphs are readily available if you're interested in comparison, but I think there are simple qualitative facts about the Yeti that people miss when they check out, and get disappointed by when it arrives. For example, condenser microphones like the Yeti can be particularly useless in loud environments. Combined with the fact that most people keep the mic a few feet away from their face, the resulting acoustics can be pretty bad. Even if the Yeti did sound better, most people would prefer the Shure simply because of it's dynamic, punchy sound.

Yeah, the main outcome of my microphone research is that I personally should not get a condensor mic unless I also wanted to spend hours and hundreds of dollars treating my room to reduce noise and echos.

https://marco.org/podcasting-microphones Here is a good way to hear them. I have the ATR2100X.

Podcastage on youtube has great comparisons, and there's a few specific videos he has about which mics are good for different uses/budgets.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J-6z93SqEO0 probably not a bad place to start

Rather basing a decision and telling people not to get a microphone based on emotions

As an amateur musician and full-time remote meeting attendee, I'll tell you all you need to know about why you shouldn't use a Blue Yeti: condenser microphone. Notice how the recommended mics in TFA are dynamic? You don't want the Yeti because (SWAG here...) it's the mic for folks that don't want to have to become experts on microphones: gimme plug-and-play. So Yeti gives those folks a microphone that picks up every flea fart in the room, unless you make an effort to quiet the room. Whereas a dynamic mic in the general case picks up what's in front of it, and doesn't pick up noises that are more than a few feet away from the microphone. So when you're dog's barking in the next room at the Amazon driver, the dynamic mic won't pick that up.

And people that go to the trouble to quiet a room don't buy Yetis, nor do people that buy Yetis want to go to that trouble.

For the true adventurer explorer:

Build You a DIY High-Quality USB-C Microphone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoQu3XXIayc

(watch at 2x to quickly preview the process)

Turns out it's totally doable to fabricate a high quality one yourself, and the tool requirements are light. Requirements: Hand tolls, soldering iron, time and patience, and $100-$200 USD for sensors, capacitors, and materials.

(Also submitted on by itself @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31480458)

amazing project where performance, price and beauty converge. This guy's whole channel is first class.

Definitely thought this was going to be about the coolers, not the microphones.

Or the Skoda? Or the cryptid! Get a Nessie!

Haha, came here to say this exact thing (and to recommend those retro metal Coleman coolers)! :D

Have been using the Blue Yeti with Zoom for several years now, works like a charm. And yes, it sits on my desk. You can put it in Cardiod setting to avoid other sounds etc. No issues with echo or sound coming from the computer speakers either.

The title is good advice... for people willing to have the microphone near them. In a quiet room, with a person or two who keep the mic at arm's length or more, Yeti is a decent choice. Results won't be great, but will be OK. Quiet rooms are rare, but people unwilling to get the microphone close are pretty common.

What is this utterly vapid article? Don't buy a condenser mic if you don't want a condenser mic. Don't put a mic on your desk if you don't want it on your desk. These are obvious features of the microphone that you can decide for yourself you do or do not want, you don't need some wanker on the interwebs asserting it's bad.

Asserting "X is bad, Y is better" with no real reasoning or credentials is the lowest order of giving your opinion, and your random hot take isn't important enough to warrant buying a domain and building a website.

I bought a returned blue yeti from Amazon’s warehouse marketplace. I read the instructions and used the directionality filter to focus only on sounds directly in front of it.

I get compliments like “you have a voice for podcasting” regularly since plugging it in.

If it isn’t obvious yet, I don’t know very much about microphones.

My only gripe is that Google Meetings or Hangouts or whatever they are calling it these days doesn’t allow me to use the mic with my AirPods.

Zoom on the other hand let’s me use my AirPods as a speaker, and my blue yeti as a microphone. It works like a charm.

P.S. YMMV.

Edit: I also haven’t figured out how to use it with my iPhone 13, which was one of the reasons I bought it due to a YouTube video demonstrating that I could, but I wasn’t able to replicate the results. If anyone has had any success doing that please let me know.

I use a blue yeti and airpods on google meet daily. Connect both and then "Ellipses (?) icon > settings > select target mic and speakers from dropdown"

What is the point of this? The alternative mic listed is 250$, whereas a blue yeti can be had for 90$ at bestbuy right now. So if you spend more you get a better mic. I don't think anyone was convinced that the yeti was the best mic you could get, just the best one for the price.

The site offers two alternatives, one which is more expensive, and one which is about the same price, but will provide much better results.

Use it with a boom-arm instead of a stand, turn down the gain and bring the mic close to your mouth, and put it in Cardioid mode. Talk to the front of mic and not to the top of it. You can find this information in the manual

As someone who has bought a lot of this equipment and tested it in various (subjective) ways, I can recommend the Rode Podmic as a good alternative that's half the price of the MV7. I broke my Shure SM7B (trying to "fix" it) and didn't want to spend the money again but the Podmic sounds surprisingly almost as good to me.

Their recommendation is twice the price of the Blue Yeti... Doesn't seem like a fair comparison. Their budget recommendation comes with a warning that it's "quite plosive heavy". Just goes to show that it's not easy to make a recommendation that works for most people.

I’ve been using the Samson Go Mic for years. It’s been game changing in the post-zoom era.

I don’t know much about the technical aspects of microphones, but over the last 10 years or so I’ve listened to a lot of ASMR on YouTube, and I would say the Yeti is a pretty decent microphone. My advice for ASMRtists would be: don’t buy a 3dio. They sound hollow, tinny, and harsh. One of my favorite ASMRtists just “upgraded” to a 3dio from a Yeti and it sounds so much worse. The rich, deep, bassy low components of her voice that made her so unique are gone. IMHO the best sounding mics for ASMR are Rode shotgun models, I think they’re called NT4 or NT5 or something like that; sound amazing.

May be good to say "microphone" here, I thought it was this:

https://www.yeti.com/

I applaud the dedication. Each fuck you should be an SPA. Theres SaaS potential since people who are royally pissed will pay to get it outthere fast

I have the t.bone SC 420 from Thomann. For 59€ I don't think you can beat that price

Got me a Q2U from Samson, which came at around 80 Euros, and made my homeoffice-videoconferencing much better.

> SM7B

Yes. Use it for anything vocal.

I don't have first hand experience, but I read multiple times that an SM57 + pop filter + EQ = SM7B for a faction of the price.

Interesting.... I've never seen this. Not a mic expert; but I know a lot of microphone design has to do its chambers as it affects resonance and response at different distances to the source. The one comparison video I've found on youtube isn't exact convincing but it's pretty close

For Europeans this ain't about Skoda Yeti.

Once again, reading comments on HN proves more useful than visiting the link in the post. o_O

Not a big fan of a site that's basically an ad for one product. I mean, if the site is for the product sure, but that's not what this is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com