There are three versions in the new Blue Microphones USB Studio Series recording systems based around three popular Blue Microphones. The kits are the Snowball ($99 MSRP), Yeti Studio ($149) and
Yeti Pro Studio ($269). All three are complete systems that come with PreSonus’ Studio One Artist and iZotope software and quick-start templates to start recording music, professional podcasts or adding sound to any video.
I received the Yeti Pro Studio for review and found it to be easy to setup and record multi-track projects at up to 24-bit/192kHz resolutions. I tried connecting Yeti Pro Studio as a conventional pro microphone and also as an USB microphone using the provided cables.
For an interview, I set up Yeti Pro in the center of a meeting table and tried different microphone pickup patterns. I liked that the microphone gain stayed constant as I cycled through omni, cardioid, figure-of-eight and stereo patterns. If I was facing a single person the figure-of-eight pattern, where one side (of the mic) picked me up and the opposite side covered my interview subject, worked well to prevent room tone or noise from intruding into the recording.
All three Blue Microphones USB Microphone systems will get the job done, and I found the Yeti Pro Studio to be just the ticket for podcasting. Plus, it gets the conversation started straightaway!
BARRY RUDOLPH is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
