Yet Another Yeti Gain Thread

[BoredErica]

Most people on the internet recommend setting gain all the way down and increasing volume via Windows to decrease pickup of background noise. My experiences run contrary to that. I'm not mic expert but: It seems the recommendations people give to reduce background noise centers around decreasing volume in general. Yes, if you make everything super quiet you won't hear the background noise, but you'll also not hear my voice. I did a recording on Audacity on my Blue Yeti (non-pro) with max mic gain and low Windows mic volume, and another with no or low gain and high Windows mic volume. To my surprise high gain low Windows volume was better because setting low gain on Yeti for me (<40%) I can hear a high pitched noise. When gain goes above 40% the sound disappears. I saw another person on Reddit mention this. The noise is spans from 1khz to 15khz.

If you own a Yeti maybe you'd like to try this out too to see if you get the same thing or not. If so, I am wondering what causes this. Is that noise always there, fixed, never increasing with higher output settings and overpowered by the noise floor of the microphone, or is the condensor microphone just not designed to operate at such low gain settings?

In terms of background noise when factoring out the high pitched noise, I didn't find any benefit going from max gain/low Windows to low gain/max Windows volume. I don't understand the theory behind lower gain/higher Windows volume meaning less background noise from my room. At most I can imagine it decreasing noise from the microphone itself through analogue conversion or something. In that case I'd imagine the best setting to be max Windows volume with lowest gain setting, but above 40%. If too loud, decrease Windows volume instead instead of lowering gain even further.

Or hey, maybe I'm totally wrong and have no idea what's going on. Help me out here.

[Volbet]

I can't specifically comment on the Blue Yet, but the general idea behind low gain/high Windows volume is that by limiting the mic's gain you're also limiting the pick-up area of the mic. 

Windows, in turn, only increase/decrease the volume of the signal which is feed to the computer, meaning an increase in Windows' volume won't have an effect on background noise, since that's limited on the hardware side. 

Whether or not this is the case with the Blue Yeti I can't say. The gain might just be treated as a volume button. 

 

Personally, I always steer clear of using Windows' volume control, since it can be rather iffy at times. 

 

Does the high pitched sound come from the microphone or from the recording it makes? It's seems rather odd that a whine would occure at low gain. 

[BoredErica]

2 hours ago, Volbet said:

I can't specifically comment on the Blue Yet, but the general idea behind low gain/high Windows volume is that by limiting the mic's gain you're also limiting the pick-up area of the mic. 

Windows, in turn, only increase/decrease the volume of the signal which is feed to the computer, meaning an increase in Windows' volume won't have an effect on background noise, since that's limited on the hardware side. 

Whether or not this is the case with the Blue Yeti I can't say. The gain might just be treated as a volume button. 

 

Personally, I always steer clear of using Windows' volume control, since it can be rather iffy at times. 

 

Does the high pitched sound come from the microphone or from the recording it makes? It's seems rather odd that a whine would occure at low gain. 

I don't hear any sound like it when I'm recording. If the microphone emits such a sound I can't hear it. This is why I only noticed the sound now, because I had no reason suspect such a sound was going on.

So... Maybe I can think of it as high vs low gain changing the ratio of loudness from my speech to the background? I'd like to test high vs low gain but I'd have to try to somewhat level match which seems tough off the top of my head. I can make a repeatable background noise by turning on the faucet though.

It's probably more confusing because I know a lot less about microphones. I wish more people explained the theory behind why they do things instead of just what to do.