The Blue Yeti USB Microphone is highly popular, but its sensitivity can overwhelm you. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

The drawback to Yeti Blue USB Microphones for podcasting

Yeti Blue microphones are widely popular for podcasting and home sound recording. They do have a big drawback of being overly sensitive. They pick up too much background noise even when the gain is turned way down. I know because I bought one for my own podcasting and video streaming and had a hard time getting good sound with it.

The Wrong Advice

Most of the advice I found online says to turn the gain knob on the Yeti down to the absolute minimum. That avoids picking up too much background sound, but then the audio is really quiet and almost unusable. The wrong advice says to amplify that sound at the computer or in your software.

The resulting sound I got using this advice was what I would describe as hollow.

The Contrarian Advice that Works Better

A few contrarians online say to turn the gain knob higher and turn down input level at the computer or software. That worked for me. The sound was much richer, and without picking up all the background noise.

Here are the exact steps I followed

The gain knob is the top one on the back of the Yeti. Most advice says turn it as far down as you can. That advice is wrong. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

1. I plugged my best set of headphones directly into the Yeti so I could monitor the sound while I made adjustments.
2. I turned the gain knob on the back of the Yeti all the way up. I could hear EVERYTHING.
3. I opened the Windows Sound Settings by typing “sound settings” into the Windows search box.
4. In the Sound Settings, I scrolled down to the Input devices.
5. I made sure the Yeti mic was selected, then clicked Device Properties.
6. I adjusted the volume down to around 50.

Much better!

I adjusted the two settings a little bit each way, until my voice sounded the best I could get and I couldn’t hear my wall clock ticking.

I ended up with the Yeti gain knob down about a quarter of the way and the Windows volume set at 75.

You don’t have to do it every time

I made these changes one time in Sound Settings, and now Windows seems to remember for me. Whenever I hook or plug in my Yeti, it’s ready to go. I don’t have to do anything extra.

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Some of you may remember the Ford slogan of the 1980’s, Quality is Job #1.

That slogan was true then for businesses. And it remains true today.

Yet, quality sometimes remains hard to find. For example in the last year, two households in my family had to purchase dishwashers. Two different brands were purchased but, to our amazement, both of them had production mistakes that needed to be fixed during installation. The chances of that happening just seem to beat the odds. Neither company seemed to live up to the quality expected.

Will the companies that produced the products survive? Probably. They are large and can overcome it. Large companies have shown time and again they have the capacity to overcome mistakes, although not without some pain.

Small businesses, however, may not have the resources to overcome quality issues. And small businesses in small communities are even more likely to get hurt as word will quickly spread if expectations are not met.

Quality was, is and will remain key to building a successful small business.

When thinking about it, remember:

• Quality is not a cost – It is possible to cut costs and retain quality to a point. But at some point, that relationship will no longer hold true. And as many companies will attest, short-term gains can turn out to be large long-term losses.
• Quality is not a statistic – You may think that 99.9% success is a great number. It’s a good number but would we accept 12 babies a day sent home with the wrong parents or 1300 calls per second going to a wrong number, one other than what was dialed.
• Quality is not a buzzword – Talking about quality or including it in your slogan does not make it happen. Quality is a culture. Quality means giving people control and responsibility.

Quality counts in your small business. Make it part of every task and included each day in your work.

Quality opens doors and builds life-long customer relationships. Make it a key part of your business.