Blue Microphones - Baby Bottle

For a male bass/baritone, Blue Baby Bottle (buy used, NOT se version) For tenor, look for a used Audio Technica At4033cl. Dynamic: sE v7, or Shure sm57 (which everyone should have anyway.)

Please don’t stress about the U87 comments—it’s really not necessary for audiobooks. I’m in a Discord with 50,000 voice actors, and the key is to use a mic that is easy to listen to for hours on end. A used KSM32, for example, often goes for around $200 on Reverb and works great. Try to avoid mics like the MKH 416 (better for commercial work), which are better for grabbing attention but can be fatiguing over 3–4 hours without EQ. The key is to pick something that’s easy on the ears. Here are some examples: EM91C ($49, easy to listen to), Baby Blue Bottle ($160, easy to listen to), KSM32 (smooth), NTG5 Line Audio CM4 (budget, easy to listen to; hard to find, quite similar to the NTG5) Shure SM7B Warm 47JR Ethos Blue Sona Another point of note is that noise standards for ACX standards can sometimes be a pain in the ass so many voiceactors just use a mic with a low self noise to make things easier, ie a RODE NT1, etc. Then EQ it to their liking.

You can find used Blue Baby Bottles for under $200 all day long. There are a few versions, the original one made in Latvia, the same model made in California, and the SL which has a high pass filter and a -20db pad. Opinions vary on which is the best. I have a Latvian one and it’s great. The others are great too, just slightly different. It’s not as bright as a lot of other inexpensive mics, which is a good thing in my opinion. A lot of cheap condenser mics have a harsh brightness that isn’t pleasant.

You can find used Blue Baby Bottles for under $200 all day long. There are a few versions, the original one made in Latvia, the same model made in California, and the SL which has a high pass filter and a -20db pad. Opinions vary on which is the best. I have a Latvian one and it’s great. The others are great too, just slightly different. It’s not as bright as a lot of other inexpensive mics, which is a good thing in my opinion. A lot of cheap condenser mics have a harsh brightness that isn’t pleasant. Yeah I have a Kiwi and the original Ball, which sounds fantastic on guitar amps. Very similar frequency response to a 421, so it also is great on drums, but kind of hard to place due to the shape.

You can find used Blue Baby Bottles for under $200 all day long. There are a few versions, the original one made in Latvia, the same model made in California, and the SL which has a high pass filter and a -20db pad. Opinions vary on which is the best. I have a Latvian one and it’s great. The others are great too, just slightly different. It’s not as bright as a lot of other inexpensive mics, which is a good thing in my opinion. A lot of cheap condenser mics have a harsh brightness that isn’t pleasant.

You can find used Blue Baby Bottles for under $200 all day long. There are a few versions, the original one made in Latvia, the same model made in California, and the SL which has a high pass filter and a -20db pad. Opinions vary on which is the best. I have a Latvian one and it’s great. The others are great too, just slightly different. It’s not as bright as a lot of other inexpensive mics, which is a good thing in my opinion. A lot of cheap condenser mics have a harsh brightness that isn’t pleasant. Yeah I have a Kiwi and the original Ball, which sounds fantastic on guitar amps. Very similar frequency response to a 421, so it also is great on drums, but kind of hard to place due to the shape.

I just tracked a jazz combo (whose singer is their main feature) live in the room—and they didn’t want to wear headphones. They used wedges (except the drummer, who used IEMs and our headphone system). There was also a small crowd of 20 or so people who also needed wedges. I tested three mics on the singer and we all liked a condenser (I tested a R44 ribbon, a 441 dynamic, and a Blue Bottle condenser). We spent a solid day playing around with vocal mic selection and placement. In the end, there’s more bleed of the singer’s vocal into the drums than the band into the vocal mic. I say all this just to say that this is totally possible and you should experiment with mics and placement.

The 57 will sound trash on vocals. Sorry, but it’s true. Spend a little more for a half decent condenser microphone. You can probably find a used Shure KSM32 or Rode NTK on EBay that’ll sound miles better than either of those options in the neighborhood of $300. Even maybe the Blue Baby Bottle. I’ve seen them on EBay around $200. edit: After some time I remembered the sE sE2200 or the sE T1. They sound SO much better than a 57 and go for around $300 - $350 new. I'm sure you can find them used for not much more than a 57. Edit: The thing I forgot to mention here is that the noisy environment really isn't something that should be addressed at the microphone level, other than maybe reducing mic distance. Getting closer will effectively reduce background noise indirectly by raising the loudness of the source relative to the noise. The real solution is to address the noise issue, not change microphone. This is unless you're currently using a microphone with an omnidirectional polar pattern. If that's the case, switching to a mic with cardioid or super-cardioid will help some.

Gotta pick your poison as every mic is going to leave something to be desired. I had a Blue Bottle at one point and tried to convince myself it was better than my beat to shit m-audio Sputnik (punches way above its weight tbf). Took me a couple years to accept that such a high end piece wasn’t doing it for me. When the Sputnik died I replaced it with the sm7b and while a much different character, I like it even more. I personally don’t think it lacks in quality or depth for professional level recordings, just requires seemingly the opposite approach in the mix to a nice LDC lol.

Good advice on the BT mic, but I don't like the laptop mics much. Nearly everyone at work wears the standard issue MS headset, and the sound isn't great. People double and triple mute, on the app, zero volume in Windows, and the physical button. Always fun to wait for them to realize and sort it out. Some wear bluetooth headsets, and sometimes you can hear it drop, or a weird buzz and quality drop in the middle of a sentence. Cheaper ones seems to be half-duplex as well. There is one guy who does livestreaming of games in his spare time, and his WFH setup is pretty nice, with a good camera and mic. I do video and voiceover, and at one point early in the pandemic I was using a Blackmagic Studio 4kPro as my "webcam", and a Blue Baby Bottle for my mic. I was testing for a project, and figured doing that was better than just playing around with it. I have since moved nearly all of my kit to a dedicated studio room, and now just have one good webcam and one Baby Bottle for my office, and one for the studio. I still do the VO work from my office, since it's quiet late at night and not next to my kid's room, and I can have the script on the monitor right in front of my face. The two of us have gotten questions on why our sound/video quality is better than "normal." One guy asked about my "cool background" and where I got it. I just opened up my wooden blinds so they could see the neighbor mowing the lawn at that moment.

This guy knows his shit. I dream of owning an actual BLUE bottle some day. I use the baby all over the place.