Blue Microphones - Baby Bottle

Honestly, my Blue Baby Bottle is Astonishing. I've had it so long, so I BELIEVE it retailed at $299 when I got it. Maybe it was $399. I got it on eBay from a music shop in NY for $250. Said Used or Open Box (Can't Remember). It came sealed and was pristine. I've used it ever since. I've even tracked some acoustic guitar on it, and it did NOT disappoint!

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.

My main is a vintage u47. Secondary is a blue bottle or wunder Fet47. I can’t say I have any sleeper unknown vocal mics.

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.