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Best Budget Dynamic Microphone? | Maono PD200x Dynamic Microphone Review
Jul 17, 2023
? FREE Vocal Production Cheatsheet ? (Get pro vocals from home every time!) https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/vocals In this Maono pd200x microphone review, I'll take a look at this affordable microphone and see if it's worth your investment. Maono is a well-known mic manufacturer that makes some of the best budget microphones on the market. I'll talk about the features of this microphone and see if it's worth your money and your needs! ⛓️ LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO ⛓️ ? Get this mic on Amazon: https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/pd200 ? Maono's website: https://www.maono.com/ ? Maono PD400x review: https://youtu.be/DQPBDeJMqh0 ? Maono PM500 review: https://youtu.be/zDFTFF_ESfs ? Free vocal production cheatsheet: https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/vocals ⌛TIME STAMPS:⌛ 0:00 - Overview 2:15 - What you get out of the box 3:56 - Specs & features
View Video Transcript
0:00
Are you looking for a budget microphone that can handle all of your recording needs and deliver pro quality results at the exact same time
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If so, definitely watch this video because I am reviewing the PD200X Dynamic Microphone by Maiono
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Pros and cons. Pros, it has great audio quality. The audio that you are hearing right now is coming from this microphone
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It's very durable. It has an all-metal build, so it's not going to break on you easily
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It comes with great bundled software. It comes with Maiono Link, which I'll talk about in a second
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which gives you a lot of control over the sound of your microphone and your recordings
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It's also just a great value in price. I think normally it sells for like $70
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And so for that price range, you get a really awesome microphone that can do a lot of different things for you
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and handle really just about all of your recording needs. So what is this microphone good for
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Well, it's great for recording vocals. If you think this is just a podcasting microphone, it's not
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But it's great in vocals, also great for podcasting, great for recording instruments, streaming, gaming
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and video conferencing. So basically all your recording needs, you get it in this one microphone
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for a very affordable price. So definitely a very, very great value microphone. I would say the one
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con with this microphone is that the dial up here, which lets you choose between your headphone
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volume and the actual input gain on the microphone, it doesn't actually have any numbers on it to tell
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you where your setting is. If you turn it all the way to the right, it will blink to let you
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know you're maxed out or if you turn it all the way to the left you won't hear me anymore so it kind of grows in and in a brightness and decreases in brightness but you don't actually know
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exactly what setting you're on with this knob that's really the only really critique that i
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could find for the for the value that you get this microphone it's very versatile it gives you a lot
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of features and overall right what do you want a microphone you want great audio quality and i've
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been very impressed with this microphone i've been using it to record vocals for songs and it's
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actually been really awesome. So with that, what do you actually get out of the box when you
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purchase this microphone? What all do you get? Here is the box it came in. So let's go ahead and
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open this and see how it looks. Nice box here, very nice packaging. And this is what you see
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inside. It's got the manual here. You also receive a USB-C to USB-A cable. So that's great if you
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You want to plug it into a USB-A or USB-C port. It's also XLR
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It doesn't come with an XLR cable. But if you do want to plug it into an interface with an XLR cable, you can do that
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It comes with the shock mount as well. And it comes with an adapter so that you can screw it into a boom arm like I am doing here
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Now, it doesn't come with any stand of its own like a lot of other Mayono microphones
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For example, this is the PD400X, which I've reviewed previously on this channel
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I'll have a link to that below. and this is kind of basically a more budget version of this i would say but the audio quality
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is very very similar it just doesn't come with all the bells and whistles of the 400x but not
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coming with a lot of extra features like compared to other microphones out there in the market it
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still comes with i think a lot more like other microphones you have to buy a separate uh like
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wind screen like there's a wind screen on here you might have to buy a separate shock mount or
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or a separate adapter to be able to screw it into an actual boom arm. So it's still
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even though it has less than what most Mayono microphones come with
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it still comes with a lot of great accessories and things you need right out of
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the box. And by the way, if you are recording vocals from home, choosing the right microphone is just one step of the process to creating pro
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quality vocals. So if you want a complete step-by-step system for recording
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editing, and mixing your vocals, then be sure to grab my vocal production cheat sheet in the description below
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This is completely free or go to Orpheus Audio Academy dot com slash vocals
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And this will give you everything you need to know to create pro quality vocals from home
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With that, let's move into the specs and features of this microphone
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So it is a dynamic cardioid XLR and USB microphone with a frequency response stretching from 40 hertz up to 16,000 hertz
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And so that's everything you need right there in the vocal range. Here you can see a picture of the frequency response
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You can see it pretty linear but up in those higher frequencies above 10k it gives you a nice bump for added clarity and brightness And it also has a little dip where you might find some sibilance So that really nice It kind of self right out of the box to give you a really great sounding recording
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when you're recording vocals. Now this microphone also comes with a custom built dynamic capsule
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So the built-in dynamic mic capsule helps you to create deep lows, delicate highs, and
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crisp mid-tones. The ultrawide frequency response of 40 hertz to 16 kilohertz presents crystal clear and clean sound
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And the cardioid polar pattern does a good job at rejecting sounds from behind the microphone
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And it's just a really great microphone for home recording, especially being a dynamic microphone
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It's not going to pick up as much background noise. It can also handle louder sounds versus like a condenser microphone, which is more sensitive and delicate
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the only downside is kind of have to turn the gain up quite a bit on this microphone
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to get enough volume it's not gonna be quite as sensitive as a condenser microphone but
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that's not a critique on the myono microphone at all it's just a difference between dynamic
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microphones and condenser microphones put my full breakdown the difference between these types of
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microphones i'll have a link to that in the description below that will go to a full video
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breaking down the differences now the cool thing about this microphone is it has controllable rgb
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lighting. And this is really comforting for me because in my studio, I don't have any LED lights
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And so a lot of times I'm sitting here wondering, am I really a music producer? What am I doing with
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my life? I don't have any LED RGB lights in my room. I have an identity crisis like every single
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day. So having this microphone gives me the ability to change. Let's see that
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What? You get all these different colors, just in case you want a nice reminder that God is
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never going to destroy the earth with a worldwide flood again. Boom, right there
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And of course, if you don't want this on at all, you can turn it off. You just hold down the button and give it a second
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There you go. Lights off, but that's boring. Also comes with this two in one smart knob here
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So this lets you set the mic gain and also the headphone volume. So if you are monitoring this on headphones, you can plug your headphones right into the microphone
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Back here, I don't use it for that because I have my own interface
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But you can get away with a lot. You don't really need an interface for this mic
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It's USB. You can plug it right into your computer. You can monitor it with your own headphones or plugging it into the microphone
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You can control your headphone volume so you can hear yourself. And then you can set the input gain on the microphone itself so how loud you're going to be recording
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And it's also got a mute button here. So if you were live streaming or something and you need to mute yourself real quick
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you could just mute yourself like that. And it's also compatible with Mayono Link software
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If you look at Mayono Link here, this is a free software you can download and use to control your microphone
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Again, you have your gain and your headphone monitoring here. You can change the tone here if you want to just keep it the original
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or you want a more natural sound or you want a deeper tone
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You can all control that here. And you also have a brightness adjustment here
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and a color selection for the rgb light of course we can turn it off here or turn it back on
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you can select our different colors right from here that's pretty cool there's also an advanced
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tab over here where you can eq it if you want so you can do a put a low pass filter on if you want
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or give a mid-range bump or presence boost i should say or presence boost and a high pass filter
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um i'll keep the high pass filter on so it's going to cut off all those low frequencies in
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in case there's any background rumble or noise floor or anything. And you can also use a compressor or a limiter here
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So if you are afraid of clipping, you don't want to go too loud and cause distortion
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You can put the limiter on here and just say, a ceiling of minus two DB
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So now nothing's going to go above that volume and cause clipping
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So this is a really cool tool. It gives you a lot of control of your microphone, which a lot of other microphones out there don't have this ability
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And then lastly, this is an USB and X-OIL, as I mentioned earlier. So if you have an interface
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you can plug it into your interface. If you are using just XLR, you can't have the RGB lights sadly
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So I've got plugged in, you can see my XLR is plugged in here, but I also have the USB plugged in at the same time
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So I can have those nice lights but also still record through the XLR since that a little bit higher quality than using USB I mentioned the PD400X earlier by Maono and I reviewed this before like I said
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so you can check out my review of this in the description below. So like I said, these are
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kind of very similar microphones. They are both dynamic microphones. They both have great audio
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quality. I felt like this microphone might be a little bit, a little bit richer, maybe just a
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little bit better audio quality. You can check out the video and see what you think. Very, very close
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Most people probably wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference between these two. They're both XLR and USB and they both are compatible with Mayono Link. But as far as the differences
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you get the PD200X here. This is $70 cheaper. This has the RGB lighting where this one doesn't
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This comes with a shock mount. So maybe better for putting on a mic stand or a boom arm like this
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whereas the 400X here, it just comes with this desktop mic stand here
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So if you want to put it on a desktop, you can do that, but, um, you can also easily put it, you know
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mount it if you wanted to on a boom arm as this just unscrews here
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you can unscrew this right here, right here, and then just attach it to the boom arm here as I've done that before in videos
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And this also comes with a three in one knob versus just the two in one this has
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So it also lets you control the headphone volume, the microphone gain
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but then it also lets you monitor the mix of what's going on in the computer
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Another difference is this also has a built-in EQ as well. You can see back there
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you can kind of the same thing of what you see in Mayona Link. You can add a high pass filter
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you can add a presence boost or presence boost and a high pass filter. So if you want that built into your microphone
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this is a great choice. And you can look at the different frequency responses between these two microphones as well
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as I'll put those up side by side here. Now as I look at them, they're pretty similar
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but the 400X here does have a slight boost or around like between three and five K
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So it has a little bit more presence, maybe a little bit more brightness
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but otherwise very similar sounding microphones. Now next we're gonna do a sound test
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We're gonna hear how this microphone sounds on vocals, but before I do, if this video has been helpful so far
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go ahead and drop a like. All right, so let's hear how this sounds now
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I've got, I mean, you've been hearing it the whole time throughout this video, so you know how it sounds on vocals here
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This is how I sound when I'm talking into the microphone, just voiceover. Here's how I sound, you know, about six inches away
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So it probably is going to definitely diminish in volume. So you do have to get close to this microphone for it to sound good
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That's just the nature of dynamic microphones. It's not a Mayono issue. Any dynamic microphone you get
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they're designed for you to speak right into them. And that's great because it's going to block out a lot of that background noise
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versus if you had a condenser microphone, for example, the microphone I typically use on vocals in my videos is this one
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this is a Maono microphone so this is the Maono PM500 condenser microphone so this gets you
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studio quality vocals really high quality for a budget price and I really like this right
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condensers are really great I typically recommend a condenser microphone for vocals because
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they're more sensitive so they can get more detail but lately I've been recording like very loudly
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like really belting out vocals and so I've actually really liked recording into this microphone for
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I've done it for a couple different songs, which I'll show you in a second because I don't have to worry about clipping at all
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It can really handle you really yelling into the microphone So that's what if you're gonna be doing louder vocals and definitely having a dynamic microphone is going to come in handy
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All right, let's hear how this microphone sounds on some vocals are recorded
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Alright, so here is a cover I did of Jackson Brown's running on empty and I used the PD 200x to record these vocals
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I'll just highlight these vocals here. I'll turn off all the effects and so you can hear a clean version of what these sounded like
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it's pretty good and then of course in an actual song you'd have some EQ and compression so that's
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what I have here just kind of cutting out the low ends boosting the presence a little bit
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Some EQ moves there and then adding a little bit of compression. Now it sounds like this
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Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive. Very subtle compression
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Trying not to confuse Have some more compression here These two plugins here by Waves And then I adding some delay some doubling some more reverb and compression here
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Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive Try not to confuse it with what you do to survive
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And then I have some, also some more delay and reverb on here
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So I'll kind of play this now in the full context of the mix So you can kind of hear what this microphone would sound like in an actual song
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69 I was 21 And I go the road my own I don't know when that road
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Turned onto the road I'm on Running on empty Running blind
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Running into the sun But I'm running behind So here you go
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And then just the vocals, if I were to just solo the vocals here. And all those vocals were recorded on this dynamic microphone here, the PD200X
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all right here's another song where i use the pd200x on this is a song i wrote called mechanical
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tears and if we solo the lead here we'll hear what this sounds like again with no effects just
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completely dry imitation hearts replica minds illusion of choice are we so blind convey about Death
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So pretty nice. It sounds a little thin, I would say, but it's actually pretty good for vocals
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because you typically want a thinner sound there. And of course, you could always use EQ
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to thicken it up if you wanted to. But overall, really, really good
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for a dynamic microphone in this price range. But then to hear the full potential
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I'll add in what I did mixing-wise. So first off, I'll also add a couple layers
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and we add a bit of EQ and compression here. Some more compression, some doubling and some reverb
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and some more reverb and delay here. So we'll hear this also in the full context of the mix
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so you can hear what it sounds like in an actual song. Imitation hearts, replica minds, illusion of choice
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Are we so blind? Can they have death? Robots inside Formel to hide Breath
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Formel to hide Breath I think that sounds pretty darn awesome
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Really happy with this microphone. On this little vocal slide thing here
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I was really shouting it out and I didn't have to worry about clipping at all
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I don't know. It sounds pretty darn nice, pretty clean and very clear and present
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So if you want to grab this microphone yourself, you can use my affiliate link, which is orpheusaudioacademy.com
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slash PD200, or you can just click the link in the description below
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Now with that, remember, choosing the right microphone is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to producing
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pro quality vocals from home. You have to know how to record correctly. You don't have to know
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how to use your microphone. You have to know how to edit your vocals and then you have to actually know how to mix them. And so that's why I put together my free vocal production cheat sheet
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You can grab that in the description below or go to Orpheus Audio Academy dot com slash vocals
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And this will show you everything you need to know to produce pro quality vocals from home
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Now, if you want to see how this microphone compares to the PD400X, I'll have a link to
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that video playing on the screen right now. With that, have an awesome day and keep creating
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