Selecting The Best Type Of Microphone For Your Stream

A quality microphone for your stream isn’t just a nice addition, it’s an absolute necessity. Finding the best stream microphone can be difficult. Within the first few seconds a viewer joins your stream, they are making a decision to stay or leave based on your video and audio quality. Let’s make sure you’ve chosen the type of microphone that will make them lean toward staying.

Type of microphone? You mean there’s more than just one?!  

Yep. Each type of microphone serves its own purpose too. There’s a reason you don’t see Blue Snowballs hanging from the boomstick on movie sets! Because you frequent movie sets and see this stuff, don’t you?… No?

Well, let’s over-simplify it. I’m no audio expert and I won’t pretend to be, but I’ve researched, purchased and streamed with enough microphones to have a good grasp on what suits us as streamers or what some might consider “the best stream microphone”.

Dynamic vs Condenser Mics

Wiki provides a much more in-depth explanation of the difference between these 2 types of microphones, but here’s how they pertain to streamers.

Dynamic mics are typically used for high sound levels. They’re hard to overload and usually rugged but typically pick up a more limited frequency range when compared to condenser microphones. Great for limiting background noise and keyboard clicks.

Condenser mics are sound-sensitive. If you watch ASMR videos, you’re probably listening to a condenser microphone. These mics are capable of picking up all the little organic noises your mouth makes before actually forming a word. Very sensitive.

 

So Many Cardioids… How Do I Choose? Let’s Figure Out Which One Might Be Considered “The Best Stream Microphone”

All of the shapes seen in the image below are different types of microphone polar patterns.

Let’s do this by stream setup and while I’m at it, let me clarify something– I do receive a portion of the purchase when you use the links on this post. So I just want to say thank you ahead of time if you choose to do so. There’s a lot to consider when setting up a stream. I’m hoping this post will clear up some of the confusion and help you choose the best stream microphone for your channel.

Here we go:

Single person stream. Like this guy… (oldmangamur)

Cardioid and Shotgun mics are perfect for this setup. Both patterns can be used to focus in on the streamer without much emphasis on every other sound in the room.

Side-by-side streamers. Like this couple… (stratuspeach)

Omnidirectional would fit this scenario, but cardioid will work as well. Cardioid mics will limit the sound picked up on the sides so pay close attention to this when you position the mic.

Group streams. Like these folks… (immortalsinc)

An omnidirectional mic in the center of the room would work good here. Mind you, this post is about choosing a single microphone. You can get incredible sound quality with multiple lavalier mics in this environment but that’s not the nature of this post.

In my experience, dynamic mics tend to have a disturbing amount of self-noise. Although the noise can almost be eliminated by using a noise gate on OBS, it would be more convenient to choose a mic without the noise in the first place. I hope this post helps you choose your mic. Stay tuned for our other microphone posts as this is one of the hottest topics when it comes to streaming.