Blue Yeti: insane amounts of echo, or just me?

P

Pants Masterson

New member
I picked up a Blue Yeti for some not-really-professional demo stuff we need to do at work (I work at a place that makes Web videos from time to time, and while we always hire a pro to do the final recording, it's useful to have a decent mic to record VO for our demo work for clients as we make progress on a project).

I'm recording in a small (10' x 10') office, with drywall and furniture, so it's *far* from an ideal environment, but the Yeti is *shockingly* echoey, regardless of the mic pickup pattern. I've gone as far as to make a "cave" around the Yeti with a winter coat so it's nestled in a thick down coat with only about a 8" "window" facing me as I record, but I can't discern any difference between that and no baffling at all. I see videos online of people recording on the Yeti, doing podcasts and so on, with no special equipment, in a "normal" room, and it sounds nothing like the echo I'm getting here.

Even with the gain way down and me speaking about 1 cm from the mic, it still sounds like a bathroom stall. How can I first diagnose if this is normal, and second, do something about it without building a whole recording studio just to accomodate one microphone?

Mac OS X and Audacity, if it helps. I'm pretty new to all of this.
 
Hi there,
Henry's right, a clip is a good idea.

In the mean time, there are two main things I can think of.
It's almost certainly not acoustic echo because of your cave description, so I'm thinking feedback or latency.

Feedback.
Are you speaking into the mic and listening to yourself in real time through speakers? If so, the mic picks up the speaker output a little and amplifies it, sends it to the speakers, picks it up again, amplifies it..........etc.

Turn up the speakers. If they squeal, it's feedback.
The answer is to use headphones, keep the speakers turned down, or mute your audio track whilst recording.

Latency.
Latency is the delay induced by the time it takes your hardware and software to process your audio.
If you are monitoring in real time whether via headphones or speakers, you'll hear your real voice acoustically and you'll also hear the processed playback which will be delayed against the real sound.
Now, it may only be a few of millisecond, but it's enough to create an off putting delay/echo/phase effect.

Does it sound weird when you record, but find when you play it back afterwards? If so, it's probably latency.
The answer is to mute your speakers/headphones whilst recording.

Also, latency can be manually increased so that the computer has a half second or maybe a full second buffer.
Playback is intentionally delayed so that if there's a hiccup, the computer can dip into the buffer and keep the play/recording seamless.
If you think this might be the case, look in your DAW settings for hardware buffer size or something similar.
If it's set to 1024 or 512, bring it down to 64 or 128.
 
Right you are Paul. You should be able to use the headphones out on the yeti and leave all other monitors off including computer speakers - etc.
 
Try putting the coat behind you and not around the mic. It's pretty definitely room echo.

One thing Sound on Sound mentioned that I thought was interesting is that your brain gets used to the environment in which you listen to sounds a lot. So that room echo is always there, but you have tuned it out. When you make a recording in that environment and then separate the sounds from the normal "place", your brain doesn't compensate any more and you notice the disconnect between environment and sound.

Do you have another place where you can record around the office?
 
I think I'll have to find one! The confirmation that it's room echo is a good place to start. Unfortunately, closed-door offices are at a premium in our open-plan office, and this is one of the rare spots I ever have access to.

Technical question: would setting the gain low and getting closer to the mic help get rid of the echoes? Would the echoes be filtered out by the lower sensitivity of the reduced gain?
 
Yup, that's a lot of room sound. And you have a 10x10 which accentuates around the 500hz region. You can try moving the mic around different spots in the room and see if it makes a differnce. But most likely, you need a better room to record in. If you are able, you can acoustically treat that room to remove the echo.

There is a forum on this site called Studio Build wehich will have tons of threads discussing how to do that. Browse and/or search for room treatment. Take note that it's not the same thing as soundproofing a room.

HTH,
 
Whoa...yeah. That's the sound of the room.

I didn't think it was gona be from the description.
The easiest solution is definitely to move to a smaller/better room, if possible
 
you shouldnt get any echoing at all with the microphone at all its probably the mic also pickin up the sound from the speaker try using ear or headphones while recording
 
Actually -- after sending the demo recording to Blue -- the Yeti itself is defective, so I suspect it's both bad room + a bad Yeti working in omni when it should be set to cardioid. I didn't mention it before, but there was absolutely no sound hitting the Yeti from speakers/headphones while I was recording -- sound all the way down on the Mac, and earphones not even plugged in anywhere.

Now I have to see about returning the thing. Joy.
 
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