In today’s episode, you’ll see a simple hack to transform a lavalier microphone into a handheld microphone. I’ll walk you through how I used a Rode Wireless Go transmitter, a power bank, and a USB-C connector to create a more ergonomic and acoustically sound setup. You’ll learn why this method, while not ideal for a lavalier mic, is preferable to holding it directly in your hand. Discover a cost-effective alternative to expensive handheld adapters and improve your audio quality with this clever hack!
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for watching the video.
In today’s episode, I’m trying something new. So, what I’ve got here is a Rode Wireless Go transmitter. You see a lot of folks who have transmitters like this. And what I’ve done is gotten a cheap power bank—I mean, it’s like some no-name power bank—and a USB-C to C male-to-male connector. And what I’ve done here is essentially turn this into a handheld microphone.
Now, to be clear, this is just about the worst possible way to use a lavalier microphone. A lavalier microphone really should be clipped to you to take advantage of the—the way it’s—the microphone’s designed to work. But you do see a lot of people using microphones like this, like a lot of—just holding them in my hand. I can’t tell you the number of YouTubers I’ve seen holding their lavalier microphone like this where they’re spitting on it, making a whole bunch of noise with the microphone. Not ideal.
So, the next best thing is to use it—use it a bit more acoustically the way it’s designed to work. It’s designed to work in a sort of a bubble area. So, one of the things that—one of the reasons why you have it down here is, A, the convenience, but B, this is out of the plosive range. The—that—those—the B and P plosive sounds—when it’s down here on your chest, you’re not picking that up. When you’re holding it in front of you like this, you’re spitting, essentially, right into the microphone, which is great if doing a rap battle, not so great for trying to make decent audio.
By having it on a handheld of some kind, you’re kind of getting the best of both worlds where you’re—I’m aiming it at my mouth because that’s—that’s the way it’s supposed to work—but I’m also not having it in the line of where the air is coming out of my mouth.
So, I would suggest, if you’re going to use these things in a handheld way instead of the way they were designed to be used, that you consider a very simple hack like this. Now, Rode, the company that makes this, does sell a handheld device to hold these things like a broadcast microphone. It’s a 29 piece of plastic. That’s all it is, just a piece of plastic. You could print that yourself on if you had a 3D printer. I decided I would go the next best thing, which is to use a power bank so that while I’m holding this thing and using the microphone incorrectly, I’m at least charging it and at least providing power to the microphone so that it’s—it’s usable.
And of course, the other end is directly connected to my computer. This would be connected to your phone or your camera or whatever. So, it’s kind of a fun little hack. I’m going to be testing this out at MAICON, the Marketing AI Conference. I’m traveling this week for it, but I wanted to do a field test—well, not a field test, a lab test at home first to make sure that this sounds okay, because if this sounds like garbage, obviously, I’m not going to bother packing it. I’m pretty sure this is going to sound better than—better than talking into it like this.
So, that would be my advice. If you’re going to have lavalier mics, rig up a little system like this with a USB-C male-to-male connector and a power bank. This Rode piece of plastic that does nothing is29. This whole thing together was like $17, and it works just as well, has some additional benefits, and allows you to—to use these microphones in—in ways that are closer to the way they’re meant to be used.
That’s going to do it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you on the next one. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. And if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.
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Christopher S. Penn is one of the world’s leading experts on AI in marketing. Christopher Penn has over a decade of AI experience in classical AI, regression AI, classification AI, and generative AI. Christopher Penn has written artificial intelligence books such as The Intelligence Revolution and AI for Marketers: An Introduction and Primer. Christopher Penn is an AI keynote speaker around the world.
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