Expert's Rating
Pros
- Excellent audio quality
- versatile recording settings
- looks good
- satisfyingly solid
- built-in headphone monitoring
Cons
- Too bulky and heavy for roving reporting
- controls sited inconveniently
Our Verdict
We loved the Yeti’s versatility and the way it made vocals sound rich and radio-friendly. It has enough tonal nuances to make recording vocals and guitar straight into GarageBand satisfying and is easily good enough for recording small live events with multiple acoustic instruments. the bi-directional mode is great for interviews. It’s quite big and heavy, though.
Price When Reviewed
$129
The Yeti certainly looks the part, thanks to its studio-style capacitor mic design and sturdy, heavy base. It rotates easily around a central pivot, which allows for a wide range of mic placements, making it suitable for many different kinds of recording.
The Yeti’s strength is that it incorporates four distinct settings – stereo, cardoid, omni-directional and bi-directional. Stereo captures a realistic stereo image and works well for recording conversations, vocals and acoustic instruments; cardoid focuses on what’s right in front of the mic and cuts out everything else, making it good for podcasts; omni picks up everything equally and is good for recording outdoors, discussions or conference calls; bi-directional records front and rear, so it’s good for interviews where you might normally try to get by with a stereo mic – or take along a pair.
Results are uniformly excellent. This is a professional-level mic and we produced great recordings of conversations, interviews, podcasts and intimate acoustic performances using a variety of programs like GarageBand and Audacity. There’s a headphone socket for easy, latency-free monitoring and simple volume and mute controls on one side; though the volume and recording settings are inconveniently sited on the other side, where you can’t see them.
Of course, you can do all this with a conventional mic and audio interface, but if you don’t normally record electric instruments and keyboards, this’ll save money and you’ll have less to cart around – though because it’s quite heavy you won’t want to use it too often for in-the-field recording. It costs a hefty £129, but we’ve seen it for £99 including delivery, at which point it becomes an attractive proposition for anyone who’s serious about their audio recordings.