For video, I think this is a waste of time and money. Audio is a different story.
The quality of your audio has an impact both on the intelligibility of what you're saying and on listener's subconscious evaluations of you. Audio software and hardware is also cheaper and much, much easier to deal with than video--I've had no problems with essentially the same setup across Mac, Linux, and Windows.
The cost of entry is somewhere around $50-$100 for USB microphones, although if you're willing to spend closer to $250, you can get a decent USB audio interface ($120) + standard (XLR) microphone ($100) + XLR cable ($10) + stand or boom arm ($20).
I've been in countless online meetings where I'm barely able to hear one or two of the participants.
Every time I've evaluated a better video setup, it's been clear that there are a bunch of things you want to get right in order to have a smooth & reliable experience. You want a camera with clean HDMI output, a capture card, and make sure that your camera can be run continuously for as long as the meetings will last--don't forget back-to-back meetings. If you might be in meetings for three hours in a row every once in a while, do you need a camera that can be run for three hours continuously? Most "proper" cameras just can't do that. If you dig into the specs, some of them will list the maximum amount of time that they'll run before shutting off. Twitch streamers and people who run YouTube channels have done the research and will tell you which cameras are suitable for this kind of work, but at that point, you're often spending like $700 or more just so people can see a clearer picture. I would love it if I could just use my DSLR, which is a very nice prosumer DSLR with some nice lenses, but it's just not designed for streaming video. I would have to buy something new.
High-quality audio for $50-$100 is a much, much better deal.
This is very true. I have what most people would consider a "pretty advanced" setup for work, and all of my money has gone into audio and lighting. I use the built-in webcam on my work MBP, and I constantly get positive comments from colleagues and customers about my audio and video quality. For video quality, /lighting/ is actually far more important than the camera itself. Even a many thousand dollars camera will not fix bad lighting in a room.
Everything you said about audio is spot-on. I will say the cheap booms suck, and it's worth spending money on a proper boom. Heil makes a boom that's relatively cheap and actually good, but most people at work who ask me how to get started I say to either buy a Blue or Rode setup, with their kit that includes the boom and shock mount.
For audio software on Mac, Rogue Amoeba makes the best stuff, bar none.
A lot of cameras will list maximum time before shutting off as 29 minutes, 59 seconds. This isn't neccessarily because of overheating issues but (I think) to avoid falling on the wrong side of some tax/duty differences between camcorders and stills cameras.
As an example, on my home setup I use a Canon R5 for video calls (way overpowered for this task but I have it for stills photography). This lists maximum recording time as 29:59. However it doesn't limit the amount of time it can be switched on and outputting via HDMI and I've used it for calls of 3+ hours without any issue (with an AC battery adapter).
> A lot of cameras will list maximum time before shutting off as 29 minutes, 59 seconds. This isn't neccessarily because of overheating issues but (I think) to avoid falling on the wrong side of some tax/duty differences between camcorders and stills cameras.
That's for recording to memory card, not for the HDMI feed.
> The cost of entry is somewhere around $50-$100 for USB microphones, although if you're willing to spend closer to $250, you can get a decent USB audio interface ($120) + standard (XLR) microphone ($100) + XLR cable ($10) + stand or boom arm ($20).
Is a XLR microphone worth the cost increase - for meetings, not streaming(or youtube creation)?
> Is a XLR microphone worth the cost increase - for meetings, not streaming(or youtube creation)?
I'm not sure how to quantify it, and I've not used USB microphones. By the time USB microphones appeared on the market, I already had microphones and there was no reason to downgrade.
My point of reference is the Shure SM57 / SM58 (which are very similar). The SM57/SM58 is dirt cheap at $100, extremely reliable, and has a very good sound to it. The "sound" of the microphone is largely created by the construction of the capsule and the construction of the microphone body. When you listen to a recording, you're hearing not only the sound, but also the resonances of the microphone capsule and body. My experience is that as you explore cheaper options below $100, you see microphones with much cheaper construction and noticeable resonance problems. I am extremely skeptical of USB microphones that are radically cheaper--up to 80% less expensive--than the most basic, inexpensive USB interface + microphone combo I could come up with.
For this reason, when I give advice to people who want to make music using a microphone, I recommend that they start with the $250 (total budget) USB interface and SM57/SM57. If $250 is out of their budget, then they should just save up until they can afford it.
So I will tell you that I am not happy with the quality of microphones in general under $100, or the quality of condenser microphones under $200-$300. I'll also tell you that the main thing I've been using Zoom for in the past couple years has been remote vocal lessons, so my needs are different from yours.
I would also caution you that there is an enormous amount of misinformation and bad advice about microphones online. People forget about acoustic treatment (super important), recommend that someone starting out get the SM7b (awful choice for first microphone), or tell you that condenser microphones are more sensitive to background noise and poorly treated rooms (just plain false--this one makes no sense at all).
So is it worth it? Don't know--how much money can you play around with, and how much do you care about audio quality?
I care enough to want to upgrade my work-issued Plantronics headset. Not enough to spend $500 doing so. $250? Possibly since it's a one-time investment, as long as there's a significant upgrade that can still be perceived in low bandwidth online meetings.
One thing I would like to avoid is the 'youtuber' setup. Ideally I'd like the microphone to be able to pick up my voice without it itself being in the camera view.
Fair. I'd prefer to call it the "Johnny Carson" setup, though!
Microphone placement is a massive subject by itself. The basic idea is that you make the signal loud by moving the microphone reasonably close to your voice and point it at your mouth, and simultaneously, the part that people forget, you put the microphone far away from noise sources and pointing away from them. This second part is what built-in laptop microphones are especially bad at. (Note that microphones have different pickup patterns, so pointing "away" from a source means different things to different mics, and it's irrelevant for omnidirectional mics.)
Depending on the camera set up, you can put something like an SM57 just out of frame and still have it be fairly close to your mouth, away from noise. A boom arm or mic stand will help. Setting your mic on the desk can work but this will pick up vibrations from the desk.
Other common setups are lavalier microphones, headset microphones, and shotgun microphones. Fair to assume you're not using a shotgun microphone.
Lav mics are simple and unobtrusive. TV hosts use them a lot. (You can see that late night TV hosts have a lav mic in addition to the desk mic... 99% of the time, you're hearing the lav mic, and the desk mic is off.) Headset mics give you more consistent and clear sound, with more freedom of movement, which is why singers and presenters use them a lot. Beware that cheap lav / headset mics will sound as bad as your laptop microphone, just with less background noise. You can watch reviews on YouTube for these kind of mics and decide if you want to try one out.
I'm almost convinced to get a real microphone(probably with a stand, for the time being). Doing some research on models now. The Johnny Carson setup may not be a big deal if most of the time the camera is off, but audio is important. And even then I might be able to keep it off frame. We'll see :)
Love my Konftel Ego portable bluetooth speakerphone. It stays plugged into USB power 99% of the time on my desk but the audio quality for myself as well as how others hear me is leaps and bounds better than any other solution I have found, including headsets.
Obviously if there are others in the room/house then a speakerphone may not be the best solution; but if you aren't going to annoy others I find a speaker phone far less fatiguing than dealing with headsets all day.
Might want to just try a high quality conference speakerphone. They have advanced audio processing, directional microphones, noise cancellation, etc. built in - since they are designed for this kind of audio from the ground up.
You can find the Konftel Ego for $80 at Provantage.com (around $120 everywhere else). Konftel makes amazing speakerphones that rival polycomm, for a lot less. Indeed, I actually prefer their sound to polycomm.
The Ego will be a dramatic upgrade from whatever is built into your other gear. If you still aren't happy with it, then you can start going down the USB/XLR microphone rathole if you still prefer. But it's probably unnecessary.
There are a ton of guides online, especially since the pandemic started. Getting a USB microphone is so easy and cheap that you probably don't need a guide for it. The guides that I've seen for USB mics are generally focused on the features that streamers need, which are somewhat unique (they want to capture desktop audio at the same time).
If you are going for the prosumer option, I recommend Scarlett Solo + Shure SM58 + XLR cable + mic stand. This may be a bit overkill for meetings, but it's a good starting point if you want to record music, stream, record a podcast, etc.
I will note I've had a bunch of issues with the Blue microphone USB output hanging when I reboot my PC with it plugged in: it still registers, but won't pickup audio - a quick replug fixes it, but it's incredibly annoying.
If I were modifying my setup today, I would've gone with an XLR mic out the gate: at the end of the day I ended up running analog audio to the Blue microphone anyway because the value of having monitor audio to your headphones is incredible (and you do not want any latency on that at all).
The quality of your audio has an impact both on the intelligibility of what you're saying and on listener's subconscious evaluations of you. Audio software and hardware is also cheaper and much, much easier to deal with than video--I've had no problems with essentially the same setup across Mac, Linux, and Windows.
The cost of entry is somewhere around $50-$100 for USB microphones, although if you're willing to spend closer to $250, you can get a decent USB audio interface ($120) + standard (XLR) microphone ($100) + XLR cable ($10) + stand or boom arm ($20).
I've been in countless online meetings where I'm barely able to hear one or two of the participants.
Every time I've evaluated a better video setup, it's been clear that there are a bunch of things you want to get right in order to have a smooth & reliable experience. You want a camera with clean HDMI output, a capture card, and make sure that your camera can be run continuously for as long as the meetings will last--don't forget back-to-back meetings. If you might be in meetings for three hours in a row every once in a while, do you need a camera that can be run for three hours continuously? Most "proper" cameras just can't do that. If you dig into the specs, some of them will list the maximum amount of time that they'll run before shutting off. Twitch streamers and people who run YouTube channels have done the research and will tell you which cameras are suitable for this kind of work, but at that point, you're often spending like $700 or more just so people can see a clearer picture. I would love it if I could just use my DSLR, which is a very nice prosumer DSLR with some nice lenses, but it's just not designed for streaming video. I would have to buy something new.
High-quality audio for $50-$100 is a much, much better deal.