A Better Audio Setup to Instantly Gain More Credibility and Respect, A No BS guide For Remote Workers+Leaders

This is an easy investment you could turnaround in 1~ day!

Caveat: Anyone can use this trick if you speak with your voice. For folks using assistive devices or text-to-speech this won’t work for you, sorry!

I respect and value your time, so here’s the ‘trick’: Get a ‘professional’ grade audio setup.

And before we get into it, I also recorded the article! Well, a version of it. I tried to cover the content without a script of any kind. I think it kind of worked! Let me know if you listen to it and if you have any feedback.

It may not sound like much, but it has been a huge boon to my career as an engineering manager. It won’t help a bad worker be a good worker, for that you need to nail the fundamentals, but it will help a good worker stand out, and we’ll talk all about that today!

Nothing in this post is sponsored. I’m not here to sell you anything!

This is a long article, but I give the gist at the start of each section, so no need to read it cover to cover to get most of the value! We’ll tackle this in 3 parts:

1. First we’ll dive deep into the impact I’ve seen for myself.

2. Next, we’ll look at what makes a professional-grade audio setup including the essential components and how to choose them. I’ll share my personal setup (the goldilocks+), a cheaper but still effective setup, and what I would go with if I hated money (or didn’t have 5 kids).

3. Finally I’ll provide some practical tips on how to use your new setup to maximize your impacts in meetings/presentations.

If you blindly trust me you can skip the entire article by: Owning and using any pair of headphones, getting an AT4040 Microphone, a Focusrite Scarlett Solo [3rd Gen] audio interface, a Rode Microphones PSA1 Boon arm, and an XLR cable if you don’t have one. This should work with just about any computer, and give you fantastic audio out of the box.

What Impact You Can Expect

In Summary:

• Enhanced Presence: Crisp audio made a strong impression.

• Increased Confidence: Better audio led to more relaxed and focused meetings.

• Professional Image: Setup associated with higher-level executives.

• Improved Clarity: Reduced the need for repetitions.

I upgraded my entire audio setup when I landed my first management position. Up to that point I was using my laptops built in mic, webcam, and some wireless headphones. It worked pretty well and I had no major issues. My switch to engineering management was a career reset (not a promotion) with no pay increase, so why upgrade if nothing was wrong?

I had the realization that the job I was taking was “professional talk to people guy”, and so I wanted my audio to sound as crisp as possible. I was not expecting the results though.

First it was a shock to those who were used to my laptop mic. My voice was a lot deeper and fuller now. It held more presence. It seemed to make people pause, and after the shock subsided they would usually spend the first 5-10 minutes asking about the mic. Eventually the meeting would continue as expected, but it left an impression.

For 80% of new people I met through video, they would comment about the setup. It was a great casual talking point. This is less common now that more folks are remote and also investing in their setups, but it’s still a great ice breaker!

Now shock and awe are nice, but I can hear the cynics “so what? It doesn’t make you any better at your job!” and I almost agree!

See for me it is just more joyful to have meetings now. These reactions, and hearing my recordings, give me a lot more confidence in the things I say. I am more relaxed, and focused on making sure I am delivering crisp and clear communication.

It also seems to lump me in with the other directors, VPs, CTOs who all have similarly looking setups. I would put the audio setup in the same category as “dress for the job you want”.

Voice chat over the internet has a lot of issues, and by upgrading my setup I completely removed unclear audio as one of them. I might still run into networking problems or “the kids broke into my office and spilled juice all over me” problems, but I have not had a single person ask me to repeat myself because of unclear audio, score!

It also filters out background noise so much better. Did I mention I have 5 kids? And when I lived in San Francisco my house was right beside a subway line (very noisy every 5 minutes, like a constant earthquake shaking my entire existence!!). I will admit that software noise cancelling is super impressive in things like Google Meet, but it’s not perfect. People will apologize for their dog barking and I heard no dog, but it did distort the sound, sometimes cutting off what they were saying (or even cutting me off because the software switched to them and dimmed me!). With a directional microphone, it will pick up the dog barking a lot less (or not at all), and the software noise cancelling will do a much better job!

The Setup

Here are all the components that make up a fantastic setup! I call mine the goldilocks+ setup, but I’ll also cover a cheaper option, and for fun we’ll dig deep into our wallet and be silly. You can find my rationale for each down below.

Headphones

• Value: Anker Q20i Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Headphones

• Goldilocks+: Sony WH-1000XM2 (3, or 4 also good!)

• Hates money: Sony WH-1000XM5

Microphone

• Value: AT2005USBPK (comes with headphones, and boom arm, and is usb so no interface required; great deal!)

• Value+: Audio-Technica AT2020USB-XP (USB, doesn’t require an interface!)

• Goldilocks+: Audio-Technica AT4040

• Hates money: Audio-Technica AT5047 (worth more than my PC!)

Interface

• Value: Focusrite Scarlett Solo [3rd Gen]

• Goldilocks+: Yamaha AG06 Multipurpose 6-Channel Mixer with USB Audio Interface

  • I have sadly learned this is now discontinued. It is a beautiful mixer that provides phantom power, I have been using it for years. If I had to replace it, I would just go with the Scarlett Solo.

• Hates money: Scarlett 18i8 [3rd Gen]

Mic Stand / Arm

• Value: No. I refuse.

• Goldilocks+: Rode Microphones PSA1 Professional Studio Boom Arm

• Hates money: ProBoom® Elite Mic Arm with Riser

Details For Each Item

Headphones

If you are only going to invest in 1 thing, make it headphones. Please stop doing calls with sound coming out of your speakers. This is incredibly disruptive to everyone in the call. If you have conditions which make it impossible for you to wear headphones or earbuds of any kind, the rest of the audio tips can help, but for everyone else: Headphones.

When someone speaks and it comes out of your speakers, if you are not muted, that sound can travel into your mic creating Delayed Audio Feedback. This is an effect where the person is hearing themselves speak at a delay, and it makes it incredibly hard to continue talking. Software has improved greatly to help prevent this, so it is much less of a problem, but I will still occasionally need to ask someone to put on headphones, or mute themselves between speaking.

What type of headphones? It does not matter. Go for what works for you, and has the look+sound you want. I switch between a pair of noise cancelling over the ear headphones (Sony WH-1000XM2) and earbuds (Sony WF-1000M4). I went to a few audio stores, tried out headphones, and these were the most comfortable so I went with those. I go with Bluetooth headphones because I like to keep them on when I walk around. I know audiophiles who swear by wired only and that’s great for them too!

Microphone

There are books written about Microphones, and much more qualified individuals who could teach you everything you could possibly want to know. I’m going to cover exactly what I think you should know for doing video calls at work.

The gist: Get a Cardioid Condenser Microphone (The AT4040 is my recommendation). It will need 48v phantom power and a way to connect to your computer. An audio interface (see recommendations above or description below). This will give you great quality sound and help minimize how much background noise gets picked up.

In more details:

Does Pickup Patern or Polar Patterns matter? Yes. It will determine which sounds in a room are heard. Some patterns pick up anything in a room, some only from certain directions. The reason we go with a Cardioid is because it picks up sound from the front, and rejects some sound from behind. This is fantastic if like me you have 5 kids running around screaming all the time.

There is a lot of other patterns and I will encourage you to ignore those unless you care a lot (I do and I did the research and it was fun as hell, but you’re busy so trust that if you go with Cardioid you’ll be happy!)

Does Type of Microphone matter? No, but still yes. Let me explain. Really you’re looking at Dynamic, Condenser, and Ribbon mics.

Dynamic is really nice because it’s cheaper and you don’t need to power it! There are a lot of great dynamic microphones, and they are all pretty durable. The Shure SM7B Dyanmic Cardioid microphone is a very popular streaming microphone (although pretty pricey). I’ve never used it but there you go.

My advice is to get a Condenser microphone because they are better at capturing detail. Meaning lower lows and higher highs. They come in two varieties which I won’t get into. The AT4040 is my recommendation, which is a large diaphragm. The alternative is (drum roll) small diaphragm.

Ribbon mics? I’ve got notin’ to say about these, they are too specific for our use case. Fragile and very specific use cases, you can ignore these

Bonus round: Should you get a pop filter? Pop filters are helpful if your audio has “plosives”. Basically annoying sounds created by the microphone if you blow air into the microphone. Surely you wouldn’t do this on purpose, however it can happen for certain sounds that we make, like the “p” in plosives :P. I don’t notice a difference in my audio with or without it, but I also position my microphone so it’s not in the path of where I might be accidentally blowing air. I recommend don’t get one, and if you notice the plosives pick one up. Although I do use mine because it looks cooler. 😎

Interface (Sometimes optional)

You need this if you have an XLR microphone. If it’s not a USB microphone, you probably need the interface. As above I have a discontinued Yamaha AG06 that I love, but the AG03 (also discontinued) would have been fine. The value recommendation should work with any XLR microphone you can find.

Some interfaces do not provide phantom power. Any Condenser Microphone requires Phantom Power, like my AT4040. Because of this, even though the AG06 has 2 mic inputs, only 1 of them provides phantom power, so the other mic would need to be a Dynamic or Ribbon microphone. This is important to know so you don’t waste your money or time having to return the wrong thing.

Microphone Stand / Arm

Do not cheap out here. I set aside 1/4 of my budget just for the mic arm and I regret nothing. I would rather have a microphone stand that works exactly how I want and get a cheaper microphone, than have the best microphone money can buy but have to fight constantly with my stand. It needs to easily move where I want it, and stay there.

I want to focus on the conversation, not my microphone.

If you are really strapped for cash, just wait and save up. If you’re in a hurry than check the reviews. Look for people who have had it for awhile, not a review right at unboxing.

If you have the money, get the one I recommended above, you won’t regret it!

Practical Tips

Let’s walk through some practice tips to take advantage of your fancy new setup!

Positioning: Experiment with where you position your microphone. What works for you physically? I don’t like blocking any of my screens when I’m in a meeting, so I try to find places that are out of the way. It can feel more organic to have the microphone out of frame, but I prefer to have it in view to maximize cool points.

Once you know where you like to place it, try each location out. Do a recording saying the same thing, and see which you like better. I struggle with this, so I enlisted the help of a few friends and family to review some short clips and tell me which they liked better.

Sound Settings: There is a gain setting on my microphone, and my audio interface has a ton of dials and knobs to adjust things, let alone all the software things you can tweak. I say this throughout the article, but it’s not in scope for today. If the audio isn’t sounding right, or your feeling frisky, play around with these things and see what works! Remember ChatGPT and other LLMs can actually be very helpful here. Let them know what your setup is and ask for some ideal settings. Worst case you get weird results you can laugh about, just make sure to share with the rest of us! ;)

Sound Check: I am admittedly too lazy to do this, and don’t mind stumbling into my first meeting (I feel it humanizes me), but if you want a more professional bar then a morning sound check to make sure everything is good will help. Make sure your audio interface is on (if you have one) and everything is plugged in, and see how it sounds. Anything weird to diagnose? You could do this right before your first meeting, or give yourself less stress and make it part of your getting ready ritual.

Modulate your tone: Your new professional setup will really pick up the nuance in your voice, so use that to your advantage. The entire process is outside the scope of this article (or my skill set!), but the more you record and listen to yourself the better you can get at this. There are lots of good YouTube sources (Vinh Giang is amazing) to help.

Review Recordings: At Yelp we have a lot of our meetings recorded for folks who couldn’t attend live, which while painful is very helpful to review if only to hear yourself speak and see if there are any areas you could improve on.

Bonus Round

I know I said 3 parts, but here is a secret 4th part because I couldn’t stop myself. Here are some more things I want to try to help boost my own audio setup.

Acoustic Treatment: I have 4 pretty bare walls in not that big of a room. Luckily it’s carpeted so that helps absorb some of the sound reflections, but I’m sure I could get better audio by hanging up some acoustic foam. There is a ton of science into this and it’s easy to waste your money, but if you’re looking to go above and beyond this is one area to look into! I know I’ll get there in the next year or two if I can get the money for it.

Hydrate: If you are dehydrated you’re gonna sound like crap, take care of yourself.

Warm-Up Exercises: Do vocal warm ups! I don’t do this but it might be fun to take some time before my morning calls to warm up my voice.