Sarah Lee Guthrie

A microphone case built for a studio shelf is not a microphone case built for a gate. Studio storage keeps gear safe on a carpeted floor between sessions. Travel means a case takes a drop onto a conveyor belt, a squeeze under a heavy bag in an overhead bin, and a week of humidity in … Read more

A 2.9 lb tube condenser hanging off a 4 lb-rated arm is not a support problem, it is a leverage problem. The closer that microphone sits to the end of the boom, the harder it pulls on the counterbalance spring, and the arm does not fail all at once. It creeps a fraction of an … Read more

Two people, one room, two microphones recording at the same time. That is the whole problem behind the search for the best podcast microphone bundles for two people, and it is a different problem from picking a single good mic. Every bundle in this roundup ships with two microphones and the hardware to capture both … Read more

Yes, condenser microphones need phantom power. It is a steady stream of 48-volt DC current sent through a balanced XLR cable to run the mic’s internal preamp and polarize its diaphragm. Without it you get silence, or at best a thin, quiet, noisy signal. If the gear you record through already switches 48V on, you … Read more

A cloudlifter is an inline mic activator that sits between a quiet microphone and your preamp, adding roughly 25 dB of clean gain so you can turn the preamp’s gain knob down and keep the hiss out of your recording. If you have ever recorded a ribbon or a low-output dynamic like an SM7B and … Read more

Short answer: yes, you still want one, and most working video creators keep a dedicated meter in their bag even when they own an excellent waveform monitor. The waveform tells you what the camera is clipping; the meter tells you what light to add before you roll. We spent the last few months metering LEDs, … Read more

If you film alone, a gimbal solves a problem no tripod can: it keeps the shot smooth while you walk, talk, and carry everything yourself. A gimbal is a motorized three-axis mount whose brushless motors read sensors in real time and cancel out your hand and wrist movement, so walking-and-talking footage comes out level instead … Read more

The best ceiling speakers for home theaters are the ones that disappear into the ceiling and hand you clean overhead effects without stealing floor space from the seating. That sounds simple, but choosing an in-ceiling speaker for a movie room means balancing three things at once: how much bass a driver can put out from … Read more

Short answer: the TCL 85S455 is the best 85 inch TV under 1500 for most people in . It pairs direct LED backlighting, four HDMI ports and more owner ratings than any other set we tested, and it still clears our strict price ceiling. If picture quality matters more than the platform, the Hisense 85E7SF … Read more

Most people buy a lock for the front door and then keep borrowing a spare key for everything else. The spare key ends up on a hook, in a drawer, and eventually on a lanyard worn by a kid who loses it every week. A keypad lock on an interior door solves a smaller, more … Read more