Ladies and gentlemen, what have we got here? It’s a Blue Yeti microphone! I ordered this one from the Apple Store online for around $229 Australian, following my rather disappointing experience with the Blue Spark Digital.

The Spark certainly sounded promising, but the construction of my particular unit wasn’t very impressive. Loose connections and a stand that didn’t fit together properly weren’t exactly what I had in mind, so I’ve decided to give the Yeti a go instead.

First impressions? The packaging is rather nice. There are pictures of Yetis everywhere, along with plenty of information about the microphone’s different recording patterns. It’s all very professional-looking, although I suppose we’ll have to get it out of the box before declaring victory!

The microphone arrived this morning, and I’ve been looking forward to opening it. Naturally, trying to remove a rather large microphone from its packaging while holding a camera in one hand is proving to be a wonderful experience.

Eventually, out it comes. Good grief, it’s enormous! The Yeti is much larger and heavier than I expected, with a rather substantial metal stand. That was one of the things that attracted me to it, especially compared with some of the lighter plastic microphone stands I’d been looking at.

Inside the box we’ve got the microphone, a USB cable and the usual documentation. There’s a headphone connection underneath, along with the USB socket, while the back has a gain control and a switch for choosing between the recording patterns.

The different pickup modes were a big selling point for me. There’s more than one microphone capsule inside, allowing it to operate in several different configurations depending on what you’re trying to record. I’m particularly interested in seeing how those modes behave.

I’ve also got a pop filter ready to go, which rather conveniently arrived on the same day. Everything appears to be coming together!

The Yeti certainly feels better constructed than the Spark Digital I was disappointed with, although I haven’t actually tested the sound quality yet. That’ll have to wait until I’ve got everything connected and can try recording with the different settings.

For now, it’s a rather impressive-looking microphone. It also looks quite nice sitting on a bookcase, although I should probably do something more useful with it!