**Sponsored Content! This product was provided to me by Azden for review purposes. But I don’t hold back on it.**
Audio in any video is important. Like, really, really important. If you sat down and listed all of the things that made a bad video “bad”, audio would be at the top of that list. I once heard a quote that I wish I could say that I made up myself:
“The Eyes are more Forgiving than the years.”
And it’s totally true. The average video viewer will tolerate blurry images, jarring jumpcuts, and overly-long self-indulgent YouTube channel splash graphics. But nobody on this green, digital earth will power through a video with garbled, distant audio. Even a peer-reviewed study by The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society confirms:
“when subjects are asked to judge the audio quality of an audiovisual stimulus, the video quality will contribute significantly to the subjectively perceived audio quality”
So obviously one of the best investments that you could make in your career is a half-decent shotgun mic. And that’s whether you’re creating social media content for yourself, or a client. And that’s why Azden, a New Jersey-based audio equipment company, created the Azden SMX-30. And I was more than happy to put this mic through its paces.