Distance from your mouth
6-8 inches is the general sweet spot for clip-on mics — too close causes popping on hard consonants, too far picks up more room echo.
Room choice over gear
A cheaper mic in a small, soft-furnished room (curtains, carpet, a couch) will often sound cleaner than an expensive mic in a bare, echoey room.
Recording app settings
Turn off aggressive noise suppression if your app offers it — it can make voices sound processed or robotic; light suppression is usually enough.
Always do a 10-second test clip
Before recording anything real, record a quick test and actually listen back with headphones — catching a bad setup takes ten seconds, redoing a whole video doesn\’t.