Budget-Friendly Microphone Battle for Vocalists
It's a special day for me—my birthday! 🎉 And what better way to celebrate than combining two of my loves: music and microphones? So, join me on this little auditory adventure as we dive into some budget-friendly microphone options that are perfect for vocalists.
I've gathered a selection of XLR and USB microphones, a lineup that includes the SE DCM8, SE Neom, Rode NT USB Mini, Rode PodMic (in both USB and XLR formats), and the Shure MV7 (also in both formats). My goal? To sing a section of one of my unfinished songs and see which microphone captures my voice with the best clarity and tone.
The Test Drive
I won't claim perfection here since singing the same section multiple times inevitably leads to subtle differences in delivery—more breath here, a note slightly off there. But I looked past these nuances for the sake of overall tone. For those who want to jot it down, I used the microphones in this order:
So, after singing my heart out, here's what I found. The SE DCM8 emerged as a strong contender. It's an XLR-only microphone, meaning you'll need additional gear like a preamp. But its dynamic nature delivered impressive clarity, depth, and sparkle—a pleasant surprise for a dynamic microphone.
As for the Rode NT USB Mini, it also stood out. Its clear, crisp sound is a testament to its condenser design, ideal for a treated room with minimal noise. However, keep in mind that volume control is tricky, and you'll need to manage it well.
On the flip side, the Rode PodMic and Shure MV7, despite their dual format options, didn't quite hit the mark. The PodMic felt flat, lacking the tonal depth that makes my vocals shine, while the MV7 was a bit muffled with pesky pop filter issues. The SE Neom, though promising, proved difficult to manage with audio level issues and peaking, making it less suitable for vocal work.
Wrapping It Up
For those on a budget but still demanding quality, the SE DCM8 rose above the rest. While it's not my first choice for professional vocal work, in this lineup with a budget under AU$400, it definitely took the (birthday) cake.
I hope you found this microphone battle as fun as I did. Even if you're not shopping for a new mic, it's always interesting to dive into the world of audio gear for your next project.
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Brianna: It's my birthday! Happy birthday to me! Oh my goodness, I'm so excited for birthdays, I love birthdays, and there are two things that I like receiving on my birthday. Well, hang on, three. So the first thing is hugs. I just love hugs. Hugs are my favorite thing in the world. I love snuggling, I love that, and also Lego.
[00:00:26] So I love getting Lego for my birthday, the third thing that I like getting for my birthday is microphones micro. I have so many of them here in front of me, I have a lot of them, so I thought to celebrate my birthday because it makes me so happy.
[00:00:41] I'm going to do a little bit of a test of a bunch of different microphones together, and I'm gonna sing one of my own songs so that you can get a feel for. How will these sound and which one I prefer? I'm gonna use some XLR microphones. They are the ones with like the little three knobbies. They're like the highest quality and then we've got little USB So I've got a little Rode NT USB Mini, I've got an SE Neom, I've got the Rode PodMic XLR Combo USB, I've got this SE DCM8, which is XLR only, the Shure MV7, So not the plus, which is a combo, same as the pod mic's.
[00:01:24] We've got that one. I want you to listen to all of them. And I want you to tell me in the comments, what you think sounds the best. These range in prices as well. All within a realm that I think makes sense for a podcaster, for a songwriter, for someone that's starting out as a musician or a voiceover artist or anything like that.
[00:01:42] These microphones aren't ridiculous, like they're not stupidly priced. I wanted to Put all these together, sing a bit of a song, because it's my birthday. I want to listen to that. I've never done all of them together. You'll get my true reactions. So the song is called Company. this song isn't finished. This [00:02:00] is just like a draft of this song, but I thought it would be a good one to test. So I'm going to sing the same section of that song with each of these microphones. And I'm going to then get you to weigh in, hmm, what sounds better?
[00:02:14] So to make sure that you get a good representation and it's not interrupting every time, I'm just going to tell you what the order is of the microphones. So if you want to write them down, you can. All right. So we're looking at the DCM8 first, then the SE Neom. Then the N-T-U-S-B mini followed by the road pod mic in USB format.
[00:02:37] then the XLR format, then the Shure MV seven in the XLR format, then ending up with the MV seven in the USB format. that is the order of those microphones, and you'll hopefully be able to hear the differences between them.
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[00:03:13] Didn't notice time moved on. Didn't notice time moved on. I Didn't notice This time moved on, didn't notice time moved on.
[00:03:40] Okay, so after reviewing all of those, what do you think? Could you tell the difference? It can be a little bit nuanced, but there are definitely some microphones in this list, just for vocalists, which feel like they fall short.
[00:03:55] Now, there's one thing I will say is that at the time that I recorded it, it's not [00:04:00] like I gave the exact same performance with each microphone. So I don't feel like it's, it's an absolute great, the best comparison between them, because sometimes I had a little bit more breath in my voice just because I'd sung it quite a few times by that point, or I felt like I was a little bit pitchy on one or two of them in there as well, because I was struggling with headphone level.
[00:04:21] So, you know, it's not like the ultimate best comparison. I think that if I'd had all of the microphones plugged in at the same time, so that the delivery was all the same,, then that would be a better. comparison between them all, but I'm, I'm looking for overall tone and clarity. So I had to kind of nitpick a little bit with that and be okay with the fact that I didn't give the performance exactly the same way every time.
[00:04:48] And hopefully you will accept my apologies on that as well.
[00:04:53] There's one in particular that I absolutely loved that I think if you have a, not a huge budget, but you want to get something that's going to be good for you, for your vocals, and also can be used for other instances.
[00:05:08] The SE DCM8, it still wins for me. And I mean, I've put this microphone, I've battled it against others as well. Uh, and it, it, it really does win every time, which is pretty cool. I think they've done a very good job with this microphone. It does mean that you need more things. So you need it to have, you know, uh, like a preamp.
[00:05:28] It's an XLR only microphone. So you can't just plug it straight into your computer. You need some other equipment to make it work, but I really think it's worth it as far as the actual sound that comes out of it. The other one that I was pleasantly surprised with actually was the Rode NT USB mini. And I think pleasantly surprised with that one because it actually is a condenser microphone as well.
[00:05:50] So condenser microphones always give you a little bit more sparkle. They, are, Definitely preferable for treated rooms or rooms that don't have [00:06:00] a lot of bounce, a lot of noise, a lot of reverb and things like that because they just pick up a lot more. And in the same way, condensers are really great for vocals because they pick up those kind of different frequencies and nuances in your voice that other microphones don't pick up as well.
[00:06:16] Like dynamic microphones, you know, not, not all are created equally, but dynamic microphones do have just not as much in that space. So. I was really impressed with the NT USB Mini for that purpose. The problem with the NT USB Mini though is that you can't really control the volume very easily. So if you're a vocalist, uh, the, like you can't control the compression as it's coming in.
[00:06:40] So you really need to set the volume. On your computer at a level where you're not going to be peaking and you need to use microphone technique pretty substantially so that you're not like overdoing the microphone so that there's all the nuance still there. So that's not a use case that I think really is very useful for vocalists for a long term situation.
[00:07:02] But if you wanted just one microphone and you also wanted to use it for like guitars and other things like that, then the NT USB Mini actually really did work. Work pretty well if you want to keep it pretty lean and it's like 180 Australian dollars. So I was really quite impressed with how that one sounded.
[00:07:19] I didn't like the Rode PodMic USB or the XLR. The USB was a little bit better than the XLR version of that. It just feels a bit flat. There's not a lot of tone in there that, that is interesting. And that's before any post production. Like I didn't do any post production on these.
[00:07:37] It just came in a bit like, eh, you know, I don't know. It wasn't really a true indication of what my voice really sounds like with that microphone. So I felt like that fell flat a little bit. And also in the XLR only format, because the Rode PodMic is such a gain hungry microphone, you really have to turn it up a lot within your mixer.
[00:07:56] Can be a bit of a struggle to get that right. [00:08:00] So again, for vocalists, I wouldn't really recommend that microphone as the one to get for that purpose. Great for podcasting. And it's won a lot of battles in the podcasting space that I've done. But for vocalists, I think there are better options, especially XLR.
[00:08:14] I would just be getting the sE DCM8. And then with the Shure, uh, It's called MV7, both in XLR and USB. That one is okay. I felt like, again, it was a little bit muffled, so it has a little bit more of those muffly tones, which for my voice isn't very nice. That's not really something that I'm looking for when I'm trying to track vocals.
[00:08:37] Also the pop filter, and I've mentioned this before, is problematic. Definitely in the format as well. There's a lot of breath. That you can hear a lot of extra breath and noises that you don't really want to hear when you're tracking vocals. So the MV7 for me fell flat with that as well. And then the last one was the SE Neom, which is a USB microphone.
[00:08:58] And I was expecting better things from this one because it is just a lovely. It's a really great podcasting microphone. It's very good for speaking. It's probably, I haven't used it for voiceovers, but it probably would work well in that format too. But the S E Neom I found was just hard to manage as far as the control.
[00:09:17] Again, the levels on that, whatever they've done in the actual processing within that microphone. It doesn't behave itself. As well and managing it with the headphones as well, getting the level right on the headphones so that it's not too loud on your headphones.
[00:09:32] Uh, on the video version of this episode, you can actually see me trying to on the fly control what's happening with the knobs because I couldn't get it to sound the way I really wanted it, but. To sound and it was peaking more than I wanted it to there. So I found like that one was a little bit too challenging for this format.
[00:09:49] Great for podcasting, not great for vocalists. But then when I listened to the SEDCM8, it's a strong, solid choice for vocalists. It [00:10:00] gives you a lot of depth. It gives you a lot of clarity. It gives you some low bottom end. It gives you that extra sparkle, gives you the things that for one microphone can then do a lot of different things as well.
[00:10:11] And I feel like it's just behaved really quite tremendously.
[00:10:15] And I find that interesting because actually the Dynacaster DCM8 from sE is a dynamic studio microphone so it isn't a condenser microphone and I expected it maybe to not give me as much of the tone as I like but it did perform very well in that format and it gave me a little bit of that like didn't notice.
[00:10:37] You know, there's, there's little higher sparkly bits that are, that are quintessential for my voice. It really highlighted them quite well. It's still not going to be my first choice overall for vocalists, but for this purpose of this battle with the microphones that I had with me, I think that this one definitely takes the cake.
[00:10:59] I hope that was interesting for you. Even if you're not in the market for a vocal microphone, sometimes it's just nice to listen to someone talk about something that they know a lot about. And for me, that is audio, that is microphones, that is frequencies and nuances in voices and, you know, post production on that to make you sound as good as possible.
[00:11:19] That's what I do all day. Basically every day. So it was, I found it really just a fun thing to do on my birthday and it was something I really just felt like doing. So I hope you enjoyed it too. If you have any comments that you want to leave, you can leave them on Spotify. You can't leave them on Apple yet.
[00:11:36] They don't have a comments feature. Hopefully that's coming at some point, but Spotify is where you would leave the comments or you can reach out to me on YouTube, leave a comment in there as well. Or over on LinkedIn is the other place I hang out quite a lot. Okay. I hope you have a lovely day and I will speak to you again soon.
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