Review on Shure Digital Condenser Microphone Lightning by Brian Mendoza

I bought this mic 2 months ago to record small musical performances (vocals, piano, woodwinds) from home with my iPhone and stream them live. Drawn by its compactness and direct iOS compatibility, I expected only average sound quality. Actual sound quality and the convenience of the built-in processing modes were excellent and rivaled the professional Shure microphones I've used in the past. To my surprise, the onboard processing modes cover most of my needs, some of which have quite high dynamic range requirements. I mainly used the iOS apps for recording and only occasionally needed the Shure MOTIV apps. The (big) disappointment was the microphone output and the included iOS Lightning cable. The first thing you'll notice is that when the iPhone (video) is on a tripod but the microphone (audio) isn't, the 3ft cable isn't enough. This leads to ordering a longer cable where you will quickly find: The 1 micro-B USB connector on the microphone is quite outdated and has rarely been used in the past, so you will find very few micro-USB Lightning cables will find . 2. If you find it, it doesn't work with this microphone. From the looks of it, the interface design is Shure proprietary, and the only cable that works is a short cable from Shure. 3. However, you can find longer male-female Lightning extensions. They work with a microphone cable, which is what I did. 4. Resist the temptation to use the microphone's USB-B cable (also included free) and adapt it to iOS Lightning with a USB extender. It doesn't work either, thanks to Shure's unique connector design. After solving the cable length issue, I soon noticed that the Shure cable at the end of the microphone (micro-USB) would come loose, not stay securely connected to the microphone, and would occasionally pull out when the microphone was moved. Nothing offensive here, just a routine activity, but not during a recording session. So I swallowed my pride, shelled out $30 (a third of the price of the mic!) and ordered a spare (short 16″) cable from Shure, which I'll probably tape to the mic to keep it in place. Poor guy. Construction, apart from the poor choice of interface design, is not what I expected from Shure. Made the overall impression of this microphone a bit disappointing.