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Review on πŸŽ™οΈ Shure Microflex MX418D/C: High-quality Gooseneck Cardioid Condenser Microphone by Laura Bates

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Good mic but with warning

First let me remove the 'warning' - this is an 18 inch model and looking back I would love to get the 12 inch version. I have this mic on my desk and this 18" version actually positions it perfectly in terms of acoustic pickup, but it makes leaning on the desk to rest your back more difficult - the mic is too close to yours Face what is a little uncomfortable psychologically. My desk is 30 inches deep and the mic is almost entirely on the other side. The shorter 12-inch size might not be as good acoustically, but would give you more freedom to lean on your desk if you're like me and like to do that. It's just something I wanted to share, but it's by no means a downside of this mic. Now for the mic itself - I compared it to my Shure Beta 87A mic and my AKG C414 mic. Compared to the 87A (stage vocal mic) this one is much more sensitive and has much better bass and clearer treble than the C414 (studio recording mic) has about the same tone and sensitivity but not as detail - not even close. With the 418 it sounds good if you speak into it, but if you try to pick up the background noise of the room it'll all be a mess - whereas with the C414 you'll be able to distinguish everything if you pick up the background noise of each noise individually - which means that this microphone does not have a large dynamic range - limited by its own noise. The speech he records is very clear - he just doesn't have that department. h or the airiness that a large-diaphragm recording microphone like the C414 has, but for conference calls it doesn't matter. The first. so have some patience. Build quality is EXCELLENT. The cord is very long (I didn't measure it but looks like about 12 feet) and the package was ridiculously large - and I'm not talking the Amazon packaging - I'm talking the Shure box - it's about a cubic foot and 2 feet long. No assembly required - it just comes in a giant box. Overall a great product and I love it. I'd like to compare it to what Sennheiser offers as Sennheiser is probably excellent too, but I couldn't find any Sennheiser reviews so I went with this one. I don't regret it, but I'm still curious about Sennheiser. UPDATE: I'm changing my rating to 4 stars because I was getting intermittent clicks when trying to record with this mic. I'm not sure why. This isn't a recording mic though and I have no problem using it for its intended purpose, but sometimes I'm too lazy to plug in a recording mic when I need to record something and I hear those weird clicks. which I have never experienced with my recording microphone (AKG C 414). I still think it's a great mic for my purposes (conferences and such) but for some reason it doesn't work as a recording mic.

Pros
  • Musical instruments
Cons
  • Some bugs