Review on Rode NT5-MP: Exceptional Compact Cardioid Condenser Microphones - Perfectly Matched Pair by Dan Deng

I'm a content creator, not a musician, so my audio quality bar isn't that high - I just need something that makes my voice sound nice and clear in video and conferencing/video conferencing. The good news is that this mic works perfectly when connected to a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (with air mode disabled), which honestly shouldn't be that high at this price point. I chose the NT5 microphone for two reasons. . First, many reviews said the sound quality was excellent, and the main caveat was that the cardioid pickup pattern might not have been as good at noise cancellation as some of the other alternatives like the Octave MK-012. However, the use of directional microphone patterns for noise cancellation can be ambiguous indoors. Bouncing your voice off the walls and ceiling can cause the mids to be canceled out and make you sound very "boomy" which is more tiring. Additionally, software solutions like Mozilla's RNNoise suppression algorithm, which now ships with OBS, actually work very well and give you the option to toggle them on and off. Again, I'm no musician so you probably don't want to use RNNoise to record vocals, but to my untrained ears it sounds really good for a spoken voice and does a great job of eliminating fan noise and even typing what this would do be angry. is within the pickup angle of the cardiac microphone. The second reason I went with the NT5 is that it promised an omnidirectional pattern if you swap out the pod for an NT45-o. I liked this because it allowed me to move and gesture in front of my green screen without worrying about mic placement, and also potentially allowed two people to speak into my single mic during a conference call. The omnidirectional pattern also allows the microphone to be used with the RoomEqWizard to determine the best spots in my room to place the acoustic panels. It may even turn out that in my room the omnidirectional pattern sounds better since I have quite good noise cancellation. (I wish I could at least experiment.) Unfortunately, the NT45-o is very hard to come by. Impossible to find a new one at the moment and the only one I found used sold before I could place my bid. In hindsight, I'd like to get an NT55 that comes with both cardio and omnidirectional pods. (Hey, even if you don't want the included omnidirectional pod, you can always scalp it.) want a cardio speaker or the NT45-o is back in stock then I heartily recommend the NT5 for content creators and as conversation microphone. Others plausibly support NT5 for music applications as well, but I just don't have the experience to comment on that.