Month: November 2018

Fifine reached out to me not too long ago and requested a review of one of their newest microphones, the K052. Since this was the first time a company approached me for a review (shady Amazon sellers don’t count), I thought I would give it a shot.

The K052 is a bit different from the majority of the other mics that I’ll be reviewing for my Budget Tubing series, seeing as how it’s a gooseneck microphone. Of course, the physical design of the mic doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a condenser microphone. In fact, I’d say that the design of this mic actually makes it a bit more versatile since it won’t stand out in certain environments. It would look a bit odd to have an obvious “podcasting” style mic sitting on your office desk, but a gooseneck would look right at home.

As for the price of the K052, it will set you back around $28. The research I’ve done on gooseneck mics tells me that this is actually a great price, especially when you take into account a couple of the bonus features included with this mic. Not only does the K052 have a build similar to many more expensive goosneck mics (two flex segments and a metal tube vs. a full flex neck on the cheaper mics), it also includes both a mute button and a volume knob on the mic base. You’d actually have a hard time finding a mic in this price range that has those features. Heck, even the Blue Snowball is missing the mute button and volume control.

When it comes to the audio quality presented by the K052, I have to admit that I was pretty surprised. While it looks like the mic uses a relatively small electret capsule, it still delivers clear audio with a nice frequency pickup range. Looks like Fifine did a good job picking out the other bits and bobs they shoved into this small package.

All in all, I think $28 is a great price for what you get.

Here’s another entry into my “Budget Tubing” series, and this time I’m taking a look at one of the most common entry level mics out there, the BM-800. I say it’s the most common because just about every cheap audio tech supplier has their own rebranded version of this mic, though they sometimes change the model number slightly (I’m looking at you Neewer NW-800).

Not only is the BM-800 sold by a multitude of companies, but it is also pretty inexpensive despite having a nice solid build. The average price for this mic is between $15 and $25, though I lucked out and got mine new in box for $10. With the package I ordered I got the mic, a shock mount, a 3/8 to 5/8 thread adapter for the shock mount, an XLR to 3.5mm audio cable, and a wind guard puff. If I wanted to spend a little more money I could have gotten everything listed previously, as well as a boom arm, a proper XLR cable, a phantom power supply, and a pop filter for a grand total of $40.

One very interesting thing about the BM-800 is that it can be used both with and without phantom power, unlike a lot of XLR condenser microphones. If you plug the included XLR to 3.5mm audio cable into the BM-800 you can use the mic with any audio card that has a 3.5mm mic jack, though admittedly your results may vary. In the above video I do an audio test using the 3.5mm cable and my latop’s sound card, and the resulting audio quality is quiet and noisy. However, I have also used this mic and cable combo with a USB audio capture device meant for recording music, and it sounds great despite not using phantom power.

Where the BM-800 really shines, however, is with the use of phantom power. Near the end of the video I plug the mic into my Behringer Xenyx Q1202USB audio mixer, and I was very surprised by how great it sounded. It doesn’t outshine my Audio Technica AT2020, but for a $20 mic you could do far worse. Also, the fact that I can use the BM-800 with a proper audio interface also means that I can actually monitor my audio while I’m recording, unlike most of the USB microphones I’ll be reviewing in the future.

All in all I think the BM-800 is actually a great grab for the price. The fact that you can actually use it with your standard audio card (despite it not sounding that great in some cases) is a nice little bonus, since most people beginning their content creation journey won’t have access to audio interfaces with phantom power.