Movo is a company that seems to have come about to help budget-conscience video creators, gamers, and podcasters and they’re often coming out with some interesting items. On a few occasions, they’ve presented their mics as options for broadcasters.
Recently they shipped to me a microphone they labeled as the VSM-7. As someone who has done voice work for years, I’m always interested in mics, but I’m also a hard-sell for a good voice mic.
[Read: Quick Take: Movo MA5L Lightning Microphone]
Mics tend to be like favorite flavors and favorite colors. The favorite mics is based on a person’s own voice and what they like. Whether it’s a Neuman TLM 103 (or even the big U 87), or the Shure SM7, the Sennheiser MD 421 or MD 441, or my own favorite the Electro-Voice RE320 (even over the RE20 or RE27).
So when I received the Movo VSM-7, I really wasn’t expecting much. A big reason for the low expectation is based on a price of $124.95 list, whereas the previous mics mentioned can cost $300 to over $3,000.
With that said, here are the specs. First, the mic requires phantom power. The frequency response is listed at 20 Hz–20kHz. The mic measures just over 7 inches tall (207 x 115 x 185 mm) and just under 2 pounds (29 ounces). It’s made of metal and it has a very solid feel. The three switches are solid and lock in place with one being pattern selection (cardioid, omnidirectional and bidirectional), one is a pad (0 dB and –10 dB), and the third is a flat/bass rolloff selector. There’s no fancy case or even bag, but the box is designed to protect the mic with a custom foam insert. The mic ships with a fairly inexpensive 10-foot XLR cable, a very nicely-designed shock mount, and a great working plosives/pop filter. Included is also a spare shock mount band (which was nice thinking on Movo’s part).
The real story? Nice!
Surprisingly, this microphone actually sounds much more like a high-priced broadcast mic. The response on my voice (a lower range voice) is very clean, and with or without the roll-off, it produces a sound that I could use for any voice over work. The patterns are interested, and if used as a single mic for an interview (host on one side, guest on the other), I have no doubt the bidirectional/figure 8 would be ideal.
The omnidirectional truly IS an omni, so it does pick-up in a very consistent Omni pattern. For voice work, most would go with a cardioid for noise rejection (and it really did reject noise from everywhere but the front). The plosive filter did an excellent job and would be just fine as the only filter needed, and it didn’t seem to color the audio at all.
If there is one thing I found with this mic, is that it is subject to proximity effect. With people (like myself) who “work a mic” (meaning “get closer” to talk quietly, or “back away” to project excitement), this mic will enhance the low frequencies when you work it closely. This is one of the features of the EV mics I’ve always loved is the ability to maintain a very flat response at any distance. In some cases, many voice people actually like a warmer bass by working the mic closely, and this one would be very good for that.
Overall, for $124.95, this is a well-built, nicely-designed mic. For cost-conscious people running tighter budgets, this would be a very good choice for a studio mic. For people less concerned about cost, it’s actually still a very nice mic. I’d certainly have no trouble throwing it in as a guest mic or in a production studio.
Info: www.movophoto.com
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