Spoken Vocals Mic Shootout

One of the most common questions I get asked when someone learns I know about audio is “What are good mics for podcasts?” because everyone and their “hip” aunt is trying to start a podcast nowadays. So I set out to find a good mic I can recommend for female wannabe podcasters.

From this article at “The Podcast Host” , I learned what makes a good spoken vocal mic. It talked less about technical specifications and more about utility. For example, with one bipolar microphone, a person could record two people. This article from Radio.co taught me about some of the industry standards like the EVRE20 and the Shure SM7b.

After this research I chose 4 mic: The AEA-84, EVRE20, SM7b, and the Blue Kiwi. I have used all of these mics in the past, but I have only used one for spoken vocals. The AEA-84 is a ribbon microphone. I wanted to see how the sensitivity would affect a female voice. The EVRE20 is what I have seen in various radio booths so I was curios to but this standard dynamic mic known for its full low-end against these others. The SM7b, another industry standard, has a problem with getting good signal. Though the sound may be small it is of decent quality, or else it would not see so much use for vocal recording. I have only ever used the Blue Kiwi to record steel pan. I loved it’s sound and wanted to try it.

I had my “client” (shout out to Madie Bishop) read several lines in her normal voice of a Shakespeare play. This gave a nice mix of different vocal sounds. Upon listening to them, the AEA has a very thin and almost muffled sound. The EVRE20 has a much more full low end, but for whatever reason produced harsher consonants, especially S’s. The SM7b, though I had to apply clip gain, sounded great! It had a full low end without hissy high frequencies. The Kiwi had a great sound, but it picked up much more room sound than the others. I purposefully conducted this test in a room with noise as to replicate what many amateur podcast environments are like.

Overall, my ranking would be:

1. SM7b- best overall sound, volume can easily be fixed in post

2. EVRE-20 – Second best sound- hissy consonants can be EQed or De-Essed

3.Blue Kiwi – The room tone pick up along with a decent but not great sound landed the Kiwi in third.

4. AEA-84 – The utter lack of low end makes this mic too thin to produce good talking audio.