Shure MV88 Condenser mic for iOS - REVIEW

Likely of interest for anyone who uses iPhone or iPad to record home videos for Open mic competitions.

http://www.gotaukulele.com/2018/02/shure-motiv-mv88-ios-stereo-condenser.html

Thanks for another great review Baz.

Shure was pretty late to the game for mobile recording & iOS devices.

Had I not already purchased and been very happy with an Apogee MiC (thanks Libranian/Andrew!), I might have explored one of these when they came out.

For folks just starting out, this Shure MV88 is a very nice option too. Brenda (SoloRule) I think has been using one of these for her videos over the past year, and they also sound very good to me.

Thanks fella

The more I try this, the more the sound impresses me. You would have thought an Android version would have been easy, so think they missed a trick there.

bazmaz said:

Thanks fella

The more I try this, the more the sound impresses me. You would have thought an Android version would have been easy, so think they missed a trick there.

Click to expand...

Sure thing Baz

External audio devices on Android is still a minefield, wholly on account of Google not enforcing a standard software driver interface for USB audio (an 'API' in programmer lingo) to be used by software and hardware developers as a reference design in the baseline version of Android that is offered to all of the device makers.

Most other operating systems (both mobile and desktop, Windows/Linux/Mac/Unix and iOS) use 'Class-Compliant' USB audio drivers that are build-in to the operating system and are quite generic, as well as electronics controller chips used in the hardware, so one device works basically everywhere, but Android is the exception to this.

Because of the exception, USB audio on an Android device via an OTG cable is a crap-shoot if it will work or not with a SPECIFIC app, and the app developer usually has to write their own USB audio stack, even if the hardware itself is class compliant.

Shure could do this handily, as they are a big enough company, but maybe they do not see a big enough market for it to pay off.

Apple users are by now used to paying that premium for both Apple OEM as well as 3rd-party add-on devices.

Interesting. Did not know all that, but it’s a long time since I ran anything Android

Booli said:

Thanks for another great review Baz.

Shure was pretty late to the game for mobile recording & iOS devices.

Had I not already purchased and been very happy with an Apogee MiC (thanks Libranian/Andrew!), I might have explored one of these when they came out.

For folks just starting out, this Shure MV88 is a very nice option too. Brenda (SoloRule) I think has been using one of these for her videos over the past year, and they also sound very good to me.

Click to expand...

One thing to add, as mentioned to me by Brenda (SoloRule) after she saw what I posted above, is that the higher price for better audio devices is usually a deterrent for beginners since they typically want the cheapest thing possible and likely will not pay more, for something that performs and sounds better.

Due to lack of experience and despite advice from those of us who have been down this path a number of times, they end up with lesser quality, but 'passable' audio recordings. Having a high-end point of reference will prevent this, but not everyone has access to, or even cares to explore better options

It comes down to proving once again that the 'buy cheap, buy twice' law comes into effect once they discover that a $30 mic sounds bad compared to a $150+ mic, and then the upgrade cycle begins until the budget is maxed out.

This perspective is made worse when too many folks are listening back on laptop, tablet or phones, with TINY built-in speakers, and/or cheap headphones, all of which fail greatly in reproducing 'accurate' (but not necessarily 'audiophile') audio fidelity, and all of this is due to the physics involved in a small speaker as a limited bandwidth of the frequency spectrum that it can reproduce, usually very focused on midrange and sacrificing most of the bass and treble and 'presence' of better speakers and headphones.

You can get very good fidelity from a $50 pair of Koss Porta-Pro headphones, and/or a $75 pair of Sony MDS965s, and even AKG now has the K40s or K70s for about $40 which are very good too.

One need not spend $200 for a set of Grado or $450 for BeyerDynamic or $800 for Sennheiser cans these days, but all of the ear-pods or ear-buds that sell for under $150 are very much like a string tied to a tin can in comparison to the better ear-pods, but it is a hard sell for folks to justify this expense.

Indeed, plus I find the YouTube compression ( as a format so many people use) is pretty awful

Interesting- thanks.
I've been looking at these for simple sound samples on my iphone (they both need a splitter cable and phantom power box- which is another $20

Cheapy package
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073VJV1R...olid=35C9MK5SWS3B2&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

or this
MXL
https://www.amazon.com/MXL-990-Cond...rd_wg=7hdKI&psc=1&refRID=9ZM3DZVTHDCWNQGDAF48


Splitter cable
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071GCV97...olid=35C9MK5SWS3B2&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Phantom power box
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IUS7U9...olid=35C9MK5SWS3B2&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

As I commented on the gotaukulele.com post, I have a $40 Blue Snowball mic that does a pretty nice job when I use it. But it is clunky and inconvenient, and not really that portable if you like to take your iPad/iPhone outdoors to shoot. This Shure looks like a wonderful thing to ask Santa to slip into my stocking ...

Yes, the convenience of this is one of the key selling points. I have a Snowball too - nice mic, but doesn't have the stereo that this one has. In fact the Stereo imaging on the Shure is remarkably good.

I must have bought and returned all the mic that are available for iOS before I settled for the Shure MV88. The Shure app is easy to use and the quality of the mic is very good. I am impressed of how Shure MV88 can cut out unwanted noise such as TV noise from another room.
All my YouTube videos are recorded with my phone plugged in with the Shure mic. No editing or enchantment.

However, I experienced perhaps 1 out 10 times that the mic doesn't record and I did not know until after I finished many takes of recording. That can be quite frustrating. Now I go to the Shure app to make sure the mic is properly connected before I shoot any video.

I also record a friend (downupdave) open mic at a very noisy pub from 5 feet away. The sound came out very clear and it cut out the unwanted noise as well. Highly recommended.

I recently purchased the top of the line Shure mic and thought it may be a better product but it was not so I am back to using the MV88.

SoloRule said:

I must have bought and returned all the mic that are available for iOS before I settled for the Shure MV88. The Shure app is easy to use and the quality of the mic is very good. I am impressed of how Shure MV88 can cut out unwanted noise such as TV noise from another room.
All my YouTube videos are recorded with my phone plugged in with the Shure mic. No editing or enchantment.

However, I experienced perhaps 1 out 10 times that the mic doesn't record and I did not know until after I finished many takes of recording. That can be quite frustrating. Now I go to the Shure app to make sure the mic is properly connected before I shoot any video.

I also record a friend (downupdave) open mic at a very noisy pub from 5 feet away. The sound came out very clear and it cut out the unwanted noise as well. Highly recommended.

I recently purchased the top of the line Shure mic and thought it may be a better product but it was not so I am back to using the MV88.

Click to expand...

Anyone that has seen Brenda's video posts (check Links and Videos) can immediately recognise not only her playing skills but also the excellent audio quality. You best believe she bought tried and returned everything else on the market before settling on this one. I heard all about it, everytime, lol

Based on several reviews/mentions, I ended up buying the Zoom iQ7. It's mid-side approach allows a bit better flexibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikWgl2eLwqk

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/5-great-mini-mics-for-ios/

The shure has a mid side setting?

bazmaz said:

The shure has a mid side setting?

Click to expand...

I was referring to the iQ7's mid-side approach.

Ukulele Eddie said:

I was referring to the iQ7's mid-side approach.

Click to expand...

Eddie - do you use the mid-side feature?

It can sound like IMAX/dolby-surround when done right, but needs proper mixing after the fact, and either an app that records 3 tracks to use with the mic...

...or if it records simply to only 2 audio tracks, in post, you would duplicate and reverse the phase of one track (the original 'side' track) while panning the original hard-left and the duplicate track hard-right, and even with a simple stereo setup, or in headphones it sounds like you are in a live performance space, very focused, but wide sound-field, and really great with no reverb or eq even needed most of the time.

Most folks outside of pro audio work are not aware of mid-side, but when used well, it makes a simple 'stereo' recording sound flat and almost monophonic.

The Shure MV88 does have a raw mid-side polar pattern setting. They describe how to use it (precisely as Booli did) in their user guide. http://pubs.shure.com/guide/MV88/en-US

It does not have a headphone jack for monitoring (like the Zoom iQ7), but comes with an adapter cable which can be used with a 6s or older iPhone or with any iPad. I don't know if you could use bluetooth headphones to monitor???

As you can see in the Sweetwater link, as the price goes up, so does bit depth rate:
16-bit/44.1 or 48kHz for the Zoom versus 24-bit/48kHz for the Shure.

Booli, I have not yet experimented with the mid-side feature but it does allow you mix it within the companion app. I don’t know if I can do that within GarageBand or not as I haven’t investigated. I will try to mess with it in the next week or two. As I’m very novice with this sort of thing, feel free to PM me if you want me to check or try certain things.

I typically use the 90 degree setting as I’m usually just recording one source. If I was recording more than one I would use the 120.

Great review.......I have one of these and ALSO didn't know the barrel rotates through 90°.....thanks for that.......... I have tended not to use it for the reason Barry talks about; why record the carpet and the ceiling ?
Listening through headphones; night and day difference in sound.
A con is you have to take the protective case off the iPhone to slide the lightning connector into the port.....which always makes me nervous; slippery,expensive little things that these iPhones are.
My case is very solid and protective so taking it off is hard and really inconvenient such that I debate whether it's worth the trouble of using the mic.
Thanks, Barry.

Booli said:

Eddie - do you use the mid-side feature?

Click to expand...

Booli, here is my first attempt with the mid-side. This is the iQ7 on an iPhone7, Mid-Side mode, raw, WAV format. After recording, in their "Handy App" I set the Wide/Focus slider (this is the "mix" for the mid-Side) about 2/3 of the way to Wide. It's a song I'm still learning but setting aside my playing, I am pretty happy with the quality of the recording (and welcome opposing opinions/feedback/suggestions):

https://soundcloud.com/ukulele-eddie/yoshida_ms_raw-wav