Podcast Pro
£99
Web Gear sontronics.com
Dynamic podcast microphoneOM
ANDY
For obvious reasons, there have been more of us with time to broadcast something, and there’s certainly lots to talk about, so the field of podcasting is booming. Sontronics are best known for their higher end studio microphones – like the Aria, Delta and Mercury – that they have been making since 2005. The new Podcast Pro doesn’t quite have their top-end recording aspirations, but nor does it boast their prices and it does pack some Sontronics quality in there, resulting in a well-spec’d mic for the cash.
First up there’s the build quality. It’s a pretty light-weight mic at 356g, but has a very solid feel and great overall design (it’s also available in a striking red). With a frequency response of 50Hz to 15kHz it’s not going to break any recording records, but nor is it meant to. That range will easily deliver a good vocal response and this is, of course, where Podcast Pro excels. It comes with a built-in ‘fine-mesh’ pop shield which helps cut down on annoying plosives but if you have a separate one, it won’t hurt to employ it.
The mic has a supercardioid pattern which is ideally suited to the ‘cast, offering a good targeted area for speaking and excellent side rejection, so if your kids are messing about in the same room while you broadcast your opinions, you’ll hear less of them. We found this worked well in practice (although obviously recommend a kid-free environment should you wish to take up this ‘art’ professionally) and the actual microphone response to be surprisingly fulsome, and we certainly didn’t miss any lows or high-end sheen that the response might suggest. Whether you could use it for higher-end recordings is debatable, but it could certainly handle some of your workhorse jobs with some aplomb, not to mention other non-music tasks like gaming.
You can, of course, pick up complete podcast kits – with a stand, a mic and an external pop shield – for around half the price, but along with other quality solutions like the Rode PodMic (£115) and the AKG Lyra (£139 and reviewed last issue) Sontronics are bringing in a touch of recording and professional class into the world of podcasting, and we are all sounding a lot better for it.
n9/ 10n