MICROPHONE

A top-quality mic with a handy noise-reduction mode, although the price is high

Shure MV5C Home Office Microphone

SCORE

PRICE £96 (£115 inc VAT) from shure.com

The MV5C is surely a product of its time. Designed to work in home offices where there might be distracting background noises, it offers a way for you to speak clearly to fellow video conferencees. Only the prospect of the pandemic finally being crushed counts against it.

If and when that does happen, you may decide to bring this excellent and compact microphone back to the office with you. Even at its full height it only stretches to 14cm tall, and with its retro styling and black/metal finish it looks attractive on the desk. If anything it’s too light, being easy to accidentally knock over. What photos never show, though, is the trailing USB cable that’s required to power it and connect it to a computer (it’s compatible with PCs and Macs), and

note the supplied USB-to-micro-USB cable is only 1m long so you may need to shuffle your laptop a little closer during calls.

The diminutive dome houses two tiny buttons: one for muting (which turns a row of three LEDs helpfully red) and one to activate the speech enhancement mode. You’ll know if this on because the leftmost of those LEDs will turn green, with the middle LED to simply show it’s active and connected. The third light indicates headphones are plugged into the 3.5mm jack. Note that you can adjust the headphone volume using the world’s tiniest volume control; those with big fingers need not apply.

What really matters, though, is sound quality, and the MV5C lives up to the Shure heritage with clear voice capture that’s so superior to most built-in laptop mics that it doesn’t bear comparison. It’s more than good enough for podcasts too.

Shure recommends you switch on the speech enhancement mode during conference calls, which then uses “a mix of preset gain, compression and EQ processing that optimises the sound of your voice

“It lives up to the Shure heritage with a clear voice capture that’s so superior to most laptop mics that it doesn’t bear comparison”

for clarity”. It also promises to reduce sibilance, which is the annoying harshness that often occurs when a mic captures the letter “s”. It works too, but what you really notice as you switch between modes is how much louder and clearer voices are in enhanced mode.

Why would you ever switch the enhancement off? Simply if you want to capture a purer signal that’s free of compression, which you might do if you were recording a voice-over or something similarly professional.

The big question is whether all this undeniable quality and convenience is worth the £115 asking price. With far cheaper microphones and headsets available, my answer is a guarded “yes”: if you want your voice to cut through during a call, the Shure MV5C Home Office Microphone is a sound investment.

SPECIFICATIONS

16mm unidirectional (cardoid) electret condenser mic 16-bit/24-bit depth 48kHz sampling rate 20Hz to 20,000Hz frequency response 0 to +36dB adjustable gain range

3.5mm jack mute switch standard tripod mount mounting stand included 89 x 97 x 142mm (WDH with stand) 160g with stand 2yr warranty