Microphone Review: Marshall MXL Studio 1 USB, USB.008, and USB.009

March 18, 2009

I’m excited to be writing what is my first hardware review here on eQuixotic. My thanks to Mike Descher of the MXL Technology Division of Marshall Electronics for providing test units of three USB microphones for my review: the Studio 1 USB, the USB.008, and the USB.009. The USB.009 is the mic I used to record the narration for my Evernote tour, which was honored with a silver in the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards. The Articulate staff had high praise for the “excellent” sound quality of my narration, hence they had high praise for the sound quality of the USB.009. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, it’s important to note that these are USB microphones, allowing you to plug them directly into your computer for audio recording – no breakout box required. Audio pros may scoff at USB microphones, preferring their expensive XLR mics and breakout boxes or mixing boards – and probably rightly so. But I’m no audio pro. I just want to plug in and go. I don’t want my desk covered up with more junk than needed. Nor do I want to have to fiddle with dozens of knobs and switches. So a USB microphone fits my needs perfectly. Sometimes it’s nice to be a simple man with simple needs.

The biggest complaint I’ve read about USB microphones is that the sound level afforded by the amount of power that can be provided via a USB connection can be low. In which case, why don’t we see Firewire microphones instead of USB? But I digress.

For a couple of years I’ve been using the Blue Snowball microphone, which is also a plug-and-play USB mic.

At the time I bought the Snowball, there were only two desktop USB mics on the market. Now there are many to choose from. And while my Snowball has served me well (and looks super cool), I suspect it may have a hard time holding its own against its younger competitors. We shall soon find out.

MXL is kind enough to include a case and a stand for each of these microphones, neither of which was included with my Snowball at the time of purchase (though Blue now includes a desktop stand with the Snowball, and they were gracious enough to send me one free of charge once they started bundling them with the mics). The cases are a nicety but not a necessity to me, as my mic remains in permanent residence on my desktop. Each mic also conveniently includes a 10′ USB cable, so you won’t have to boost a cable from, say, your printer every time you want to record some audio. (Now if only printer manufacturers would get a clue and include a USB cable with their printers…)

As you can probably imagine, these three models are at different levels of the microphone food chain, and their prices reflect that reality. Let’s jump into the nitty gritty of each, shall we?

Disclaimer: as I mentioned above, I’m no audio pro. I don’t pretend to be an audio pro. I have no idea what audio pros know. So I’m not going to get into things like frequency response, sampling rates, A/D converters, and whatnot. If you’re serious about such things (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be), check the MXL website for the detailed specs. Me, I’m just looking for “Plug in, sound good.” *grunt*

Also, I’m not going to opine on the sound quality of each mic. Sound is, after all, one of those highly subjective things. And I’d just sound like a fool if I tried to pontificate about honey-smooth midranges and tinkling highs. I’ll let you be your own judge via some audio samples I’ll provide at the end of the review. Logic would dictate that the more expensive mic would sound better than the model below it, and that logic would probably be correct. Whether that amount of “better” justifies the upcharge between models…well, that will have to be up to you.

At the entry level, we have the Studio 1 USB.

Street price on this mic is only around $100, so you have no excuse to keep using that cheapo USB headset mic for your eLearning narration. The Studio 1 USB has a headphone jack for monitoring, but nothing else. No on-mic gain control, no sound settings. Plug it in, fire up your audio recording app of choice (mine is Apple’s GarageBand), and start recording. The headphone jack is a nice feature, as it provides low latency monitoring, i.e. you don’t get the annoying sound delay you may get when outputting your monitor audio from your computer. My gripe with the Studio 1 USB mic is the worthless stand that it’s bundled with. It’s tipsy and too small to accommodate a gooseneck pop filter (at least the pop filter I use, anyway). For my sample recordings I had to hold my pop filter by hand. Not good. And I may be an audio neophyte, but I do know one thing: a pop filter is a must. Notable plosives simply scream amateur hour. So tack on the price of a decent desktop mic stand to the Studio 1 USB.

And to any of these mics, tack on the price of a pop filter. Mine is a metal model I picked up at my local Guitar Center for around $50. This is money well spent. Trust me.

Moving along to our next mic, the USB.008 mic goes midtown, with a street price of around $170.

Sadly, the USB.008 comes with the same pointless mic stand as the Studio 1 USB, so again, factor in the price of a better stand. The USB.008 does provide you with a 3-way gain control switch to tweak your input levels, but oddly does away with the headphone jack for on-mic monitoring. A curious choice by MXL – you hate to see an upscale model lacking a feature found on its budget-priced little brother. And the USB.008 also has a cheesier case then the Studio 1 USB – it’s just a zippered soft case, unlike the plastic, compartmentalized case of the Studio 1 USB:

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Studio 1 USB and USB.008 are small compared to my Blue Snowball, with its tall stand and Ringer shockmount.

The USB.009 takes us uptown (way uptown compared to the prices of the other mics), with a street price around $400.

But this is MXL’s flagship USB mic, and it shows (sounds). First, this thing is built like a tank. I have no doubt it would survive an errant topple from the desktop with aplomb (I will not, however, confirm this via testing). The headphone monitoring jack is back (this time with its own volume control knob), with the addition of mix and gain control knobs. The mix knob controls the live mic and computer playback volume during monitoring. A nice touch. The USB.009 also comes with a nice aluminum case:

And, ta-da – a usable desktop mic stand! This is a heavy, solid piece of work that won’t be teetering over every time you bump your desk leg with your foot – and it ably accommodates a gooseneck pop filter.

MXL claims the USB.009 is the first plug-and-play USB mic to record at 24-bit/96kHz, though I don’t know if that spec is of the utmost importance for doing eLearning narration work. Nonetheless, the components in the USB.009 are a big step up from the other two mics in this review. And like my dad always said, in the long run you never regret spending extra money for quality (and I’ve learned the hard way that he was right).

I assume the USB.009 is also a better fit for instrument recording, so if you’re going to work on that acoustic new age guitar album after you finish your eLearning course, you’re good to go. And can you really put a price on versatility?

Size-wise, the USB.009 goes toe-to-toe with my Blue Snowball:

I have only two gripes about the USB.009. The first is the glowing blue light (!) that emanates from its core.

I don’t know about you, but glowing blue lights are one of those things that are kinda cool the first time you see them but very much uncool thereafter. It got annoying during a narration recording session. I wish the mic had a switch to turn off the light. I doubt Bob Dylan sings into a glowing blue mic…

My second gripe is the lack of indicator markings on the gain, mix and headphone volume knobs. It’s frustrating to have to turn a knob to its stop point to know where you are within the range.

So if I were MXL king for a day, I’d drop the blue light and add a marking to each knob. Easy fixes.

Also, my unfortunate test unit was afflicted with a short in the headphone volume knob, which would cause the sound to vacillate between stereo and left-channel-only, depending on the position of the knob. This became an annoyance during headphone monitoring. Were this a mic I had purchased, I assume MXL would replace the mic or repair the defect promptly.

But now I’m just picking nits. My clear favorite of the trio, blue light and all, is the USB.009. Big surprise. But is it worth the extra money? My dad says “absolutely.” And I’d have to agree. You’ll certainly get many years of high-quality narration recording out of this mic. But if your budget absolutely, positively can’t accommodate a $400 microphone, the USB.008 and Studio 1 USB should serve you ably. Once you buy a decent mic stand.

I’ll conclude this review with recording samples from each mic. These samples were recorded using Apple’s GarageBand, with the Narrator setting applied, as that’s the sound setting I use and I want these samples to reflect real world use. These are uncompressed WAV files.

I’ll also include a reference recording from my Blue Snowball mic, as well as a recording from a Plantronics USB headset mic, which many eLearning developers inexplicably find adequate. Zing!

The first sample includes a recording from each mic. But I’m not going to tell you which is which mic is which when you listen to them. Pick your favorite, then scroll to the end of the review to see which mic it is.  I used a snippet of narration from my Evernote tour for my source material.  NOTE: the links as shown below are not my ideal format – if anyone knows how to add a “Play” button for a WAV file in a WordPress post, please let me know.  I found plugins for audio players, but they don’t handle WAV – and I don’t want to give you compressed MP3 versions of the mic samples.

Samples from all mics together.

Below are individual sample recordings from each mic.

Plantronics .Audio DSP-400

Blue Snowball

MXL Studio 1 USB

MXL USB.008

MXL USB.009

And this is the order of the microphones as they appeared in the all-mics sample:

Blue Snowball

MXL USB.008

MXL Studio 1 USB

MXL USB.009

Plantronics .Audio DSP-400

Addendum: in response to DesignerDad’s comment (below), here’s a photo of my “homebrewed” sound booth. Ugly but cheap – and functional. I thought others might be interested in my setup as well. You can read about it in more detail in my October post on narration recording.

Posted in Audio, Narration, Reviews, eLearning Development Tools