- I think it's official at this point
and I can no longer blame it on the fact that I've been
a professional audio engineer for so many years.
I have way too many microphones.
What is up people, Dunny here,
and today we're gonna be doing a quick overview
of the new MKE 400, from Sennheiser.
In my opinion, they've done a really fantastic job
of packing great sound and lots of options
into a really tiny form factor.
But let's break that down down a little bit.
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Now, right off the hop, let's talk about the price.
This is going for $199 US, which makes it
definitely not a super cheap or budget microphone,
but it doesn't sound like a super cheap
or budget microphone either.
A lot of people start off with the sub-$100 options
like this RODE Video Micro.
Which is fantastic and super compact and really inexpensive,
but it doesn't necessarily sound that great.
And once you get this giant wind muff on top of it,
it's really not that small either.
Another option in that category
is the Deity D4 DUO, which is really cool
because it's got front and back capsules,
it's got lots of really cool options as well.
But same kinda deal, once you get the wind muffs on it,
it's really not much smaller than the MKE 400.
And again, it doesn't sound
like one of Deity's high-quality mics either.
The MKE 400, I would more compare to the Deity D3 or D3 Pro.
And if you're more familiar with RODE, probably something
like the Videomic Pro, or the Videomic NTG.
Similarly to those other on-camera microphones,
this is also a highly directional, super cardioid pattern.
So that means it picks up really well
in front of the microphone.
Not so well from behind or on the sides.
So it's gonna pick up your voice when you're talking
to the camera or whatever your subject is
in front of the camera, and not so much everything else.
And like I said before,
I think what they've done really well with this one
specifically, is they've given you that higher quality sound
that you would expect from those more expensive microphones,
but they've done it in such a small package.
Now it might not seem like it at first,
but let me break that down.
This is the RODE Videomic NTG
on the shock mount that it comes with.
Now you need this shock mount to mount it to your camera.
So it's kind of part of the package, right.
Now, first of all, length wise, you can see
that the Videomic NTG is much longer than the Sennheiser.
And second of all, width wise,
you can see that once you get that shock mount on there,
it's definitely a lot wider too,
it takes up a lot more space that way.
Now it might look like the NTG is skinnier
out at the front of it,
but you're gonna probably want to put on
some kind of wind protection like this.
And these guys are total garbage anyway,
these little foamies that come with them,
they never really do much in any kind of serious wind.
So then you go out and you get one of these guys,
like what I've got from Movo,
and all of a sudden the MKE 400 is looking pretty darn tiny
comparatively to this giant RODE Videomic NTG.
And I've even got smaller wind protection here, so.
You can see the size difference there,
it's pretty huge comparatively, to this little guy.
Now you might be thinking,
"Well, this one now has wind protection,
so what happens with this one?"
Well, this whole capsule here
is actually built-in wind protection.
And like you saw on the Videomic NTG,
we've got a shock mount system
so that when you're handling your camera,
it won't be making a bunch of low frequency noise.
The shock mount is actually built inside
of this whole capsule as well.
So the microphone itself is actually really, really skinny,
but it's just mounted inside there
on a shock mount system inside wind protection.
Now that wind protection probably
isn't going to be anything crazy,
so they've also sent it out with this extra wind muff
that you can put on top of it like that.
And in my experience, it works really well.
The kinda combination of that internal layer,
plus the kind of more soft,
furry outer layer works really well.
Now, if we compare that again,
the MKE 400 hasn't really gotten much bigger,
and the Videomic NTG is still a pretty hefty thing.
Now, it sounds great, but it's pretty big.
Another thing to keep in mind in a similar vein,
is because of the way that these shock mounts
are set up on both the RODE and on the Deity microphones,
they become really tall.
They go really far away from the camera
when you mount them in the hot shoe,
whereas the MKE 400 stays really low profile.
So the question is, did they have to cut any corners
to get this microphone, this small?
So let's go through some of the features
and you can be the judge for yourself.
So first and foremost, the batteries that you'll find
in here are two AAA batteries, so not a rechargeable system.
That's got its pros and cons of course.
If you have something with a rechargeable battery,
which is what a lot of the new microphones have,
like the D3 Pro and the Videomic NTG, it's pretty cool
because you can just recharge it whenever you want.
But if you make the mistake of letting it run down
and you're in the middle of a production,
the only thing that you can do is halt production
to go plug in that microphone
and give it a chance to charge up.
With this, if you carry a couple of spare AAA's on you,
you can always just switch them out.
But what's really impressive about this,
is it's actually got a 300 hour battery life.
So it lasts a really, really long time.
And on top of that,
it actually auto-powers on and off with your camera.
So you can't accidentally leave it on
and just run out of batteries while it's sitting in your bag
or something like that.
As you turn on the camera,
the microphone will sense that and turn on as well.
And as you turn off the camera, it'll also turn off as well.
Now, if you want to use this microphone
with something that's not a camera
or something that doesn't have
whatever that electrical signal is that goes down the cable,
you can also power it on just by using the power button
and you can just hold it down if you wanna turn it off.
Also, if it gets down to less than three hours
of battery time, that green glowing button will turn to red.
So you have like a three hour warning
to get a new battery in there.
Also on this side, we're going to see a low cut filter.
So this'll help with any kind of low-frequency
rumbling noises, or a little bit of wind noise
or anything like that.
It's something that's pretty common on microphones,
but gets left out of a lot
of those smaller vlogger microphones.
And then beside that, we've got a three-way gain switch.
So as far as I'm aware, the plus symbol is plus 20 decibels.
Right in the middle is at zero, at nominal level.
And then the minus is actually minus 20 decibels.
So you've got quite the range there.
You don't have the same kind of step list gain knob,
like we're seeing on the D3 Pro and the Videomic NTG,
but this is a more kind of classic,
something more like the Videomic Pro,
and it definitely gives you a little bit of versatility.
And then you can dial in
the rest of the gain on your camera.
Generally, you wanna have it as much gain
from the microphone as possible.
And as little from the pre-amps in your camera as possible,
that'll give you the cleanest signal.
And then if we flip it around to the other side here,
we'll see something really interesting as well.
We've got a headphone output
as well as a volume for that headphone.
This is something that we're not seeing
on a lot of microphones and can be really handy,
'cause some of those kinds of vlogger cameras
don't necessarily always have a headphone output.
Something like the Sony a6400 doesn't have that.
If you are going to use that headphone output,
you have to remember that that is before
it gets to your camera.
So if your camera gain is turned way up too much,
it might still be distorting through the camera,
you gotta keep an eye on your audio levels.
And then one of my favorite things about this microphone,
is that they've put the output on the front right there.
And it's actually got a screwing mechanism
so that you can lock it in.
We see this sometimes on like wireless lab solutions,
but once you get that screwed on there,
you definitely can't get it out.
And the placement of this is really important.
Because it's under where the actual microphone is,
it's not taking up any extra space.
If let's say they put it where the headphone jack is,
it would stick out the side and it makes
the profile of the microphone actually wider.
If it was on the back,
it would stick out the back and make the microphone longer.
As it is, it's just using the empty space
that would have been under the microphone, in between
the microphone and like the lens of the camera anyway.
So it's really using no extra space whatsoever,
I thought that was pretty clever.
Like I said before,
it does come with this wind protection in the package.
Which I pretty much just leave on it all the time,
because it doesn't take up almost any extra room,
they've done a really nice job fitting that.
It also comes with this handy-dandy little carrying pouch.
And it comes with a second cable, designed specifically
for your phone, so it's got a TRRS end on it.
If you are using most modern Android or iPhones,
you're going to need an adapter to go from this
to either USB-C or your lightning connector.
And speaking of using this microphone with mobile,
they've also got the option for a mobile video kit,
which comes with a Manfrotto PIXI tripod,
as well as this phone holder.
Which is actually probably one of the better phone holders
that I think I've ever seen.
It's quite sturdy, it's got all these quarter inch threads,
so you can do all sorts of accessories and stuff.
It's got a hot shoe on the very top of it,
which is really nice,
so you can slap your microphone in there.
I've been using this microphone for a little while
and I have run into a couple of little things.
Namely that the cold shoe accessory,
when you go to tighten this down.
Because it's so low profile and because it's so short,
it's actually kinda hard to get in there
and tighten it as much as you want to.
And so then it does have a tendency to kinda come loose
on top of your camera, if you don't make sure
you get it really tight the first time.
And then of course, the final question is how does it sound?
Is it my favorite sounding microphone? And the answer is no,
I think my favorite sounding microphone
for kind of on-camera vlogging type of things right now,
is the RODE Videomic NTG, and then the MK 400,
and then the Deity Videomic D3.
But let's do a couple of quick tests in this situation
and I'll show you what they sound like.
All right, so this is the MKE 400.
I do use my microphones with the wind protection
on them most of the time,
so I'm just going to leave it on for now.
I've got it in the plus-20 decibel mode.
And just for right now,
I've got the low-frequency cut turned off.
On your mark, ready, set, let's go.
Dance floor pro you know, I know.
I go psycho when my new joint hit.
Just can't sit, I got to get jiggy with it, ooh, that's it.
Okay, so now we've got the Deity Vmic D3.
This is the $99 version, so it doesn't have
a lot of the bells and whistles that the D3 Pro has.
But because of the size and because this one's
actually cheaper than the MKE 400,
I think this is a pretty good matchup.
On your mark, ready, set, let's go.
Dance floor pro, you know, I know.
I go psycho when my new joint hit.
Just can't sit, gotta get jiggy with it, ooh, that's it.
And then finally, we've got the RODE Videomic NTG,
which has been my go-to for the last little while here
for when I'm out and about running and gunning.
I've got no low-cut filter on it right now,
and I've got it in its highest gain setting.
On your mark, ready, set, let's go.
Dance floor pro, you know, I know.
I go psycho when my new joint hit.
Just can't sit, got to get jiggy with it, ooh, that's it.
And just for comparison sake,
this is the RODE Video Micro.
On your mark, ready, set, let's go.
Dance floor pro, you know, I know.
I go psycho when my new joint hit.
Just can't sit, gotta get jiggy with it, ooh, that's it.
On your mark, ready, set, let's go.
So that should give you kind of a basic idea where
the MKE 400 stands in terms of kind of the competition.
I've been really happy with my experience with it.
I really love that form factor.
I think that's the real winner for me.
In my opinion, it doesn't sound like one
of those tiny compact microphones
like the Video Micro or the Deity D4,
it sounds much better like the D3 or the Videomic NTG.
But they've managed to fit it in such a small package,
and having the shock mount built inside is so awesome.
As always, links for everything will be down
in the description if you wanna check them out further.
And I wanna hear from you,
leave me a comment down below and let me know
what your thoughts are on the MKE 400.
And on your way down there,
hit that like and subscribe button.
Hit the bell notification
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
(beep)
It is hot in here.
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