- I'm Michael Fisher, and normally I don't come at you
like this face to face in a walk and talk.
Part of that is a stylistic choice,
but really it's just harder to film live audio
out here in the real world.
What makes it a little bit easier
is if you have a device like this.
This is the most innovative little microphone
I've ever used.
And it's also one I can't use that often
because of one big drawback.
This is the Mr. Mobile review of Mikme.
(upbeat music)
Physically, the mike the microphone
isn't all that different from the Zoom H2n,
the portable recorder I normally use on the road.
It's a black metal box,
two by two by one and a half inches,
with a tripod mount on the bottom,
a micro USB port with some controls on the side,
and a single record button up top.
Inside is a one inch, gold plated condenser microphone.
And since I'm not really an audio guy,
I'm going to bring in a special guest to talk about that,
in just a second.
But first I want to talk about how I've been using it
these past few months.
The microphone is powered by a rechargeable battery,
good for up to three and a half hours of recording
if you just use it by itself.
But it's also got a Bluetooth radio inside,
and a companion app for iPhones running iOS 9 and later.
That means if you want to record,
say a podcast or an interview,
you can use your phone as a remote control
to start and stop recording and adjust gain on the fly.
And if you want to record video you can do that
right through the app with synchronized audio.
What's cooler about this is that yeah,
you're going to get some Bluetooth connection problems
occasionally during recording.
But the phone and Mikme synchronize later,
and that corrects for those errors
by taking the higher quality audio
from the microphone's internal storage.
The app has a few editing tools,
including separate tracks for local audio
and microphone audio,
you can put effects on there and whatnot.
But most often I just found myself using it
in a very straightforward audio capacity.
The special BlackBerry KEY2 Edition
of the CrackBerry podcast
was recorded entirely on the Mikme.
And despite the fact that this cardioid microphone
isn't really designed for surround sound recording
with four people around a table, it did pretty well.
- [Man] It did good for (mumbles) keyboard.
(laughing)
- [Man] That's a thing for a lot of people,
I mean I myself included.
- [Michael] By the way I was using it
as a Bluetooth connected microphone in this mode,
not a stand-alone.
Then I started getting a low battery warning
at about an hour and 15 minutes in.
My only real problem with the thing arose
when it came time to get the final audio off my phone.
The sharing functionality is cumbersome,
and if you decide to ditch
one failed export attempt for another,
well the project has to mixdown all over again
before you can try it.
That gets annoying.
Especially if you don't have a great internet connection,
as I often don't on the road.
Also I couldn't find a way to shoot video in 4K
using the app, I think it's limited to 1080P.
And that app crashed a few times on my iPhone 10.
Also if you do get an error message,
well don't don't expect a lot of detail.
Before we come to Mikme's biggest limitation
I want to bring in some gadget guy
to give us a look at the device
from an audiophile's perspective.
Please welcome SomeGadetGeu, Juan Carlos Bagnell.
- Okay, we all good there?
Yeah, looking set.
Hey, Mr. Mobile.
Thanks for bringing me on.
This is a really interesting idea of a product
which really wasn't on my radar.
Now there's a lot we could talk about
when it comes to studio quality sound.
But the conversations we had
before you sent this thing out to me,
I would say your assessment was pretty spot on.
Your ears are in the right place.
Utilizing this one inch gold diaphragm
means we are going to arrive at recordings
which are more detailed, more nuanced,
a bit more colorful, and a bit more vibrant
than the portable recording solutions
we often use out in the field.
When it comes to a larger diaphragm
as that relates to audio quality,
the obvious metaphor we can point to would be cameras.
Generally speaking,
the larger the image sensor is on a camera,
the higher quality the photo and video capture
is going to be.
Yet we rarely see this kind of studio capsule
used out in the field.
So why don't we take this higher quality capture unit
out with us for location audio?
The purpose of any microphone
is to capture those tiny little
nuances and vibrations in air.
And studio grade kit is very susceptible to movement.
Again capturing vibrations, vibrating the microphone.
And you also have to balance out some of the compromises
involved with a very sensitive piece of equipment,
and how durable you can make that piece of kit.
When we're dealing with condenser microphones
out in the field, you're usually going to see
some kind of handheld unit like this.
Now this is a condenser microphone,
but it doesn't employ the same kind of capsule
that we see in the Mikme.
(metal threads scraping)
This smaller capsule helps balance out
some of those compromises in handling noise,
and you're able to mount it in a far more durable fashion
than what we typically use for studio grade microphones.
Let's quickly compare this
against one of my studio mics,
which is going to use a diaphragm very similar
to what's in the Mikme.
(metal threads scraping)
This poor mic, I've dissected it so many times
and I just drop that screw.
All right, now we're cookin'.
A little bit smaller, a little more durable,
but a little less nuanced against quite a bit bigger,
a lot more nuanced, but also a lot more fragile.
It's a really interesting step
taking something which usually lives
in a very safe environment,
and trying to build an enclosure for it
where we can take it outside the studio.
Which brings me to one critical point
when we're throwing around monikers,
advertising studio grade quality.
To arrive at studio grade quality,
that's as much the quality of the capture of the microphone
as it is the quality of your studio.
Increasing that quality over what we usually use
in a mobile solution, upgrading to this studio grade,
large diaphragm capsule can be a double edged sword.
For example recording here
in my decently well acoustically treated office,
I'm having to record these pieces
around a very aggressively ambitious
garbage truck down the block.
(garbage truck beeping in reverse)
To compensate for that other major concern,
handling noise, because of how much more sensitive
this type of capsule is to vibration,
Mikme is borrowing some very good ideas
from other top tier microphone manufacturers.
Mr. Mobile, if I may be so bold,
I believe one of the microphones you use
to record your narration is the AKG C414,
which employees a very novel internal
shock stabilization system to free that microphone
of any distracting vibrations when in a studio environment.
Mikme has taken that idea,
injecting a whole ton of steroids into it
to act as a stabilization system
for handholding that kind of capsule.
I'm such an AV nerd.
Capturing audio is a beautiful technical art
representing a wonderful balance of compromises.
Achieving the best possible sound that we can
while minimizing distracting elements from the gear
that we're using in the environment
that we're surrounded by.
Always a game of balancing those pros and cons.
But taking this back up to what I said earlier,
Mikme's got some really interesting ideas on display here.
- [Michael] Again that's Juan Carlos Bagnell.
You can follow him at SomeGadgetGuy.
I'll drop the links in the description.
Thanks a lot man.
So with all the technical wizardry
inside this clever little package, what's my beef?
The price?
No, audio gear is expensive.
And $399 is a pretty fair price for all this functionality.
No, the thing that's going to relegate my Mikme
to dust gathering duty on a shelf is
the fact that I don't use an iPhone.
And the app, the thing that makes it more
than just another portable microphone is iPhone only.
The company's reasons for this are familiar ones.
Android is harder to develop for because of fragmentation.
So many phones supporting or not supporting
so many different features, I get it.
Still, Android makes up 86% of the global smartphone market.
So the fact that no Android phones are supported at all,
I mean it's just really frustrating.
If you are an iPhone user
looking for a way to record music,
or podcasts, or interviews on the road,
you should definitely give this one a gander.
Just be sure to cross shop my old reliable, that Zoom H2n,
especially if you're only using it for voice recording.
It doesn't have the fancy app integration,
but you do get incredible sound, great battery life,
and versatile recording patterns
for a lot less than the Mikme costs.
What's your favorite on-the-go recorder?
Is it your phone?
A plug-in mic, micro-cassette recorder from 1991?
Let us know in the comments.
Also subscribe to theMrMobile on YouTube
so you don't miss more tech reviews landing every week.
Until next time.
Thanks for watching,
and stay mobile my friends.