I have always said that you don’t need to buy an expensive mic to sound good on stream and I still stand by that, but for a long time, I really didn’t think the SM7B was particularly special. I thought it was mostly hype, bragging rights, and really more about the look than actually being a good choice for streaming. It’s big, it’s expensive, it requires a lot of gain, and it just doesn’t sound great without tweaking… or so I thought.
Why get one?
I have used (and still own) many different mics, but the one that I settled on as my streaming mic is the Neat Worker Bee (the original model). I like this mic because it’s cheap, it sounds great, and I like how it looks. For my voice in particular, I can use this mic without any EQ applied and it sounds almost exactly how I want it to sound. The first few videos in my Minecraft series use this mic and I was using it for streams, but I ran into a few issues that got me thinking about an upgrade:
- My entire house has hardwood floors and effectively no insulation, so sound bounces around a lot. Even with 12 Elgato Wave panels on the walls, there’s audible room reverb, especially with the door open so the sound can escape into the hall and other rooms.
- When I’m streaming Phasmophobia and playing with my wife, whose office is next to mine, even with a noise gate the mic will pick her up.
- My mouse, which I like a lot and don’t want to swap out, has fairly loud clicks that the mic picks up. I waste a lot of time trying to edit them out of videos.
- This probably seems stupid, but the Worker Bee’s capsule is recessed compared to the body and when in the shock mount, it is set back even farther. This means that my chest is constantly bumping into the shock mount just trying to get close enough to the capsule to sound good.
Given how much I like the sound of the Worker Bee, I was really loathe to buy anything else only to have it sound worse (as many other mics have). But the SM7B would seem to solve all of my issues, according to internet legend, so I started doing some research. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to buy things I don’t need, so I wanted to be sure. Before taking the dive, I pulled out my trusty SM57 because, as it happens, it is easy to EQ an SM57 or SM58 to sound “close enough” to an SM7B. I learned that it sounds nothing like the MV7, which I had previously purchased thinking it would be a cheaper SM7B, and really nothing like I thought it would generally. This also taught me that while I can EQ those mics to sound like an SM7B, without EQ, the SM57 is far too bright for my taste. Knowledge acquired, I decided to give it a try. Here’s what I learned.
Findings
First, a lot of people describe the SM7B as sounding terrible without processing, but I don’t find that to be true at all. I guess I just like mics with a flat frequency response. It is, unsurprisingly, not as bright as the Worker Bee (which is a condenser with a slightly boosted top end), but a slight 2 dB high shelf boost at 3.5 kHz makes it sound quite nice. What did surprise me is that I also wound up boosting the low end just a little bit (about 1 dB). I assumed it would be overly boomy or muddy, but it really isn’t. Sure, I can still get right up on it to make it boomy, but at a normal distance, it’s quite flat. It may not get you the exaggerated broadcast sound you’ve come to believe is desirable right out of the box, but it’s a great starting point for crafting your own sound.
Second, if you read around the internet, you will discover that the SM7B is somehow magic at completely rejecting all room reverb and that this is due to it being a dynamic mic with extremely low sensitivity. It is a dynamic mic, but it is neither magic nor does that (or its sensitivity) have anything to do with it. Dynamic mics generally have thicker diaphragms, which means that they move less in reaction to sound waves, which means they output less signal and have lower sensitivity, but all this means in practice is that they require more amplification. It also (generally) means that they are worse at picking up high frequencies. And yet the SM7B is, seemingly, good at rejecting room reverb. Why? I suspect it has to do with the polar pattern and, in particular, the way the polar pattern changes depending on the frequency (you can view the graphs on this page). The higher the frequency, the more directional the mic is, becoming essentially hypercardioid at frequencies above 6 kHz. Most of what you hear from “room reverb” is in the higher frequencies, so when you have a mic that is both less sensitive to higher frequencies and that rejects a lot of off-axis high frequencies, you get less reverb. In contrast, the Worker Bee has a very wide cardioid pattern at all frequencies, hence why I struggled with it. However, it’s big brother the King Bee has a polar pattern very similar to the SM7B, as do plenty of other, cheaper mics. Interestingly, the SM57 and SM58 do not have narrowing polar patterns like the SM7B, so they may be more susceptible to picking up room reverb.
There is also a cost to this in the form of off-axis coloration. With the Worker Bee, I can angle it 45 degrees off the corner of my mouth to deal with plosives while still getting great sound; with the SM7B, if I do this, there is a noticeable (to me) change in tone. The more I angle the mic, the duller and muddier it becomes (though the change is subtle). This is not necessarily a problem as you may prefer that tone, but it’s something to be aware of when positioning this (or any similar) mic. In my case, I find that keeping the mic in front of me but angled up at my mouth provides the best sound.
Third, yes, it is a low-output mic, but most audio interfaces these days have preamps with enough gain to handle it just fine. Unless you have particularly noisy preamps, you are unlikely to need any sort of booster. I do have a FetHead (originally purchased to solve a noise issue with the Revelator io44) and I did end up using it as the EVO 8 interface I use has a bit of noise at high gain. It’s unlikely to be an issue in a streaming setting, but I had the FetHead, so why not?
Finally, and least importantly (probably), is the form factor. As I mentioned, the Worker Bee’s shock mount was constantly bumping into my chest. I could’ve moved it up and angled it differently, but then it would be in the way of my monitor. The SM7B attaches to the mic arm with a yoke in the center of the body, with the capsule sticking out a few inches from there. That allows me to keep the boom arm and the mic body out of my way while still getting the capsule close to my mouth. It needs to be said that an SM57 would accomplish the same thing, but I already knew I didn’t like the tone of that mic.
Final thoughts and recommendations
Before you ask, yes, I am keeping the mic. But should you get one? Probably not, at least not right away. I am a firm believer that you shouldn’t invest a lot of money (and this mic is a lot of money) in your stream until you are certain you want to keep doing it. You should wait until you have enough income from the stream to pay for the mic and then, if you still want it, go ahead and buy it. There are plenty of cheaper ways to get good audio, as covered in other posts here, in my videos, and in plenty of other videos. And yes, I realize I’m being a hypocrite, but I have a full-time job that pays me well, so I can afford it. But it is a good mic and just applying EQ to a cheap mic will not magically turn it into an SM7B. There are many factors that contribute to its legendary status and I now understand why it is a worthwhile purchase.
noodohs 