Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Shure SM7dB w/Built-in Preamp – Review”.
Hey what’s up folks how’s it going. This is W from MW technology and today we’re going to be talking about one of the most legendary microphones of all time, the sm7b. Now it was actually introduced over 50 years ago, back in 1973 and they’ve made tiny revisions to the microphone changing the overall improvements of the humbucking coil, but the core design and the core sound of the 7B from its original design hasn’t really changed. And it’s now pretty much legendary status in both the music and broadcast industry. It was used on Michael Jackson’s Thriller and now it’s absolute ubiquitous in the podcasting world, where you name any podcast and pretty much a 100 times out of a 100 they’re using the 7B and that’s for a good reason.
It’S a great, very dynamic microphone. That sounds great on vocals, but uh. It’S ver hell enough to fit any kind of application that you can throw at it now. The original sm7b is a dynamic microphone and compared compared to a powered condenser microphone, it’s a little bit less sensitive. So you do need to have a decent preamp, either built in to your USB audio interface or use actual a dedicated mic preamp.
Now, if you’re kind of on the budget side, you might be worried about whether you have adequate power to feed this monster of a microphone with your cheaper audio, USB interface or if you’re, on the higher side, you might need to have a large clunky, uh proper Mic pre that actually feeds a good enough power signal to get this up to proper levels for your recording. Now, what we have over here is the latest version of the 7B, specifically the sm7 DB, which actually includes a built-in preamp. Now this uh pretty much as the flexibility of what you would get with a traditional condenser microphone with the Dynamics of a non-powered microphone.
So you still have the ability to bypass the preamp and still have that uh classic SM B sound. Now the key thing that sure has made sure that they’ve completely nailed is the original sound of the 7B, with the preamp on and off. So we’re going to do an AB comparison to show you guys whether they have succeeded in that task. Now we’re actually using right now, the 7B in its flat frequency response setting with the preamp on set to the plus 28 dbel settings, we’re going to turn off the mic preon here and then use the built-in preamp on my cheaper M Audio Mobile pre, USB audio Interface and see how that sounds now, what you’re listening to right now is basically the classic sm7b without the preamp and we’re using the audio gain built into my mic Prix on the USB audio interface. We pretty much have it cranked, almost at 90 %. I can go to full and you guys can get aspect of that and uh when you do uh boost your built-in preamp, especially if it’s a cheaper preamp like what we have with this m audio.
You are introducing a lot of background noise as well as natural Distortion that comes out of these cheaper Chinese made preamps, and this thing is like decades old, so definitely a good scenario of what you would encounter with a cheaper USB audio interface, uh and uh. Now we’re pretty much maxed out and if I go a little further back, we definitely don’t have the same level of gain and the flexibility that we have with the built-in preamp, which opens you up for a lot of uh, more use case applications as well as Mic placing okay so now we’re back with the preamp on and uh. Now we can really turn up the volume if you want and we can clip the microphone a lot easier but uh the big advantage over here is now. We can uh push the microphone a little bit back, perhaps even out of the shot increase, the volume of my preamp and uh. Hopefully you can can hear me quite well. I can see my audio levels have dropped but uh.
If you want to have a scenario where you have the microphone, perhaps out of the shot like this, we can turn it up even more, and obviously you hear more room noise, but uh with the preamp. It just adds a level of flexibility and uh scenarios where you have possible limitations with the 7B original microphone uh, if you don’t have a nice, powerful, preamp or if you’re mobile and want have a compact setup and not rely on too much external hardware. Now, in terms of the overall look and design of the 7 DB, it’s pretty much the same as the 7B. With the addition of some extra controls at the back of the microphone, you can see that we have four dip switches: the lower switches control, the bypass switch, which turns off the preamp, and you can also set the level of gain on the preamp either plus 28 Or 18 DB on the top two switches, you find your EQ settings. You can either set them to a flat frequency response. We still have the same frequency response as the original microphone.
Where can capture up to 50 to 20,000 htz? You still have the EQ settings for either base rolloff or a presence game, and, of course, you can use it in his flat response setting and change the settings for EQ via software now. In summary, I would definitely have to say my brief time with the 7 DB has been really fun. The sound quality is exactly the same as the 7B, so most people hav have any problems with that, and just the added flexibility definitely makes it worth the extra $ 100 to $ 150 that they charge extra for this and uh just the fact that it becomes A little bit more mobile, portable and quicker to set up is definitely a positive aspect as well love to know what you guys are using for a dedicated microphone uh for your video conferencing or for your podcast.
If you have one and love to know what you, I think is the best broadcast mic of all time uh. I definitely think the 7B is probably up there in terms of its legendary status from a broadcasting standpoint, but love to know what you guys think big. Thanks to sh for supplying us with this review unit, if you like this video, please give us a thumbs up and share this content.
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