The SHURE MOTIV 88 microphone for iPhone/iPad is cute and compact, but packs a punch for recording on the go for musicians, journalists and vloggers opening up a whole world of audio.
For tech savvy creative professionals demanding the best quality they can get from their gadgets, the market is wide open for well designed devices that make us all look great.
When it comes to recording noise of any kind, it’s great to see professional audio companies making strides to link their products with the technology we’re all using to get amazing sound quality straight to your iPhone/iPad.
We’ve been trying out the newest launch by audio veterans, SHURE, the MOTIV MV88 microphone for iPhone, that overrides the inbuilt apple microphone and provide a professional feel to your sound recordings. The MOTIV MV88 works with the free Shureplus MOTIV mobile recording microphone app for iPhone/iPad; the pair giving you a simple to use recording experience with expert settings at your fingertips.
The SHURE Motiv MV88 is a condenser microphone that plugs directly into the lightning port on your iPhone/iPad (you might have to remove your case to connect it). The app recognises the mic is connected and off you go. Or if you’re recording video or using other apps, you’re good to go too. So long as the mic’s green light is on, it’s taken over from your phone’s mic.
The microphone itself is a sturdy feeling, all metal, compact unit coming with a removable windscreen. It can pivot through 90 degrees, to achieve the desired position. It comes with a cute case that fits in a reasonable sized pocket making it super portable.
We found the Shureplus MOTIV app itself really intuitive to use. Three icons at the bottom cover mic setup, recording and file handling/editing.
The mic setup section gives you professional DSP filters to control your recordings. You can choose filters to best suit your chosen source (whether its speech, singing, acoustic or down right loud!). You can also set the recording level to get the most from the mic’s dynamic range. Looking at this, we did find the mic is most suited to recording high volumes of music (it is difficult to set a level to get normal speech levels to span the range!), but the speech recordings still sounded pretty good to us on playback. Other options include limiter, compressor, wind reduction (although you might be better just sticking with the windscreen), left to right swap. There is also a five band equaliser giving you adjustment from +6 dB to -8 dB (although this might be handled better in post production).
The app also allows you to set the width of stereo recordings, to the directivity pattern from mono allowing you to follow cardioid, figure of 8 or mixed polar patterns.
You have a recording monitor so you can check you are not overloading when you’re recording that guitar solo, and when complete files are saved and can be cut up or filters afterwards. Complete sound files can be emailed or sent straight to dropbox/ Asset Bank, or youtube if you wish!
We tried a few test recordings and were really happy with the results. The sound was clear, and full with a great tone. But this microphone gets top points for its usability and flexibility. It would be great for journalists and vloggers looking for more than the standard phone mic can give them. For musicians it’s perfect to get great recordings on the go, or wherever you are without a full studio setup.
The SHURE MOTIV MV88 microphone for iPhone retails for £135.00. You can find out more about it at the SHURE website.
