User Impressions

While checking out the Colonna microphone, we caught ourselves comparing it to the Blue Yeti microphone we had on hand. The Colonna microphone adopted the original design concept of the early capsule microphones, and even though the Yeti has the same designing aspiration, the Colonna appears to be more attractive overall.


Like the Yeti, the Colonna is a "plug & play" microphone, which means you only have to plug it into a USB port of a PC after taking it out of its package. Mac or gaming console, it will be ready for use without any further adjustments. The 3 m (118.11") USB cable is more than enough to make your life easy when it comes to connecting it to any of the devices mentioned above. The foot plate is out of metal, and it seems to be quite capable of keeping the Colonna in place. We wouldn't recommend intentionally rock it by much, however, since the only sturdy piece due to its height is literally the base. We can also safely assume that should the Colonna drop, something other than the base might break. Finally, all the controls and buttons are out of plastic and seem to work just fine. On each side of the microphone's desktop stand are two bolts one can use to easily adjust the capsule's angle.


What could be implemented slightly differently is the pick-up pattern button because it caused quite a bit of confusion while shooting the video! The first time we tried out this microphone was in our unboxing video. Due to the strong lighting, the blue LED indicator for the polar selection was not visible, which inevitably had us think that there is no way to make out our selection. Furthermore, there was no mention of the LED's role in the instructions manual, which had its function catch us by surprise. The only hint of this LED was in its official unboxing video, which we deliberately avoided because we sought to discover every single detail of this product on our own. However, we saw the blue light for the mic's mode on its corresponding knob the moment we switched off our studio lighting.


If a user owns a microphone stand, the Colonna can easily be mounted by using the integrated standard thread. The 3.5 mm headphone jack is incredibly useful as well, along with the volume/mute control and analog gain control, which allows you to adjust the microphone's sensitivity. The four embedded controls offer the ability for on-the-fly adjustments, making a user's life easier since you don't have to be a sound technician to optimize the output of the Colonna microphone.



Condenser microphones are also often referred to as "capacitor microphones" because they are constructed almost in the same way as capacitors. The clue is that the thin membrane close to a solid metal plate has to be electrically conductive. In order for the microphone to perform better and offer more accuracy, the condenser capsule has to be charged with a high voltage. There are two ways to administer an electric charge to a condenser capsule; with an external voltage or by permanently "restraining" an electric charge in the capsule. Which way the condenser capsule is going to be electrically charged, though, is not the only factor that plays a role in terms of exceptional sound quality since the final result is a blend of engineering and attention to execution. Thus, an optimal outcome is a combination of steps. As you can easily imagine, the more steps and precision is required, the higher the production cost and retail price of the final product.

The Colonna has three high-quality 14 mm (0.55") condenser capsules, which combine to offer up a promise of high-quality recordings. Since we already had the Yeti microphone at our disposal, which has condenser capsules of similar dimensions, we compared the two. The recordings of both microphones clearly show the differences between them. The Colonna's recording is more realistic without the need for further adjustments, but is not as loud or crystal clear. Once we plugged our in–ear headphones into the Mac in our unboxing video, we also picked up EMI-RFI broadband interference in all our recordings, which hadn't been as clear before. It was probably caused by QRM, man-made interference since our video was shot in a lab with lots of testing equipment.




The Yeti's recording is, on the contrary, louder, but had even more ambient noise. According to these recordings, the Colonna microphone does not need a lot of polishing, but its final sound seems to need amplification, whereas the Yeti is ultimately louder, which could occasionally lead to the need for some refinement. Both microphones use capsules of the same dimensions, but the differences are in the built-in condenser technology.

Here are some more recordings for the three pickup patterns (bidirectional, cardioid, and omnidirectional) the Colonna supports: