Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB Microphone

The shining star of the Audio-Technica Creator Pack is the ATR2500x-USB microphone. This microphone is a newer member of the famous ATR microphone lineup. It obviously targets home users, particularly those who don't really feel like complicating their lives and setups with audio interfaces and XLR cables, but still look for a great-sounding microphone. Being a USB microphone, the ATR2500x-USB plugs directly into a free USB port and is ready for use without any additional drivers or software. Much like the ATH-M20x, the microphone can be bought separately as a stand-alone unit, in which case it will cost you $120/€120. After testing it for a couple of days, I can only conclude that it's an excellent choice for home studio recording, streaming, voiceovers, and similarly demanding tasks.

Closer Examination and Build Quality

The ATR2500x-USB microphone is very well made. Its metal body feels exceptionally robust, and it looks professional, too. Behind a metal mesh is a large condenser capsule with a cardioid polar pattern. The capsule is facing the front of the microphone, clearly marked with a blue LED, so that's the side you have to point towards your mouth.


The built-in blue LED is completely unobtrusive and very useful, as it makes it easy to find the front of the microphone even in complete darkness. Below it are two volume buttons and a 3.5-mm headphone output. The headphone output is used for direct microphone monitoring. Meaning, as soon as you plug in your pair of headphones, you'll be able to hear everything the capsule picks up in real time without any perceivable delay. Should you select the microphone as the default playback device, this 3.5-mm port will also output any sounds coming from your PC, and you then can use the aforementioned buttons to adjust the volume. The microphone-monitoring volume cannot be adjusted, which is a shame.


On the bottom of the microphone, you'll find a USB-C port. Audio-Technica supplies a decent rubberized USB cable that terminates in a standard USB Type-A plug, so you can easily connect it to your PC. You're welcome to use a USB-C-to-USB-C cable if your computer is equipped with USB-C port(s), but would have to buy the cable separately.

Microphone Performance

The Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB microphone is equipped with a condenser capsule in a 120° cardioid pickup pattern. The exact model of the built-in ADC isn't specified, but it can record audio in up to 24-bit/192 kHz resolution.

If you're at all familiar with condenser microphones, you already know what to expect: good ones sound great and offer excellent dynamics, but are very sensitive, so they're not an ideal choice for noisy environments, or instances where you're not the only person talking as they can and will pick up anyone in your room. If that's your situation, you need a dynamic microphone—no condenser microphone will fulfill your needs despite the cardioid pickup pattern, which implies that the microphone is able to ignore sounds coming from its sides or behind the capsule. The ATR2500x-USB isn't an ideal choice for recording multi-instrumental music or interviews either, as it doesn't offer any other, more suitable polar patterns. This really is a single-user streaming microphone, and that's exactly how it should be used.

With that out of the way, let's examine the performance of the built-in capsule, staring with the microphone mounted to the supplied boom arm. For direct comparison, I've added a sample recorded with the similarly priced Elgato Wave:1 condenser USB microphone, which I reviewed recently (read it here).




As you can hear, the Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB microphone sounds great. My voice has a natural tonality with no hints of compression, and the background is exceptionally quiet, more so than with the Elgato Wave:1. Plosive rejection isn't perfect as some slight boominess is present at my recording settings, but this can be solved in multiple ways—namely, by reducing the gain slightly (the capsule is still loud enough), moving the microphone slightly further away, or buying a cheap aftermarket foam pop filter (like this one), which you'll want to do to look more professional anyway. Too bad Audio-Technica didn't remember to bundle it with the Creator Pack. Overall, I can gladly recommend this microphone for serious Twitch or YouTube streaming, voiceovers, and any home office videoconferencing tasks.

Here's a demonstration of the proximity effect—what the microphone sounds like when you come very close to the capsule, with your lips almost touching the metal mesh surround.



Let's hear how the cardioid polar pickup pattern copes with background noise. For this test, I'm talking into the microphone while simultaneously typing on my mechanical keyboard equipped with Cherry MX switches.




The Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB microphone handles background noise better than the Elgato Wave:1. The click-clacking of my mechanical switches is audibly softer, while my voice still sounds just as good as it did with no background noise.

Finally, here are two samples recorded after moving the ATR2500x-USB microphone from the boom arm to the supplied desktop tripod stand. I've placed the stand on the table in front of me, between myself and my keyboard. This increased the distance from my head to the capsule to 40 cm.




While my voice remains perfectly understandable, the capsule does lose a bit of its appeal when moved further away, out of the sweet spot. Background noise rejection is also worse simply because the microphone is now physically closer to the keyboard. The desktop stand should basically only be used when the supplied boom arm isn't available; i.e., when you're traveling. For home and office use, actually any kind of use where the microphone stays in a fixed position, you'll get much more from it by mounting it on the boom arm.