Closer Examination

The Movo VSM-7 studio XLR microphone comes fully assembled, so there's not much left for you to do before using it other than to affix it to a boom arm and connect it to an audio interface with the supplied XLR cable. The microphone uses the standard 3/8" and 5/8" threads, so it can be mounted on pretty much any mount you might have at your disposal.


Sitting in front of the capsule, affixed to the shock mount, is a pop filter. It can be pivoted simply by loosening the bottom thumbscrew, although it works best when perpendicular to the microphone. If you for some reason want to "lower" it and leave the capsule exposed, that can be done in two seconds.


Prior to receiving the Movo VSM-7, I've read some comments that spoke negatively about the build quality of the supplied shock mount. If there's any truth in these, I can only conclude Movo greatly improved this aspect of the VSM-7 because the entire frame of the shock mount is made out of metal, the elastic bands seem durable (there's an extra pair in the box, just in case), and the microphone sits firmly in its place. The rear and bottom fasteners are made out of plastic but caused no issues with unexpected microphone movement during my testing. I also didn't have any issues with the mounting mechanism, although this also has to do with the quality of the boom arm you're combining with the Movo VSM-7. On my Rode PSA1 boom arm, the VSM-7 was rock-stable and reliable in everyday usage.


The capsule is located behind a dense metal grille. The body of the microphone is made out of metal too, which makes it feel extremely robust and much more luxurious than its price would suggest.


On the front of the microphone, positioned centrally, is the pickup pattern switch. It has three positions, corresponding to three polar patterns: cardioid, omnidirectional, and bi-directional. More on them in the microphone performance section of this review.


The polar pattern switch is flanked by two other switches. The one on the left is a low-cut/high-pass filter switch, which, when activated, aims to eliminate low-frequency hums and other sounds originating from the sub-150 Hz range. When this feature is inactive, the microphone doesn't do any filtering on its own, effectively giving you the full scale of the captured audio signal to work with, which is what most users of a microphone such as the VSM-7 will prefer. The second switch is a -10 dB pad switch. The purpose of a pad switch is to attenuate the signal from the microphone before it reaches the audio interface. Pads can be useful when you want to record an instrument that is so loud it would otherwise cause distortion and clipping even after adjusting the microphone gain to a very low level. More advanced microphones oftentimes offer several different pad levels (-6, -10, -20, -30 dB) for fine-tuning, and many mixers also have pads built-in. The addition of this feature on the Movo VSM-7 is definitely nice, although it's safe to assume most users won't use it. Either way, if you're using this microphone for voice recording, you should keep this switch at its default 0 dB position.


The supplied XLR cable is 3 meters long, which should be sufficient for most scenarios. The quality of the supplied cable isn't exceptional, but it does get the job done without any noteworthy issues.