Microphone Performance

The Movo VSM-7 is equipped with a large 34-millimeter (1.3") gold-sputtered condenser capsule. The capsule is protected with a pop filter, whose purpose is to prevent the boominess of plosives (sounds like P, B, T, and K), which can and will occur when the air from the speaker's mouth violently strikes the capsule, especially if as big as the one built into the VSM-7. The capsule offers three different pickup (polar) patterns: cardioid, bi-directional and omnidirectional. Let's go over their characteristics.

The cardioid polar pattern is what you'll want to use if you're the only one sitting in front of the microphone. The capsules will pick up sound in front of them while to a certain degree rejecting everything coming from their sides, and even more so from behind. In practice, that means room noise won't be as audible as with other polar patterns, especially if the microphone is close to your mouth.

The omnidirectional pattern makes the microphone equally sensitive from all sides. This can be useful when you want to record several people and/or instruments by placing the microphone in the center of the room, for instance. For better or worse, the omnidirectional pattern will inevitably pick up a lot of room acoustics. While the omnidirectional pattern is generally much less sensitive to precise microphone and speaker positioning, the cardioid pattern is still generally a better choice for solo usage because most users don't sit in acoustically treated rooms. The omnidirectional polar pattern also eliminates the proximity effect, so your voice will sound much less bassy even if sitting up close to the microphone. Many users will prefer the bassy nature of the cardioid polar pattern.

The bi-directional polar pattern makes the capsules pick up sounds in front and behind them while rejecting everything coming from the sides. This again can be used for instrument recording, single-microphone two-person interviews, and similar use cases.


Let's finally take a listen to the Movo VSM-7. For my testing, I've mounted the VSM-7 to the Rode PSA1 boom arm and connected it to the Allen & Heath ZED-10 mixer with the supplied XLR cable. The mixer was connected to my PC via USB. No filters were applied to any of the following samples, nor were they post-processed in any way.




In cardioid mode, the Movo VSM-7 sounds fantastic—audibly warmer and deeper than the USB-powered Movo UM700, but also cleaner and fuller than the USB microphone I'm using as the reference in these tests, the famous Rode NT-USB. My voice sounds pretty much how it would sound if we were having a conversation in real life. For a $125 microphone, that's quite an achievement! In omnidirectional mode, some depth and warmth are lost, which is to be expected after switching to that polar pattern, although the overall tonality of the VSM-7 remains natural and entirely pleasant. Below, I'm linking the USB-powered Movo UM700 and Rode NT-USB samples, which you can use for direct comparisons. Unless you're using studio monitors, a pair of decent headphones is suggested to appreciate the differences between all these microphones.




Let's now check the performance of the supplied shock mount. In the following test, I'm talking while simultaneously tapping on the boom arm, as well as the body of the microphone. Then, I'm typing on my mechanical keyboard, which shows us how the microphone handles background noise in cardioid mode. The keyboard is located behind and below the microphone.



The Movo VSM-7 continues to impress. Even though the Rode PSA1 is certainly a very good boom arm, I didn't expect the supplied shock mount to be as good at helping the microphone reject the noise generated by tapping. The background noise rejection in cardioid mode is quite impressive as well. I wouldn't call my keyboard quiet, but the way it sounds in this case is perfectly tolerable.

What about the supplied pop filter? The following two samples were recorded with the pop filter on and off to check how the capsule handles the onslaught of plosives in both scenarios and to find out if Movo's pop filter does anything other than look nice.




What a massive difference! The large condenser capsule is quite prone to boominess caused by the plosives, which can easily be heard when you listen to the first sample where there's no pop filter to protect it. All that changes in the second sample, recorded after raising the pop filter to its default position. Suddenly, there are no plosives to be heard, which clearly indicates two things: The supplied pop filter does its job admirably, and it is perfectly positioned in relation to the capsule distance-wise.

Finally, I've tested the built-in high-pass/low-cut filter.



There's no significant reduction in overall background noise—the low-cut filter isn't very aggressive. I don't see that as a drawback since it means that the natural depth of your voice (and instruments) will be preserved. For most users, it will make more sense to keep the filter deactivated anyway, as you'll probably want to use your audio interface for signal processing.

All in all, the performance of the Movo VSM-7 goes above and beyond anything I'd expect from a $125 XLR microphone. This is the sound you should be happy with even if you're streaming in front of a larger audience.