Antelope Audio Axino Synergy Core USB Podcast Microphone for Laptop, PC — All-In-One Large Diaphragm Vocal Recording Microphone w/Onboard Emulations & Effects — Dynamic Condenser Mic + Audio Interface

We got this so we'd sound better on zoom calls. Maybe it's overkill for that, but sometimes it's important to sound good. Mostly people don't sound good on Zooms or even Youtube. So this mic is an answer to that.We used MacOS, and downloading and setup was straightforward. You do need to effectively register the product to be able to use it as intended. For setup, there is an app to customize the mic. After setup, the Mac presents it as just any microphone without requiring you to view any app ever again unless you want to modify the settings.Connected to the Mac using a USB-C to USB-B cable, which we ordered separately. They include a USB-A to USB-B, but on the newer Macbook Pro, that would require an adapter.There are all kinds of choices of emulated microphones and also processors. Anything we cared about came bundled already. There are some other esoteric add-ons which you could buy. You can experiment to get your voice sounding the way you want it. The limiters will keep your signal from "clipping", so that is useful actually.You don't need any other amplifier etc. Just a USB connection. Being all digital, the noise level (hiss you hear when turning up the sensitivity) is extremely low.This is a condenser mic, so you will get more room noise than a dynamic mic. The pickup pattern is cardioid, so it will only respond to sounds in front of the mic. I think some of the emulations might alter the pickup pattern, but we didn't confirm that. The included stand is good enough that we didn't need anything else, such as a boom arm. To sound good, you need to be close enough to the mic; otherwise, background noises will be heard since you will need to crank up the sensitivity more.The only choices to get less background noise are dynamic mics, and every quality dynamic mic (Shure SM7B etc) requires an extra amplifier, which complicates the installation. And even with that external amplifier, you wouldn't have all of the processing and emulation that this mic gives you in software. You'd need another app for that kind of software, which again complicates things.The only criticism I have of this mic is that there is no LED on the mic to indicate that you are on mute or not. In the end, we set it so that it won't mute by being pressed; then we handle the mute function on the Mac only. You need to be confident about whether you are muted or not, hah.Also, the mic itself gives no indication of whether you are clipping or not (speaking too loudly). That would have been a useful feature. Of course again, you can see this on the Mac.

Easy setup, sounds great. Being able to switch between multiple microphone profiles to find the sound you want makes a huge difference (even though most of you nerds will just flip to the voiceover preset, sound like your favorite podcaster with a Shure SM7B and never go with anything else 😂)I do zoom calls all day and have gotten multiple compliments on the way the mic sounds since switching from a headset to a dedicated microphone and headphones (shoutout to Beyerdynamic as well)

This microphone beats every usb microphone in the market, except the high end modeling mic antelope edge duo. The imitation of characteristics of other mics is pretty amazing. We compared it to the TLM 103 and the Sure MV7. We can hear a difference, but it’s so darn close, that it takes a lot of post and EQing to reveal that they are not the same mic. We love the sound of the Sony c800 and the u87. You can record with this mic and say you used another high end mic and engineers will believe it. Lol. The quality of the body of the mic is amazing. The only thing we did not like was that by default the mic is set to 44.1k, instead of 48k. We have to change it every time before recording.