Quality sound with a wide pickup pattern: Mackie mobile shotgun microphone

Product: Mackie Professional Mobile Shotgun Microphone with USB Output and Rechargeable Battery

For those looking at this Mackie shotgun microphone, there's a lot to like about it, including the shock mount being high quality and the build quality being suitably premium, but it should be noted that this microphone does not have particularly strong rejection of off-axis sound.

It's only a pseudo shotgun, or I guess it's more like a regular cardioid than a super cardioid in its behavior, and it does turn out that you can see this characteristic in the polar chart that's right there in the manual, so it's not like they're hiding it. It's just something that you might want to know if you were looking for something extremely directional. That's not this mic. This mic captures a relatively wide forward-facing swath of sound.

Anyhow, I would say that it's pretty quiet unless you turn the gain all the way up, and I do like the tonality. It has a very neutral sound. It's detailed. I don't like that you can't really tell what the battery level is and that Mackie doesn't even publish what the battery life is, but you'll definitely get a full day's use out of it anyway. I'm also not a fan of the fact that the USB port is only for charging or analog audio output.

It doesn't have a digital output option, which it just seems to me that there are competing shotgun microphones at this price point that offer that capability, but the connecting cables are very robust. Everything about it is robust. I think this is a microphone that'll last even though it's not all that heavy. It's pretty lightweight. I suppose it's a classic Mackie compromise in terms of price and performance and all that.

It's affordable pro gear, ok? Just don't count on it blocking that sound coming from the side. It just doesn't do that very well.