New Media Gear 25: Shure MV88 iOS Digital Stereo Condenser Microphone

Shure MV88 iOS Digital Stereo Condenser Microphone

I discovered this microphone through, of all things, an advertisement on Instagram?!? What?!?! A useful social media advertisement. If all ads could be as targeted to me as this one, I might not complain about them so much. That said, the ad immediately made me want to check our the Shure MV88. I am always on the lookout for useful New Media Gear and this looks to be another device you might want to add to your arsenal. As I don’t have one in-hand, I have included some links below to give you an overview of how people are responding to this mic and some real world usage examples.

One dislike that crops up for me is the inability to use it with a cover. I know, making a device that works with any of the thousands of covered out there would be nearly impossible, but I hate having to pull my phone out of its cover to use it and I miss the protection it provides when working. I also worry about external devices plugged into the Lightning port, as I am always afraid I am going to break the port accidentally.

Beyond those fairly small quibbles though, the audio samples from the mic sound good and it can help to keep your recording kit a bit smaller. You’ll want an iPhone with a larger storage capacity in order to insure you aren’t constantly filling it up with audio. My 16 GB iPhone 6 already complains about being full much too often and I am sure I would run into even larger issues if I were recording audio to it regularly.

Check out the Shure MV88 and tell me what you think!