With the MV5, Shure continues its trend of packaging modern technology in retro designs from the company's back catalog.
At $99, the relatively small MV5 represents the least expensive of the Shure Motiv mic lineup (other than the Lavalier-style clip-on MVL).
It can be used as a traditional USB microphone with your computer, or it can be used with iOS devices—a Lightning cable is included, and there's a free app that allows for easy recording and editing.
The MV5 also features two DSP (digital signal processing) recording modes and a flat, DSP-free mode.
For the price, its overall audio quality, ease of use, and DSP flexibility are all quite appealing.
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Design
Available in black or gray models, the retro-looking MV5 is a roughly 2.5-inch sphere, with the plastic silver grille facing the front, and connections on the back panel.
Inside the MV5's enclosure, a cardioid-pattern 16mm condenser picks up the audio.
When connected to the included metal stand, the mic's height reaches roughly 5.5 inches, but its positioning can be adjusted to a degree, so the height may vary.
Since the overall height is fairly low when placed on a desktop, we found it useful to angle the mic upward to create the shortest distance between the front grille and the speaker's mouth.
Despite being made of metal, we found the stand to be somewhat lightweight and therefore easy to knock over if tipped slightly or pulled by a headphone cable.
The back panel of the mic houses the 3.5mm low-latency headphone jack, as well as the micro USB connection for the two included cables—one terminates in USB, the other in Lightning for iOS devices.
There are also controls on the back panel, including a mode selector for the three DSP modes (voice, instrument, and flat, with status LEDs that show you the mode you're in), a volume dial for headphones, and a mute button.
An onboard gain knob would nice.
Instead, you have to adjust gain within your recording app.
The MV5's frequency range is 20Hz to 20kHz, and the mic offers 16/24-bit, 44.1/48kHz recording quality.
It's compatible with Windows 7 (or higher), Mac OSX 10.7 (or higher), and requires USB 2.0 and a minimum of 64MB of RAM to operate.
For the iOS connection to work, you'll need iOS 10 or higher, and at least an iPhone 5, an iPad Mini, a 4th-gen iPad, or a 5th-gen iPod touch.
The Shure Plus Motiv recording app is free and allows you to tweak the MV5's EQ and compression modes, as well as make and edit recordings.
We discuss this more in the next section.
Performance
The three DSP modes are really two—voice and instrument, and then one without any DSP.
This means the flat mode offers no EQ or compression, while the other two modes bake in a certain amount.
This flexibility allows you to quickly dial in settings, or ignore them and get the purest signal possible.
There are plenty of USB mics with DSP, and some—like Blue mics—with none.
Few manufacturers offer DSP and DSP-free signals in the same mic, so that is an advantage of the Shure Motiv lineup.
Using GarageBand on a Mac Pro, we found the MV5 to be simple to operate.
The mic was immediately recognized by the software and ready to use.
In flat mode, our vocal recordings sounded just that—flat, with no hint of EQ sculpting or dynamic compression.
This is ideal if you plan to use EQ or compression during mixdown, but want a pure signal to work with.
Things sound crisp and clear, with not too much in the way of low-frequency presence.
Even up close with the proximity effect more in play, the lows are subtle.
Clarity is ideal.
Oddly enough, we found instrument mode to be the better of the two for recording typical speaking vocals.
It adds a reasonable amount of compression and the EQ is on the subtle side.
The vocals get a little extra body, and peaks are evened out slightly compared with flat mode.
Voice mode dials everything up a bit too much for our taste.
Compression is strong in this mode, as is EQ.
Recording a male voice with some depth to it, you can get into boomy territory pretty quickly here, especially if the speaker is close to the mic.
At times, we found the recordings in this mode to sound a little too resonant in the lows.
It's not hard to imagine it sounding good for certain types of voices, but it adds a little too much low and low-mid presence, and smooths out the dynamics perhaps a bit too much.
So, when recording podcast vocals, we recommend sticking with flat or instrument modes.
For singing vocals, it really depends on the performance—the compression that's baked in here could possibly help a recording if the singer's performance is dynamically varied.
Recording on an iOS device using the Shure app, you can make some adjustments to the audio in each mode that allow you a bit more flexibility.
In instrument mode, for instance, you can opt for slightly more compression, or less, and create your own EQ curve.
You can also edit recordings, and export high-quality WAV files in 24bit/48kHz format, or go lower if you wish.
In other words, the app offers a simple, useful version of what most recording platforms offer, though there isn't much in the way of deep editing tools and mixing options.
Conclusions
In flat and instrument modes, the Shure MV5 offers a clean, clear signal that we find quite strong for the price.
Ultimately, it's hard to complain about much here.
We are slightly more enthusiastic about the Blue Snowball Ice for two reasons—its lack of DSP and lower price.
But you might find the MV5's DSP to be useful, especially when you consider that you can adjust it or turn it off.
If you're looking to step things up a notch in terms of recording quality, the Shure MV51, the Blue Raspberry, and the Beyerdynamic Fox are three great USB options, but they'll cost you a little more.
The Bottom Line
The affordable Shure MV5 microphone delivers quality audio and adjustable DSP and EQ settings through a free companion app.
