Macomb County Video Marketer Reviews The Sennheiser MKE 440 Mic
Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Tips & Tech Talk. I am your host Ron, and today we’re talking about microphones. Well, one specific microphone. Today we’re taking a look at the Sennheiser MKE 440 Directional Stereo Microphones. The Sennheiser MKE 440 compact Stereo Shotgun microphone is a compact Stereo Shotgun microphone for cameras, with a lighting shoe mount and an external microphone input. It features maximum side noise rejection with rugged all metal housing. The MKE 440 has to aligned and matched many shotgun mics that ensures that the MKE 440 will capture the audio you want, while rejecting off access noise. The MKE 440 is ideally suited for speech, music, or ambiance.
So again, this microphone is designed specifically for a DSLR because it has the shoe mount, and it also has the quarter inch Jack that fits right into the mic for this DSLR. So, it does operate on a couple batteries. You are supposed to get 100 hours of use out of the batteries. One thing that I think is going to be important is, to not have to use a windscreen for this. Because, I do have a windscreen for it, but the problem with the windscreen is that when it is on the microphone, it blocks the on off switch. So if you’re not conscious of it, you might run into a situation where you think you’re recording audio but you didn’t turn it on, or maybe you forgot to turn it off and you wasted your battery, and now you have no batteries and you can’t record sound without the battery. So that can be problematic if you in fact use the windscreen.
We’re going to take it out, see what it can do, put it through its paces, and find out if the reputation succeeds the actual performance. So without any further ado, let’s take this out and see what it can do. So here I am holding my Canon 80D, and I am very close to the camera, but this is the sound that’s being recorded from the internal microphone of the Canon 80D. Now we’re going to go ahead, and we’re going to take the jack and we’re going to put it in, and we’re going to find out what kind of microphone and what kind of sound we’re getting with the Sennheiser MKE 440. This mic is fantastic for getting natural sound. So close your eyes and tell me what you hear.
There you go. You had a car driving by with a bird squawking, great natural sounds that you can turn into a sound effect. As you can hear, it’s designed to pick up conversation, but also your surroundings. Listen to that natural sound, it’s amazing. The wind’s picking up a little bit, coming at us pretty strong.
So here we are in the area where they’re going to build the dog park here in Utica, north of Epler and south of where the slaughter house used to be. So, I’m about 100 yards away from the bulldozer. Of course, I know you’ve can hear Bailey crying. It’s amazing how far they’ve come.
This microphone, its sweet spot is three to six feet in front of the microphone because it’s a directional microphone. It’s meant to pick up what’s in the frame of the camera. And as you can hear right now, this audio is very, very good quality. This is at zero decibels, and you can go negative 20 and plus 20. And then, if you turn the camera around you’re still picking up my voice, but it’s just not concentrating on my voice. It’s trying to capture what’s in front of it, which at this point is just natural sound of a wooded area. This obviously sounds really, really good. I am outside. Outside is tricky because of all the natural sounds.
So, to utilize this microphone to capacity, you want to be maybe indoors in a controlled environment with not a lot of people if you’re going to interview somebody. For example, you can interview somebody in a restaurant, but it might sound something like this.
Janice: “You look red.”
Ron: “I know because all the colors are red. We’re at The Red Ox, right?”
Janice: “Yep.”
Ron: “That’s why it’s red. It wouldn’t be green. So you don’t know what you’re getting?”
Janice: “Well, I think I narrowed it down to the grilled turkey reuben or the chicken pot pie. So, that’s what I think I’m going to get. ”
Ron: “I’m looking at the fajitas, but the perch sounds delicious.”
Janice: “That sounds horrible.”
Ron: “So, all know is I have this delicious beverage, Labatt Blue. It’s so very good, but I wanted to test this environment because we are in a restaurant. There’s a lot of noise, so I’m curious to see how much my voice is picking up because behind me I can hear people being loud.”
Horrible conversation not withstanding. The audio picks up the people in front of it very, very well, but as you can hear, you can hear a lot of background noise. So if you want to really do an interview with someone, or you want the audio to be the best it can be, make sure you’re in a controlled environment. The more controlled the environment, the better quality, the more you’re going to get out of this microphone. With that said, I hope you learned something, but before I let you go, before we sign off here, some gratuitous drone video of the new dog park was recently approved in Utica.
So when all is said and done, I could not be more pleased with the performance of the Sennheiser MKE 440. It will definitely be the microphone that I put atop any DSLR that I’m out shooting with. It’s a very good microphone. I can’t give enough rave reviews about this microphone. Two enthusiastic thumbs up. So yes, a great microphone. So hope you liked this video. If you did, please share it with your friends, hit the like icon. Also, go to my youtube channel, hit that bell notification, so you’ll be notified when I make future videos. And of course go to my website, ronrobinsonstudios.com, and you can see a lot more videos.
Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you right here for another episode of Tips & Tech Talk. Take care. Great mic.
