Shure MV6 review: DSP magic in a plug-and-play USB microphone

If you go on Shure Singapore’s website right now and click on their microphone section, you’ll see about 6 pages of microphones that the company offers. Everything from lavalier microphones, drum kit microphones and gooseneck microphones that you might find on a lectern. What you might be hard-pressed to find, however, is a microphone specifically targeted towards gaming. That is what Shure hopes to address with the Shure MV6 USB microphone.

Shure states that the MV6 is inspired by the SM7 and MV7 lines of dynamic microphones. If the term ‘SM7’ sounds familiar to you, that might be because of the SM7B, a popular microphone currently oriented towards broadcasting. But can it carry that reputation into a more entry-level market?

The TL;DR version:



The Shure MV6 is a competent microphone with nifty features for those without sound-treated setups. Unfortunately, its asking price is a bit on the high end for a USB-only microphone.



Note: You can get the Shure MV6 on Lazada, Shopee, and Shure's website here.

Design & build

The MV6 certainly takes inspiration in design from the M7. It features a black cylindrical housing with green highlights, in accordance with the Shure brand colours no doubt. The accents might not appeal as much to people who were into the cleaner look of the SM7B and MV7, though that's up to personal preference.

You’ll find that there’s only one button on the Shure MV6, that being the mute switch. Though, it’s not correct to call it a switch since it's really a capacitive button. You tap the button to mute the microphone, and if the mute is activated, you’ll see a red LED light up. Personally, I’m not a big fan of this implementation because the red LED is a bit dim to see during the daytime. Furthermore, there were multiple times when I would move the microphone and inadvertently hit the button and accidentally put myself on mute. 

But these are minor annoyances because the button works well enough. The capacitive nature of the button also makes sure that there's no audible click whenever you mute the microphone, compared to a physical button or switch.

Beneath the pop socket is a lime green grill and a capsule that houses the diaphragm and presumably the voice coil underneath. 

Included in the packaging is also a stand and base plate. Assembled together, you get a pretty hefty 1.3kg package. Most of that is from the base plate, which does an excellent job of preventing wobbling. You should also note that the MV6 screws into a 5/8-inch - 27 thread, which is a fairly standard size for boom arms and other microphone stands.

On the back of the MV6 are two inputs: A USB-C port that requires a minimum standard of USB 2.0 (included in the box is a rather short USB-C cable, so you might be better off looking for a longer one yourself), and a 3.5mm headphone jack for latency-free audio monitoring. The latter is quite useful, especially if you don’t have an audio interface. Sadly, that's all you're getting though. If you were expecting something like an input gain knob, a monitor volume knob, or an XLR connection, you won't find it here.

One thing worth pointing out is that there are no frequency response switches on the back like the SM7B. This is more forgivable; you take what you can get when it’s a third of the price.

Sound & MOTIV Mix

Right off the bat, what struck me about the MV6 was its ambient noise rejection. Even before installing Shure’s MOTIV Mix app (which we’ll get to in a bit), it does quite a good job of not picking up the noise of the fan behind me. This is in comparison to my personal microphone, the Samson Q2u (which, to be fair, might not make a good comparison point since it only costs half the MV6).

This is probably thanks to two features that the MV6 has, what Shure calls Voice Isolation Technology and Real-Time Denoiser. Voice Isolation Technology appeared on the original MV7, and while Shure is quite vague on how the technology works, it seems to rely on the microphone being built to be more sensitive to a certain type of airflow and combines that with a frequency response that focuses more on your voice.

Real-Time Denoiser, meanwhile, is a feature that's baked into the MV6’s Digital Signal Processor (DSP). It specifically recognises and "carves out" persistent noise such as fans and traffic. With both features working together, it does a good job of isolating your voice against a variety of ambient sounds. However, there are limits. It still picks up keyboard noises, for example.

The MV6 also packs a couple more features that work out of the box, including Auto Level Mode, which automatically adjusts the microphone’s gain based on your distance (up to 18 inches, or about 45cm) and Digital Popper Stopper, which automatically dips the microphone volume whenever it detects a plosive sound, almost like a compressor.

Some people might be turned off by this heavy-handedness. After all, it's a bunch of processing being applied without input from the user. But the fact that all of these work out-of-the-box, without the need for any external intervention or apps, is pretty amazing and a testament to Shure’s audio expertise. You can also turn these features off in Shure’s MOTIV Mix app, but these features will stay on if you choose not to install the app.

The result is a clean sound that’s certainly suitable for casual and semi-professional usage, including Discord calling and streaming. I’m not sure I would describe it as warm, as the vocal processing makes it sound slightly more hollower than I would like, but that’s my personal preference. You will be heard clearly, and the noise rejection certainly makes it an upgrade from built-in microphones (or cheaper USB microphones, for that matter). Plus, its analog-to-digital converter supports recording in both 16-bit/44.1kHz and 24-bit/48kHz formats.

To get the best out of the microphone, make sure you are close to it. As a dynamic microphone, it works best when you’re about 15cm away from the microphone. Any more than around 30cm and you’ll have a steep drop in volume.

Given that the MV6’s frequency response pretty much cuts off at 15kHz, nuances in more sibilant consonants such as ’c’, ‘s’ and ‘t’, are filtered out, which sounds somewhat unnatural to me (reminds me of when compressed audio files lose of a bit of detail in the high end). Thankfully, this only really sticks out if you go looking for them, and I doubt anyone outside of microphone enthusiasts will notice. That said, a 15kHz cutoff means that recording music is out of the question (at least semi-professionally).

For off-axis response, the MV6 was able to pick up my voice when I was facing 90 degrees to the right of the microphone, about 15cm away. Given the cardioid pattern of the MV6, some quality was lost when speaking to the microphone from an off-angle. When speaking in this manner, my voice sounded softer and a bit tinny. Even so, I was able to understand myself well enough.

Where the MV6 does falter is through noise rejection for desk sounds. The larger surface area of the base plate causes it to pick up desk noises (bumps, knocks, dropping items on the desk), especially if you don’t have a desk mat to dampen it. Even clicking and typing more aggressively than usual can cause sub-bassy rumbles that can be annoying. You might be better off with a boom arm when using it, though to be fair, the same can be said for any microphone.

All in all, the sound quality is good. The built-in signal processing might be a little bit on the strong side, but again, you can turn them off in the MOTIV Mix app if you want a drier signal.

Speaking of which, let’s talk a little bit about it. The MOTIV Mix app allows you to access some deeper settings for the MV6. This includes on/off toggles for the DSP features, as well as a tone slider, where you can adjust the microphone’s tone between Dark, Natural, and Bright. There’s also a Monitor Mix setting, where you can adjust the microphone level and playback level when monitoring audio (though it's not applicable to the MV6 as you can only monitor it through the headphone jack on the microphone itself), and a high pass filter, though the only choices you get for the cutoff frequencies are 75Hz and 150Hz.

It’s here that you can also adjust the gain on the MV6, though make sure to turn off Auto Level Mode if you want full control over it. Shure rates the adjustable gain range for the MV6 to be 0 to +36dB, though MOTIV Mix caps it at +12dB, which is more than enough as you’re certain to start peaking by then. You can also toggle the mute lock on the MOTIV Mix app.

It's also important to note that, if you do have MOTIV Mix installed and want to use it as your main mixer (mixing multiple audio devices together, for example), you have to select MOTIV Mix Virtual as your audio device in your respective streaming software, including OBS.

Conclusion

What struck me about the MV6 was its capabilities in noise rejection, and I do applaud Shure for having the above-mentioned features baked directly into the DSP rather than having to download another app to enable them. Overall, it’s a solid USB microphone, and the only things I might want to see changed are a differently-designed base plate that's not as sensitive to shocks and an XLR connection. On that last point, though, I suppose they want to retain it as a selling point for the MV7 lineup instead.

S$249 for a USB microphone is starting to stretch it, however, and I find the lack of onboard adjustability a bit discouraging. Other USB microphones have offered flexibility that the MV6 doesn't, including a physical gain knob and multiple pickup patterns that you can switch between for cheaper. Also, there's a bit of an elephant in the room: although Shure markets it as a "Gaming Microphone", I'm not entirely sure what about it makes it more of a gaming mic than its other offerings. It shares many of its core features with the MV7 line, and while it does have OBS certification, so does the MV7+, which is marketed as a "Podcast Microphone".

This is no knock against the MV6 of course, more so towards the relative shallowness of Shure's gaming pitch. To me, the MV6 feels more like a stripped-down version of the MV7, which is far from a bad thing. It seems that Shure is more keen on making the MV6 a microphone that you can just trust, through solid DSP-native features and plug-and-play compatibility. And to that end, it does the job well.

Note: You can get the Shure MV6 on Lazada, Shopee, and Shure's website here.

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