I’d love to be able to say I’ve tried my voice and my studio set up with the most popular, top industry microphones out there. I haven’t. And, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. But I know when it sounds clean and accurate, and that’s what I want from my microphone — pure sound. I think I found that with the microphone I bought recently, the Shure SM7b. It’s a dynamic microphone which tends to make it a little brighter and broader. Dynamic mics are also more rugged and travel well for voice actors who work on the road. It doesn’t require phantom power which again makes it a more attractive choice for on-the-go voice actors working from laptop DAWs.

10/16/28 Update: the Shure SM7b has remained incredibly predictable and reliable. It does a great job isolating vocals from any ambient sound, though I do record in a padded cell, uh, sound booth. It doesn’t color my voice, but instead delivers the same rich, warm tones inherent in my voice (except when I’m yelling at the cat.) Basically, the mic continues to produce clean audio. Just what I need. If I want to brighten or affect my voice in any way for a project, I prefer to do that in post, non-destructively. As a company voice for many corporations, I’ve actually done script revisions the way I’d do a pickup, just editing in the new phrase, even years after the original recording, and the update is otherwise undetectable. I even did this once with a different audio interface, and the Shure did a great job capturing the same vocal quality. That honestly surprised me. So, yes, the Shure SM7b is still a quality microphone perfect for vocals.