 Alright guys this is the Limelight by 512 Audio. It's a dynamic broadcast microphone perfect for podcasters, live streamers or youtube makers. There's a few things that come in this box. You have the microphone, you have yourself a mount for the microphone, there's a user guide and a very nice leather based carry couch for the microphone if you do want to take it with you in your backpack or anywhere else. I'm going to go and dive in a little bit about the design. It showcases to you guys how to set this up and how to use it and of course a whole bunch of audio tests to see how great this sounds. So let's get straight into it. In terms of the design it has a very good solid metallic build. It has this mesh all around and then you have the microphone there sitting at the top. Got the 512 logo just there at the bottom with Limelight. This is actually designed in Austin Texas you know and they're very proud of that and then you also have dynamic broadcast microphone just listed there on the side just at the bottom. You have yourself the switch for the low cut filter or having it at flat frequency and then this is the XLR input. Now I just wanted to talk about the input because this doesn't come with an XLR cable. You'd have to buy one separately and connect it to whatever audio equipment you have. If you're very new to recording podcasts or filmmaking and you've not used the microphone with an XLR input before I'm going to showcase to you guys the best way to set this up and how to get the best quality audio from a microphone like this. In terms of the mount this has a 3 eighth thread just there at the bottom inside. It's a universal mount so you can get an adapter if you have a quarter 20 inch thread on your tripod or anything like that but I'm going to showcase you guys a couple of ways to mount this right before I connect and set this up with my audio recorder. One of the most popular ways to mount the microphone especially if you are using it for podcasting is on a microphone boom stand. So I will just attach the mount which by the way you can rotate 360 degrees so you can get it in the perfect position. It has this rubberized grip where you do mount it and just squeeze the bottom part of the microphone into there. So I'll do it from this side. You can hear the squeaking on it on how tight it is then you also have some tightness just on there to keep it at the correct elevated level. Then you just move the stand in the right position and then you can use it like this but in this example I'll just use my small tripod because I want to place it on the desk and move it around to give you some sample audio tests. So let me demount it from here. So the best way to connect a microphone that requires XLR input is to have a preamp audio recorder such as this. This is my mix pre3 and I record all of my YouTube videos with my Sennheiser MKE600 shotgun microphone. Shotgun mics are great to shoot at a distance so that's one of the reasons why I have this. So the XLR input is currently connected to this microphone with the white cable you see there at the back. This is using the phantom power that's generated directly by the preamp so I'm going to disconnect it from this microphone which you're currently hearing the audio from and that you've heard from from the beginning of this video and I'll connect that to the limelight XLR input just over here and then I will switch over the audio so you guys can hear the difference on how this sounds and then we will go ahead and check to see the audio quality in various different scenarios using the limelight microphone and one other huge advantage of having an audio recorder like this is that you can see the gain levels on here and you can very easily adjust with the knob no matter what the position you have the microphone from your mouth and you can also do very good monitoring on amps like this as well with your headphones just to make sure you are getting the perfect audio input when you do record things like podcasts so let me go ahead disconnect this and connect it to the limelight. So now the audio is coming directly from the 512 limelight microphone and you guys can probably hear a massive difference right? Just before I give you some sample audio tests in various different scenarios and distances with the microphone just wanted to point out some of the key specifications for you guys so this is taken from their website if you wanted to check out this in more details then hit the link in the description to read more information about this microphone but there's a couple of key specifications that I did want to highlight the first one being the frequency response rate which is 50 hertz to 20 kilohertz which you know is sculpted for close range vocal frequencies and it's designed to reduce any background noise and you know I'll give you an example of that as well. And secondly is around the polar pattern which is hypercordioid and the pickup on this is 105 degrees which is very narrow compared to a lot of similar microphones that I use for podcasts which have more of a wider spectrum so that really narrows down and hears the vocal clarity in people's voices especially when you are going to have a high quality podcast then you know this is something that's very important. So the next set of sound tests I want to do is just in case you guys want to position this in different places you can see and hear how it would sound if you were to do that. So the first thing is I'm going to just turn this around 360 degrees while still talking to see how much it can still pick up. So right now it's faced directly to me and I'm going to slowly start to move it a little bit left. There's no microphones that are listed on the sides or the back of this so you can see my sound is probably fading a little bit and just coming back to the right hand side and I'm still speaking waiting for the microphone to come back to pick up my voice from the front and that is a 360 degree sound. So if you are going to speak from the sides this is something useful to note that this is going to sound a little bit off compared to the sound you're getting directly from the front. Secondly if you are shooting youtube videos for example and you didn't want the microphone in shot then much like a shotgun microphone which are primarily made for distances if I move this further back so now it's around 40 centimeters away from me and you guys can hear and I can see on my preamp recorder the gain levels are dropping the further back I go the lighter it's going to sound. I just want to test I'm going to put up the gain on my preamp at the same distance so now it's at a level which is almost at the maximum level to be honest and you probably hear a lot clearer it's a lot louder more punchier but again this is not a shotgun microphone it's made for close-up range vocals so although it would still be quite clear and it does reduce a lot of noises in the backgrounds whether you're near a window and you might have cars on the street or you might be typing on a keyboard whatever it may be it still does a good job to isolate that and you know eliminate that from your actual audio if I was to move further back now I'm around one meter away from the microphone and from the gain levels I can see you know it's still picking up my audio quite well depends how clear you want it to be the most clearest is when you are very close to it at this distance having the gain up very high then it might be something that you can work with and you may need to tweak a little bit in post editing but again I wouldn't recommend it because it's not designed for that purpose now this is a sound test which is pretty much exactly on top of the microphone not sure how much it's maxing out if you guys are listening to this I can see from the gain levels it's doing a decent job it's not in the red zone which you know dictates that it's very loud and you need to back off a little bit but the audio quality is very clear and you know one of the things that this does is reduces pop noise as well so in your speech you know if you do pronounce very harshly the P's or the B's then it kind of isolates that as well and it doesn't really get picked up from the microphone to the point where it's going to be very visible to your audience so even if you do record a very close-up like this it would still do a very good job next up let's see how good it is in eliminating the background noises so I'm going to start typing on my keyboard here on my mic work and see if you guys can still hear it very clearly while I am still talking in the microphone so I'm just writing up a word document and this is going to help me with my speech for my next video and I'm just clicking on here let's get my mouse and do some mouse clicks as well and see if that is eliminated from the audio as well I've had a playback of doing similar things like this already with the microphone and for me personally it does do a good job eliminating that so if you wanted to use this maybe for working from home you're taking meetings on your laptop you can actually connect this to your MacBook it's a little bit fiddly with XLR inputs you would need to get an adapter to have a dedicated microphone input for the jack most laptops won't have that these days and then you'd also need to get an XLR to stereo sound connecting cable and then there could be some laptops that might be compatible with that I've seen people online talking about that not working for them so if you can get this for a audio recorder specifically that is the best scenario and finally just wanted to test with the low-cut filter switch that's on the back of this microphone I'm going to turn it on up until now it's been on the normal flat mode so let me go ahead and make that switch okay now the low-cut filter is on I've not adjusted the gain settings on my preamp or my audio recorder and you guys may hear slightly that it has dropped in voice level a little bit but it is trying its best to eliminate any background noise I do have cars on the street outside of my windows that are driving by very often and most likely and I can pretty much guarantee you guys are not going to hear that but if you do have a very noisy environment in wherever you're recording whether you have maybe an air conditioner a fan a heater or you know people in the next room talking then the low-cut filter would be a great option but for me personally if you are in a quiet room and you don't have a lot of background noise always have that off just so that it doesn't distort the noise levels artificially all right guys so my final thoughts finishing off this video on this limelight is that I would definitely recommend this for podcasters for people making youtube videos for people doing live streams and even gamers one thing I wouldn't recommend this for are filmmakers that are looking for more broadcast quality shotgun microphones that will do filming at a distance or people that would require moving their microphones quite often to different positions because you don't want to get various different levels and sounds and gains of your audio so it comes in at 199 dollars you know if you are brand new to recording podcasts this is a very decent sounding microphone and I'm quite impressed with this when I will record tutorial videos for my youtube channel this is something that I will set up because having this next to me while I'm you know screen recording on my laptop it's going to be perfect for that rather than a shotgun microphone so for me I can see myself using this very often because this does sound great especially when I speak very closely to it if you guys have any other questions about this microphone drop a comment down below if you did like the sound of this microphone and you did like this video make sure to like this video as well I do really cool tech and a lot of microphone reviews so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any more of those really cool videos coming up and I will catch you guys next time take care