MXL FR-401M Supercardioid Boundary Microphone, Black

My daughter starred in a local Church play and we needed 2 of these to mic up the main area. These worked perfect. We had no feedback and they were nice and crisp sounding. They also held up to being stepped on a few times as well so quality seems good. For the money these will work for you in a pinch. Recommended

I'm new to audio stuff. I needed a mic for a large group discussion at a reunion that we held around a large semi-circlular conference table. So I read every review I could find and watched all the "You Tubes" on Lav. mics, shotgun mics, etc. Never heard of a "boundary" mic before this. After seeing only a few reviews of this I bought it and let my young audio/video expert friend test it with me. We were simply amazed! It picks up at a very wide angle (maybe 120 degrees or so) and the sound was quite good at 15 to 18 feet. No other boundary mic would do more that four or five feet. This thing was terrific!

Works well for children message at church, can hear the kids responses better than just mic on leader

Product arrived well packaged and quickly. I plug it into our mixer and use it as a field mic. Extremely sensitive and get great sound. It also rests well against walls as tables with the flat back surface. A great addition to our broadcast.

Serviceable mic, I needed it for my home office for testing video conference systems and it works.

I use this microphone in noisy situations to help isolate what I want to record. It works great!

This is a super sensitive microphone . If using it to mic a piano etc. be sure to place the microphone away from the piano a bit ( 4 feet or so ) or it will be distorted in sound . Picks up speech excellently ! This microphone has a very strong signal output .

No matter where this was plugged into even the mixer, not one iota of sound. And unfortunately after having issues that kept me from using it immediately it is much too late for me to return it. It DOES NOT WORK!

The price that Amazon was offering the MXL FR-401M for was unbeatable, so I bought two of them to experiment with in a home recording setup. I already own a large variety of different microphone types like dynamics, large and small condensers, and inexpensive ribbon microphones...but nothing like these. These are boundary, PZM type microphones (pressure zone). I've had excellent past results using other MXL microphones and after a quick test I'm quite impressed with the new 401's also.The microphone resembles a computer mouse, and it's roughly about the same size, a 15 foot XLR cable is permanently attached on the back. The MXL FR-401M is a condenser microphone, so phantom power is required.The MXL FR-401M is based on a style of microphone that the Crown company first introduced in 1980. Meant to be placed on hard surfaces like floors, tables, and walls. In doing so, the surface then becomes part of the microphone and this apparently has some definite benefits. The original sound and reverberant reflections reach the microphone at the same time, causing a natural increase of several decibels in level, it eliminates improper phasing issues, while natural clarity and constant level is maintained from different locations around the microphone without having to reach for gain or eq on the mixer.Boundary mics are typically used for sound reinforcement, to pick up actors voices and musical instruments in live theater, placed on lecterns in churches, and also to record business conferences where there are a lot of people sitting around a table with one boundary microphone. They're often used in television because they can be easily hidden from the cameras. Some professional recording studios use them to record grand pianos and drums.You may be wondering how a microphone that's placed on the floor or a wall actually sounds, the short answer is very good! The sound is crisp, clean, and clear. It was my original intent to use the MXL FR-401M to add some "room sound" ambience to recordings, but after some brief experimentation I can see several other good uses for them, especially where acoustic instruments are concerned. Condenser microphones are very sensitive to sound pickup, but these are even more so...I stood at the back of the room, 15 feet away from the MXL FR-401M which was on the floor, I placed my hand over my mouth and then whispered quietly under my breath. Guess what? The MXL picked up every single word and the clarity was amazing! Since I bought two, I can use them to record in stereo as well. So happy I bought these MXL's. 😁**Note: This is a specialty type of microphone, that fills a definite niche, and as such it wouldn't be a very good first choice if you were just starting up a home recording studio and buying your first couple of microphones. You should get a good dynamic and/or large condenser microphone first, then definitely consider this later on. Definitely a great mic and outstanding value.

gifted someone ,did not work at all. complete useless.