I’ve got a couple of Blue Yetis in the studio. One is permanently affixed to a boom arm on my desk, and the other is on the backup studio rig (aka the kids’ Valorant/Fortnite/Minecraft/goofing off with friends computer).
I wanted a mic that had USB (preferably C), gave me the option for XLR, and was both a) good enough and b) easily portable. The tech has advanced a bit in the years since I picked up the Yetis, so after a bit of online research, I settled on a Shure MV7+.
What nobody seems to be saying about the MV7+ (certainly not in the marketing materials, and aside from one random comment I found on Reddit) is that it’s most emphatically NOT an SM7. It’s trying its level best to look like one, but the guts inside are essentially a hot-rodded SM57.
Don’t get me wrong. The SM57 is a great mic. And my MV7+ sounds good, so no complaints. But to paint it as a cheaper SM7 with USB and a pretty LED duct-taped on is a misnomer.
To paint it as a cheaper SM7 with USB and a pretty LED duct-taped on is a misnomer.
It matters because the SM7 is famous for its proximity effect — get your mouth close and the low end blooms, that warm, full, voice-of-God radio broadcast sound. A lot of people buying something that looks like an SM7 are chasing exactly that. The MV7+ doesn’t do it. Part of that’s the double-windscreen setup physically keeping you from getting as close to the element as you would on a bare SM57 or SM7B. You gain some forgiveness for inconsistent positioning. The dramatic low-end bloom is off the table.
It definitely has less issues with the proximity effect than an SM57, but a lot of that is probably because you physically can’t get as close to the mic capsule as you can with a 57, owing to the double-windscreen setup.
The reason I went with the MV7+ over the original MV7 is the dual connectivity: USB-C straight into a laptop for podcast sessions, XLR into an interface when I’m somewhere that has one. Same mic, two situations. If you’re still rocking the old Micro-USB on a Yeti and that’s been quietly annoying you, that alone is worth the upgrade conversation.
I will say that it looks good on camera, though, even if the touch-the-LED-to-mute caused some chaos during OBS lessons with my A/V students. The problem wasn’t figuring out the mute — it was that an accidental brush on the LED panel would kill someone’s audio mid-recording with no warning. Once one of them figured out you could mute someone else’s session just by walking past and touching it, that became a thing. It took a minute.
The Motiv software Shure is pushing to use with it seems pretty good, though I don’t really need it. Or use it, for the most part. The noise reduction works fine, the other features work fine, no real standouts. They’re good enough if you don’t already have them, and comparable to Nvidia’s Broadcast software. They’re not quite as nice as the enhancements available at podcast.adobe.com (which isn’t realtime).
But then, as a media professional, I’ve got a big ol’ stack of audio software and plugins that I can throw at any mic problem, since anti-reverb foam on the walls and proper audio treatment would spoil the vibe of my living room/recording space.
And probably anger my landlord just a bit.
I’ve had an MV7+ for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve pressed it into service recording a few podcasts (available here). I’m also using it to record a lot of sample audio for a convincing voice clone of myself (only an hour to go!), and my students have really liked it for recording their not-really-live-streams-because-that’s-a-school-nightmare assignments, to the point of nearly fighting over it.
The verdict? I certainly don’t regret buying it. It’s working just peachy for what I bought it for, and I don’t have any real complaints over the sound. I haven’t used the headphone output on it at all — maybe I should — but it’s comforting to know it’s there if I need it. (Relevant: if you’ve ever lost a take to audio you didn’t catch in the moment, zero-latency monitoring is a habit worth starting.)
Is it worth the $287-ish I paid for it with a nice desktop stand? Yeah. The stand is a short, weighty beast, suitable for use as an improvised weapon. The mic itself sounds good, but like nearly any other mic, needs some post-production (or realtime effect) love.
If I’ve convinced you, here are a few pointers:
- Get your mouth 2–4 inches from the mic. Dynamic mics want you close. The double-windscreen gives you more latitude than a bare SM57, but too far back and it sounds thin and distant.
- Set your hardware gain before you touch the Motiv app. Get your loudest voice peaking around -12 to -6 dBFS on the input meter, then let Auto Level Mode smooth out the rest. The software is better at trimming peaks than rescuing a mic that was set too quiet to begin with.
- If you’ve got an audio interface, run XLR. USB-C works fine for everyday recording, but XLR gives you better dynamic range and takes the analog-to-digital conversion out of the mic itself, away from USB bus noise. For sessions where the signal chain matters, it’s worth the extra cable.
- Update the firmware before anything else. Open the Motiv desktop app and check for updates right away. Earlier versions had documented audio dropout issues that have since been patched.
- Plug in headphones and actually use them. Zero-latency monitoring sounds like a checkbox feature until you’ve been on a shoot where bad audio wrecked a take. Hear yourself as the mic hears you, while you’re recording. It changes how you work.
- A physical pop filter still earns its keep. The Digital Popper Stopper in the Motiv app handles moderate plosives, but a hard P or B will get through. A cheap foam windscreen costs almost nothing and handles what the software can’t. I’ve been in enough improvised audio situations to appreciate belt-and-suspenders.
- You don’t need Motiv. The mic works fine as a plain USB-C or XLR input with no app attached. If you’re already running audio processing in your DAW, skip it. It’s there if you need it, not in the way if you don’t.
The MV7+ is a practical, well-built mic that earns its keep. It’s just not an SM7, and nobody should tell you it is.
