For a mic of this type, this design and durability, the $169 price tag is an absolute steal. I’ve seen crappy headsets that cost this much and can’t perform this well. Sure, you’ll need an XLR passthrough, converter, or mixer to get it to your machine, but once there it is worth the extra effort and potential extra cost. This is the mic streamers should consider when looking for a good audio capture and delivery.
Typically, when we get mics for review they’re of the USB nature. While those are certainly gorgeous and can do the trick when you’re trying to deliver audio quickly without the cost, there is nothing quite like sending a mic into an audio mixer and out into a device (be it a switcher or a computer) to capture the absolute best quality audio delivery possible. It’s a professional quality solution and ups the game of whatever presentation you’re trying to put on.
Now, I understand springing for a Blue Yeti is going to cost you around $99, which will save you $300 when compared to a Shure SM7B. If you’re a streamer trying to save a buck, then there’s nothing like a Yeti. That said, I can tell you that most young streamers probably aren’t going to drop $399 for the Shure SM7B to up their quality game when they can get something cheaper. They certainly aren’t going to add an arm and a mixer, that will push that price point to $579 minimum. That’s quite the dip for something that may or may not return the cha-ching. Young streamers simply won’t risk that investment.
The question lies, what if you could get a professional audio XLR mic that compared to the Shure SM7B at a high-end USB audio price? Sure, you’re still going to need a mixer ($100), and you’ll want to add an inexpensive arm to hold the mic (around $20), but you won’t have to pay the $399 you would expect from such a quality XLR mic. The young streamers might shift their penny-pinching attitudes and jump at the chance. Well, get those jumping shoes ready, young streamers, because the King Bee II from Neatmic is going to cost $169, and better believe this sucker delivers.
You’ll forget that Yeti exists.
Let’s dig into that King Bee II.
Durable…trust me
The first thing you will notice right out of the box is how durable the King Bee II feels. It’s heavier than a Shure SM7B, it’s protected by a gorgeous shockmount, and it comes ready to screw into an arm with different-sized threads for whatever arm you might have. It’s a very well-prepared piece of equipment that needs little to no assembly, which quite honestly shocked my engineer and me. It’s just ready to go out of the box.
And do you know how important that pre-assembled structure is? It’s incredibly important…especially if you drop it on a studio floor. Hard. So hard that I could feel time slow down and the curse words I spoke while it was in mid-air resemble that of Ralphie from A Christmas Story.
Anyway, here is an accurate representation of the sounds it made prior to it even being used:
KAPOW! *dink* *sound of screw flying off*
Back to the review.
For about 10-minutes, while I was finding the tiny black nut that had fallen on the large black floor of the studio, I was sure that I broke the hell out of this device. Thoughts went through my head.
What do I tell Neatmic? I’m sorry I broke your mic, I’m an idiot. I’m sure it would have been great. Can I send it back now?
No. What about if I say that it came this way? Nah. You shouldn’t lie, Stevens. You’re morally better than that…right? Yes.
*shakes mic*
Nothing feels broken, but I know something has to be. I couldn’t have taken that fall and survived unscathed.
Right?
Wrong. Thankfully, this thing is durable as hell. Once I stopped panicking, placed it on the arm, re-adjusted the mount, and hooked the mic up to the audio mixer, I launched Streamlabs, and boom…it was fine. More than fine, even, stunning in delivery and every bit of cardioid as advertised.
In short, yeah, this completely planned test of durability worked out just fine. The King Bee II is sturdy, strong, heavy (so bring a good arm or at least get those screws tightened at the joints), and able to withstand a fall onto a hard floor without even showing a single scratch.
Totally intentional.
Setup and Performance
If you know what you’re doing with microphones, then there is little need to worry about setting the King Bee II up. I put it on the arm, plugged it via XLR into the tiny mixer that we had (there was a previously huge mixer in the room, but we nixed it), came out to our Alienware machine via RCA to mini-jack, and went to work. Once plugged in, I added the input in Streamlabs, and BOOM! The mic is live, it’s freaking clear as day, and it was picking up sounds better than any Yeti mic I had ever touched.
The fact that this cardioid microphone was meant for voice recording (large diaphragm in the mic) did wonders for capture and delivery inside of Streamlabs. When your job is to get the voices on your stream perfect or to do a voice-over for post-production, then this mic does it. It’s built for a very pleasing low-frequency capture, which means that you sound good, and you don’t sound like you’re yelling into the wind (a little dramatic, I get it). What you capture from the mic is what it delivers into the machine and in the cleanest and most concise way possible.
My experience with the KBII is that there was little to zero volume disparity with pick-up. The pick-up pattern was as advertised with little to no mystery thanks to the obvious design of where your lips should be and where the mic should lie. The addition of the custom pop filter means zero need for an annoying external screen. That screen worked so well that I didn’t get any obvious pops you might typically get from being too close or at an angle, something I had struggled with through the Yeti, even with a screen on it. Heck, I even struggled with that with the Shure SM7B. The design and delivery were simply exquisite.
To put this through the test, I had the opportunity to use it in one of our streaming bays. It never disappointed, never felt like it needed me to constantly adjust it to gain or adjust the quality, and it honestly just did what it said it would be doing. For a mic whose price point was $169, it felt very underpriced for what it brought to the audio portion of the streaming experience. If there was any hitch in this giddy up, it would be that the mic could pick up sounds beyond what was intended, though your choice of location would have to try hard for that to happen. Luckily, our bays are soundproof, so even the air conditioning that rolls through makes little to no difference in what is recorded. I think a noisier venue might pick up some unintentional sounds, but for any good streamer out there, you know that you probably should set up next to noisy ACs or anything else that might provide disrupting sounds…like a first-generation PS4.
With the sounds of planes landing in your PS4 aside, the mic does a good job of blocking out the external sounds while capturing what you’re asking it to take.
In addition, it was also one of the few mics I have used during streaming that I didn’t constantly adjust because the audio was so limited in its capture. Much like its body of design, the entire audio experience felt genuinely solid and reliable.
It’s a comfortable mic that knows how to take your voice and almost 1:1 delivers it as you want it.
I cannot recommend the King Bee II enough.
Conclusion
For a mic of this type, this design and durability, the $169 price tag is an absolute steal. I’ve seen crappy headsets that cost this much and can’t perform this well. Sure, you’ll need an XLR passthrough, converter, or mixer to get it to your machine, but once there it is worth the extra effort and potential extra cost. This is the mic streamers should consider when looking for a good audio capture and delivery.
