A Hands-On Review of the FiveFine USB Microphone: A Comprehensive Analysis
As I sat down to review the FiveFine USB microphone, I couldn't help but feel a sense of skepticism. The packaging didn't exactly scream "high-end quality," and my experience with other Fifine products in the past had been mixed. However, I decided to approach this review with an open mind and see how this microphone would perform in real-world use.
To begin, I turned off any filters that were present in OBS, the video editing software I was using at the time, and performed a self-noise test on the microphone. This involved speaking from the front, back, and sides of the mic, as well as typing on the keyboard to isolate the sound of the microphone itself. The results were enlightening - while the raw sound of the microphone wasn't bad by any means, I couldn't help but feel that it needed a bit more finesse to really shine.
Next, I set up my room for testing, including door treatments and acoustic treatment above the door to reduce echo. This is because my home office isn't exactly a quiet or treated space - but as we'll see later on in this review, the microphone's performance was surprisingly robust despite these conditions. With that said, let's get back to the microphone itself.
I spent several minutes listening to the microphone and observing how it sounded when compared to other similar products in the market. While I'm no expert, my ears tell me that this microphone has a certain... je ne sais quoi that sets it apart from its competitors. It's not the most exciting sound out there, but it's certainly well-suited for streamers who prioritize a smooth and consistent audio experience.
One of the standout features of the FiveFine USB microphone is its ease of use. The plug-and-play design makes it a breeze to set up, even for those with no prior experience with microphones or recording equipment. Additionally, the included shock mount and big knob capacitive mute make it easy to fine-tune your audio settings on the fly - which is no small thing when you're in the middle of a live stream.
But what really sets this microphone apart from its competitors is its value proposition. At $120 MSRP, it's certainly not cheap - but when compared to other high-end microphones on the market, such as the Samsung QTu or the popular Sennheiser MKH 416, I can see why Fifine might be positioning this product as a more affordable alternative.
Of course, my own experience with Fifine products in the past has been... mixed. While some of their offerings have impressed me with their quality and value, others have fallen short. However, it's clear that Fifine has taken steps to address these issues with the FiveFine USB microphone - and while it may not be the absolute best-sounding mic on the market, I'm happy to say that it holds its own against some of the more established players in this space.
In fact, after conducting further research and reading reviews from other users, I have to admit that my initial skepticism about this microphone has given way to a sense of optimism. While Fifine may not be the most well-known brand in the audio equipment market, they seem to be making some serious strides in terms of innovation and quality control - and that's something to be applauded.
So what do you guys think? How does this microphone sound to you? Do you have any experience with Fifine products or similar USB microphones? Let me know in the comments below!
As I wrap up this review, I want to reiterate my enthusiasm for the FiveFine USB microphone. It may not be perfect - but it's certainly a solid choice for anyone looking for an affordable and reliable USB microphone. And who knows? If you're feeling adventurous, you might just find that it becomes your new go-to mic for all your streaming needs.
If you liked this review, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe to my channel for more content on tech, streaming, gaming, and everything in between. I stream live every Friday at 8pm Pacific time over on Twitch - feel free to drop by and say hi! And if you have any questions or topics you'd like me to cover in future reviews, let me know down below.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody who streams or wants to get into streaming will always ask the same question what is the best microphone for streaming type that question into google search or youtube and you'll see a lot of different mics come up but there's going to be a common theme among some people as to what kind of microphone is the best for streaming and that is dynamic with that said there's a new contender in the 100 ish dynamic microphone segment and that is this the fifein k658b usb dynamic microphone and today we're checking it out my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your stream technician real quick if you're new around here and you're into tech pc hardware gaming stream tips and tutorials you're in the right place hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also ice cream to twitch every friday at 8 pm pacific at twitch.tv slash coalition gaming crew so feel free to stop by drop a follow and let's talk some tech anyways let's get to the video so let's quickly go over what the features of this microphone are so we can get to the sound test of this thing it is a cardioid dynamic microphone i want to say condenser so bad because the majority of microphones out there are condenser microphones which have a tendency to pick up everything a lot of noise a lot of background stuff like that dynamics are supposed to be good at not picking up too much noise simply because you know the the the way that they pick up noise is a lot closer to the microphone people would say um better noise rejection some people would argue that it's not necessarily noise rejection but in the end it's basically the same result so you get a little more quietness like when you're not talking or if there's background noise like ac units and keyboards and all that stuff these will just help keep that sort of stuff down yeah now this k658 microphone looks familiar right kind of looks like a sure sm7b if i hold it like this but uh if you hold it like this you see yeah big difference big old knob here so this is one of the features that i actually like about this microphone is that in the knob is a capacitive mute just just like that you touch it and it will mute the microphone no slider no clicking no nothing and just like that now the knob that you're seeing is also a mic gain knob so so i'll go over this later but it's this is nice because you can just set the mic to 100 volume in windows and then adjust it right here on the knob downside is knob is kind of plasticky metal body plasticky knob not the greatest of combos but it's not not the worst either and something else you're seeing here is this shock mount actually like this i have an entire video on shock mounts the importance of shock mounts and i'll link that right up there for you guys to check out and a lot of microphones in the price range of this guy and this is supposed to be 120 dollars from five fine um a lot of the microphones don't include a shock mount the one that i have right here this avermedia mic 330 um this is a 100 dynamic microphone that you're hearing and you've been hearing this whole time but i had to buy a shock mount for it just to help deal with the little bit of vibration issues that i had in my room yeah this shock mount cost plus the microphone ends up being about the same as this one so i think that this still competes with the the hundred dollar dynamics like the rode pod mic and i guess the at2040 is the newest one that came out and this one as well so it's competitively priced i guess the shock mount does look kind of weird for it though as you can see like it's this big thing at the end also this thing has rgb look at that rgb man on a microphone you can turn it off there's a capacitive button on the back you just touch it right there and there you go also this is a top address microphone so you speak into it like this not a side address that you would talk into like that no no no you can point it at your mouth like that like you would expect to like most people would expect to point a mic um that's kind of a thing that like a lot of dynamic microphones have there aren't really anything that are dynamic and side address and the ones that are out there just more for instrument and recording i can't show you the capsule because the foam feels like it's glued on so it is what it is so let's get this sort of sm7b sorted not looking microphone on my arm and we can give this thing a sound test oh and real quick before we get to the other mic test this mic was with with processing i had a noise gate a compressor and some eq applied to it but now what you've been hearing since i began this little segment here is this mic raw how it would sound out of the box with only gain adjustments on it so this is how this mic sounds before adjustment so that way we get a proper apples to apples comparison to the fi fine microphone so now let's get over to the fi find mic all right now we have the fifei and k658 dynamic here mounted on my arm so that way we don't have any table noise or anything like that to mess with how it sounds no processing this is just straight up to the usb speaking of the usb since we're here we're just talking on the microphone and this is what you guys are hearing now um it has usb type-c so that's nice to see we're on a modern version of usb on this microphone and then also we have uh let's turn the rgb on huh shall we um and we also have a headphone jack on the microphone for zero latency monitoring so pretty standard now for what you anybody would call a good usb microphone but always good to see either way so i have the the microphone i believe the knob is at about a quarter turn and you can tell here that if i do the if i move it around you know it's obviously getting quieter and louder as i talk and i'm gonna go to like i believe maximum on this guy oh yeah look at that all the way up high but let's bring that back down i'm looking at the bars right now in obs to make sure that i'm not peeking into the red this looks like an okay level let's go down a little bit so it's nice that you can have that on the fly adjustment right there on this microphone and also the touch to mute let's demonstrate that a lot of microphones that have a slider will like kind of be kind of peaky and or they'll kind of like click and it's kind of annoying whereas this one here i am just talking talking talking to uh as you can see it's not it's not sudden too bad at least no click no annoying noise it's okay i actually like that capacitive touch on the microphone is a really nice touch on this thing i have one more comment to make on the build quality of this microphone it's light even though it is a metal body when i'm holding up the um this guy my avermedia this thing seriously it feels like it weighs maybe three or four pounds and this maybe weighs i don't know maybe a pound if that which kind of makes sense considering the kind of shock mount that it's on is it has the weight hanging off the front of it so i understand why they went that way with it but if you're looking for something that has that really heavy build quality this is not it although that shouldn't matter really because honestly i almost never touch the microphone once i have everything set up it's just the way i like to operate some people are handsy with their microphones all the time but i don't care that much so it could be a cheap plastic microphone once i have it on the arm and everything's adjusted the way that i like i almost never touch it and then the build quality doesn't matter to me as long as it works and it works for a long time so it's time for me to listen back to this and give you guys my thoughts on how i think it sounds oh real quick let's just do a sort of a self noise test and sort of rejection test on this microphone i turned off any filters that were in obs like i mentioned and so this is how this mic sounds again raw and this is me talking from the front this is me talking from the back this is me talking from this side and now we're back in the front here let's type a little bit on here type the set w keys and now let's just type on the keyboard so again now i've been quiet through moments in this section so you guys can sort of hear how this sounds when there's no noise my room isn't all that treated i guess i don't know if you can tell like a clap i have door treatment i have treatment on the door i have treatment above the door like a ledge to reduce echo in the room and stuff like that and the rest is just a room man just a bedroom in the house ain't nothing special in here okay now let's listen back and see what i think all right i just listened back to the microphone and i have to say i think raw for raw like straight up this usb versus my avermedia um the avermedia really needed the equalization in order to bring out the best in it this microphone i feel is pretty solid without necessarily needing too much eq however i can hear it already that a little bit of eq on this microphone will definitely improve it big time and then you can have yourself a sm7b looking like it has a tumor on the side kind of microphone for your streams and it would sound pretty good how this competes to the other hundred dollar microphones hundred dollar dynamics well like i mentioned with the avermedia having pretty good results once tuned and i know that the rode pod mic again is one of those pretty good results once tuned and that sort of thing that i think it sort of has a spot there for an easier to use microphone in that range because if you're looking at the pod mic the 80 20 40 and the live streamer mic 330 the dynamics around the 100 mark right now they're all xlr and this guy's usb so if you're looking for something that was a little more let's say ready to go plug and play that sort of thing then this microphone definitely stands to have some sort of reason to exist um it doesn't sound bad so that's definitely a good thing but my experience with fifine in the past has been that they sound pretty good for the money if you guys want to check out one of our other five fine mic videos i will link right up there and down the description below and it seems that this one seems to fall into that as well although it's a bit pricier than the usual mic you would probably get from a company like fifine but choice is always good in the market and this is another choice for the 100-ish dollar dynamic microphone market the features that it has are actually all pretty good features well thought out big knob capacitive mute usb type c zero latency monitoring um all that is pretty good stuff best part my book is also the uh the rgb is nice now i'm not saying that's the best part but the included shock mount included shock mount very good what did you guys think of how this microphone sounds do you think it's worth the 120 dollar msrp i believe that fife even lists some coupons on their website even though it's it's an amazon coupon and it's not available on amazon as far as i can tell but hey if this thing got under 100 bucks its value is actually pretty high because then it puts it not that far off of like the samsung qtu's and stuff like that and you get a more let's say streamer friendly look i guess there's a reason that some people don't like some of those cheaper dynamics like the samsung qtu well here you go um all right everybody let's do this now let's get this video to 200 likes and drop a comment down below saying how you would use one of these microphones in your setup and i'll give one of these away to a random comment down below so let's get that going yeah if you like this video you know what to do hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also i stream to twitch every friday at 8pm pacific at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew so feel free to drop a follow stopping by let's talk some tech and streaming and gaming and all that sort of stuff all right everybody we'll see in the next video peace out for now byeeverybody who streams or wants to get into streaming will always ask the same question what is the best microphone for streaming type that question into google search or youtube and you'll see a lot of different mics come up but there's going to be a common theme among some people as to what kind of microphone is the best for streaming and that is dynamic with that said there's a new contender in the 100 ish dynamic microphone segment and that is this the fifein k658b usb dynamic microphone and today we're checking it out my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your stream technician real quick if you're new around here and you're into tech pc hardware gaming stream tips and tutorials you're in the right place hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also ice cream to twitch every friday at 8 pm pacific at twitch.tv slash coalition gaming crew so feel free to stop by drop a follow and let's talk some tech anyways let's get to the video so let's quickly go over what the features of this microphone are so we can get to the sound test of this thing it is a cardioid dynamic microphone i want to say condenser so bad because the majority of microphones out there are condenser microphones which have a tendency to pick up everything a lot of noise a lot of background stuff like that dynamics are supposed to be good at not picking up too much noise simply because you know the the the way that they pick up noise is a lot closer to the microphone people would say um better noise rejection some people would argue that it's not necessarily noise rejection but in the end it's basically the same result so you get a little more quietness like when you're not talking or if there's background noise like ac units and keyboards and all that stuff these will just help keep that sort of stuff down yeah now this k658 microphone looks familiar right kind of looks like a sure sm7b if i hold it like this but uh if you hold it like this you see yeah big difference big old knob here so this is one of the features that i actually like about this microphone is that in the knob is a capacitive mute just just like that you touch it and it will mute the microphone no slider no clicking no nothing and just like that now the knob that you're seeing is also a mic gain knob so so i'll go over this later but it's this is nice because you can just set the mic to 100 volume in windows and then adjust it right here on the knob downside is knob is kind of plasticky metal body plasticky knob not the greatest of combos but it's not not the worst either and something else you're seeing here is this shock mount actually like this i have an entire video on shock mounts the importance of shock mounts and i'll link that right up there for you guys to check out and a lot of microphones in the price range of this guy and this is supposed to be 120 dollars from five fine um a lot of the microphones don't include a shock mount the one that i have right here this avermedia mic 330 um this is a 100 dynamic microphone that you're hearing and you've been hearing this whole time but i had to buy a shock mount for it just to help deal with the little bit of vibration issues that i had in my room yeah this shock mount cost plus the microphone ends up being about the same as this one so i think that this still competes with the the hundred dollar dynamics like the rode pod mic and i guess the at2040 is the newest one that came out and this one as well so it's competitively priced i guess the shock mount does look kind of weird for it though as you can see like it's this big thing at the end also this thing has rgb look at that rgb man on a microphone you can turn it off there's a capacitive button on the back you just touch it right there and there you go also this is a top address microphone so you speak into it like this not a side address that you would talk into like that no no no you can point it at your mouth like that like you would expect to like most people would expect to point a mic um that's kind of a thing that like a lot of dynamic microphones have there aren't really anything that are dynamic and side address and the ones that are out there just more for instrument and recording i can't show you the capsule because the foam feels like it's glued on so it is what it is so let's get this sort of sm7b sorted not looking microphone on my arm and we can give this thing a sound test oh and real quick before we get to the other mic test this mic was with with processing i had a noise gate a compressor and some eq applied to it but now what you've been hearing since i began this little segment here is this mic raw how it would sound out of the box with only gain adjustments on it so this is how this mic sounds before adjustment so that way we get a proper apples to apples comparison to the fi fine microphone so now let's get over to the fi find mic all right now we have the fifei and k658 dynamic here mounted on my arm so that way we don't have any table noise or anything like that to mess with how it sounds no processing this is just straight up to the usb speaking of the usb since we're here we're just talking on the microphone and this is what you guys are hearing now um it has usb type-c so that's nice to see we're on a modern version of usb on this microphone and then also we have uh let's turn the rgb on huh shall we um and we also have a headphone jack on the microphone for zero latency monitoring so pretty standard now for what you anybody would call a good usb microphone but always good to see either way so i have the the microphone i believe the knob is at about a quarter turn and you can tell here that if i do the if i move it around you know it's obviously getting quieter and louder as i talk and i'm gonna go to like i believe maximum on this guy oh yeah look at that all the way up high but let's bring that back down i'm looking at the bars right now in obs to make sure that i'm not peeking into the red this looks like an okay level let's go down a little bit so it's nice that you can have that on the fly adjustment right there on this microphone and also the touch to mute let's demonstrate that a lot of microphones that have a slider will like kind of be kind of peaky and or they'll kind of like click and it's kind of annoying whereas this one here i am just talking talking talking to uh as you can see it's not it's not sudden too bad at least no click no annoying noise it's okay i actually like that capacitive touch on the microphone is a really nice touch on this thing i have one more comment to make on the build quality of this microphone it's light even though it is a metal body when i'm holding up the um this guy my avermedia this thing seriously it feels like it weighs maybe three or four pounds and this maybe weighs i don't know maybe a pound if that which kind of makes sense considering the kind of shock mount that it's on is it has the weight hanging off the front of it so i understand why they went that way with it but if you're looking for something that has that really heavy build quality this is not it although that shouldn't matter really because honestly i almost never touch the microphone once i have everything set up it's just the way i like to operate some people are handsy with their microphones all the time but i don't care that much so it could be a cheap plastic microphone once i have it on the arm and everything's adjusted the way that i like i almost never touch it and then the build quality doesn't matter to me as long as it works and it works for a long time so it's time for me to listen back to this and give you guys my thoughts on how i think it sounds oh real quick let's just do a sort of a self noise test and sort of rejection test on this microphone i turned off any filters that were in obs like i mentioned and so this is how this mic sounds again raw and this is me talking from the front this is me talking from the back this is me talking from this side and now we're back in the front here let's type a little bit on here type the set w keys and now let's just type on the keyboard so again now i've been quiet through moments in this section so you guys can sort of hear how this sounds when there's no noise my room isn't all that treated i guess i don't know if you can tell like a clap i have door treatment i have treatment on the door i have treatment above the door like a ledge to reduce echo in the room and stuff like that and the rest is just a room man just a bedroom in the house ain't nothing special in here okay now let's listen back and see what i think all right i just listened back to the microphone and i have to say i think raw for raw like straight up this usb versus my avermedia um the avermedia really needed the equalization in order to bring out the best in it this microphone i feel is pretty solid without necessarily needing too much eq however i can hear it already that a little bit of eq on this microphone will definitely improve it big time and then you can have yourself a sm7b looking like it has a tumor on the side kind of microphone for your streams and it would sound pretty good how this competes to the other hundred dollar microphones hundred dollar dynamics well like i mentioned with the avermedia having pretty good results once tuned and i know that the rode pod mic again is one of those pretty good results once tuned and that sort of thing that i think it sort of has a spot there for an easier to use microphone in that range because if you're looking at the pod mic the 80 20 40 and the live streamer mic 330 the dynamics around the 100 mark right now they're all xlr and this guy's usb so if you're looking for something that was a little more let's say ready to go plug and play that sort of thing then this microphone definitely stands to have some sort of reason to exist um it doesn't sound bad so that's definitely a good thing but my experience with fifine in the past has been that they sound pretty good for the money if you guys want to check out one of our other five fine mic videos i will link right up there and down the description below and it seems that this one seems to fall into that as well although it's a bit pricier than the usual mic you would probably get from a company like fifine but choice is always good in the market and this is another choice for the 100-ish dollar dynamic microphone market the features that it has are actually all pretty good features well thought out big knob capacitive mute usb type c zero latency monitoring um all that is pretty good stuff best part my book is also the uh the rgb is nice now i'm not saying that's the best part but the included shock mount included shock mount very good what did you guys think of how this microphone sounds do you think it's worth the 120 dollar msrp i believe that fife even lists some coupons on their website even though it's it's an amazon coupon and it's not available on amazon as far as i can tell but hey if this thing got under 100 bucks its value is actually pretty high because then it puts it not that far off of like the samsung qtu's and stuff like that and you get a more let's say streamer friendly look i guess there's a reason that some people don't like some of those cheaper dynamics like the samsung qtu well here you go um all right everybody let's do this now let's get this video to 200 likes and drop a comment down below saying how you would use one of these microphones in your setup and i'll give one of these away to a random comment down below so let's get that going yeah if you like this video you know what to do hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also i stream to twitch every friday at 8pm pacific at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew so feel free to drop a follow stopping by let's talk some tech and streaming and gaming and all that sort of stuff all right everybody we'll see in the next video peace out for now bye\n"
