Arozzi Colonna Microphone Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅04-03-18
Performance Testing
Setup, Design & Observations
Setting up the Arozzi Colonna will require a spare USB 2.0 port, from there it is plug and play.

The included cable is 3m long which is great as it allows you to position the microphone at a significant distance away from your PC system, however we would have liked the cable to feature some braiding, and a ferrite core to reduce any interference (RFI or EMI).

Much of the body of the Colonna is plastic, while high quality, it does dampen the 'visual' quality a little, but this can easily be overlooked. However, the frame on the included stand, and is rather bouncy and likely to easily cause interference with the microphone should you accidentally knock the microphone. The dials too are plastic, but felt fine and certainly capable of doing what they are intended for. The onboard buttons are very stiff clicking, and we would prefer a little more squish or resistance to them.

Performance Testing

During our testing, we did note that there was indeed some RFI, as well as background vibrational noise caused by our PC systems cooling, this is an inevitable consequence of having the microphone placed within 600mm of both our PC system, and our WiFi Router. However, voice pick up is incredibly clear and detailed, and despite not using a pop-filter, it didn't choke under the pufferances of any of the plosives (sounds when aspirated, you expel a puff of air, for example the letter P). Our recording is a fairly easy fix to clean up using basic filters, but in an environment where you are streaming, you may wish to adjust your desktop, and system positioning to ensure there is no interference, while you may wish to use a microphone boom to mount the Colonna, allowing it to be both closer to you, while allowing you to reduce the sensitivity. Thanks to the long cable and various pickup patterns, you should have no problem using it for group recordings, or Podcasts.

To test out if we could reduce the RFI, we swapped the cable out for a cheap £3 one from Amazon. We found that it did reduce the RFI, but didn't eliminate it completely, and so it is likely that I would need to rearrange my setup/system to help improve, and reduce any interference. Also, simply buying a higher-quality shielded cable will fix the issue; regardless, this isn't something that should be necessary.


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