EPOS B20 Streaming Microphone Review

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅02-06-21
Performance



From a mechanical standpoint the B20 is good, but not perfect. Construction appears exceptionally robust thanks in part to the aluminium body, but the connection made between the circular stand base and stalk is just fractionally loose. It will also be vulnerable to tipping, though we imagine that dangling wires routed under the base would be the chief culprit. On the other hand, the B20 is stable when attached to a RODE PSA1 mic stand via the native 3/8ths inch thread, and would absolutely be our configuration of choice if possible.

The supplied documentation and microphone itself don’t make it clear but the side with Volume and Mute buttons is the ‘front’, a fact you’ll need to dig into the B20’s product page to uncover. It wouldn’t hurt for EPOS to be a little clearer on this.

EPOS recommend that the microphone be positioned approx. 20cms from the mouth at a Gain of 50% when using the cardoid pick-up pattern, and we used this as the basis for our testing with the device. It’s a pretty good fit for the microphone all things considered, though less confident broadcasters will need to get used to projecting their voice more than they might be comfortable with.

The Gain dial is a little sensitive out of the box, making the software a more reliable avenue for adjusting levels. EPOS do have a firmware fix planned for this however.

From a pure audio standpoint, the B20 clearly captures vocal tones while passively filtering out extraneous noises, particularly those outside of its pickup radius. It eliminated most of the plosive ‘pops’ and some more of the sibilant ‘Ss’ without noticeably degrading the quality or losing any exclamation or pronunciation quirks. Teammates on voice comms noted the vocal clarity but did not express any issues with background noise, despite PC case fans running in the background.

With the weather heating up we cranked open some windows to let the world in, and with built-in filters and moderate noise cancellation levels the dull hum of the outside was effectively eliminated. Sharper and more spontaneous noises were still picked up, but you can't expect miracles.

Speaking of vocals, the explicitly defined and customisable side-tone channel should be applauded here. Many mic users either don’t know they exist or how to use one they have, so to have it well implemented and configurable in software - that is then saved as a setting to the device - will allow less accomplished users to take better advantage of the functionality. And in so doing they will become a lot more comfortable with their own voice as it’s not deadened by noise-isolated headphones through this channel.

When positioned in front of the monitor the B20 using a cardioid pickup pattern didn’t register any bounceback from either the monitor screen or wall directly behind it. Eliminating these small niggles certainly helps to de-stress the process of gaming and streaming, and marked a welcome departure from some other microphones we’ve used in the past.

Other pickup patterns operated as advertised, although some amount of tinkering is required to get the proper gain and noise gate levels for each. We did struggle to really envision a scenario where each would be preferable when used as a solo streamer/content creator over the simple cardioid pattern, although granted the world isn’t quite set up for collaborative in-person content creation at present.

One aspect of the B20 we’ll miss is the dedicated mute button. Windows 10 doesn’t currently offer a hotkey/shortcut key to just mute microphone inputs and other mics often have to make do with 3rd party software, to our endless frustration. Microphones, both discrete and those integrated into headsets, should have them but frequently don’t; the B20 does and we used it frequently.

Another welcome inclusion was the very subtle indicator LEDs. Some manufacturers have started to ape ‘gaming’ aesthetic styles with adaptive RGB lighting, so a dim white bar for ‘on’ turning to a gentle red when the mic is muted was a pleasant surprise. It’s not at all distracting, and white is far better than blue for not standing out like a sore thumb. They also shouldn’t reflect too strongly in your glasses if you wear them, once again making it a little more appropriate for streaming.

Whether attached to the stand base or a 3rd party mount, the B20’s stiff articulation between mic and stalk makes it pose-able in a single 360-degree elliptical. Rubber feet on the included stand base keep the microphone in place on a desk, but we did court disaster once or twice when moving cables without care.

Finally, we did notice one potential problem with the hardware itself. Very rarely, once every 20mins or so, we heard an audible pop through our headset when connected through the mic’s side-tone channel. It’s brief and no loud but still clearly audible. It might be due to the mic, headset, or system on which it was tested, but we would be remiss not to mention it.

To sum up, the B20 captured voice crisply and cleanly, and rewarded tinkering with software and hardware settings in a manner that isn't common amongst consumer audio devices.


7 pages « < 4 5 6 7

Comments