Blue Microphones Nessie review

The Blue Microphones Nessie is an adjustable condenser microphone aimed at serious home musicians and podcasters, and it has an extremely pleasant design. The Nessie’s microphone is mounted on an adjustable neck that makes setting it at the appropriate height very easy, whether you’re using it while seated at a low coffee table, a standard office desk or somewhere less conventional. The Nessie’s built-in USB sound card can record DVD-quality 16-bit/48KHz audio. This isn’t the highest bit rate and resolution, but it’s certainly good enough for podcasts and demos.

The ball at the top of the Nessie houses a condenser microphone of the kind for which Blue is well known. Compared to dynamic microphones, condenser microphones have a wide frequency response and are sensitive to quiet sounds, which makes them ideal for accurately and naturally capturing the human voice or the subtle sounds of acoustic instruments. While dynamic microphones use an electric coil connected to a diaphragm to convert sound waves into an electrical signal, condenser microphones have a diaphragm that acts as one of a plate of a capacitor. Constant voltage (in this case supplied via the USB connection) is applied to the circuit, which includes the diaphragm and a second fixed plate. As sound waves cause the diaphragm to vibrate, the capacitance between the plates changes. This alters the voltage across the capacitor, generating the changing electrical signal that communicates the sound to your recording or output medium.

Towards the base of the Nessie’s stem is a mute button, which we found to be a little over-sensitive; even the lightest touch enables and disables it. A glowing ring of light around the base flashes when the microphone is muted and remains lit when the microphone is live. Built into the base is a large volume control for the microphone’s built-in monitor output. Unfortunately, it’s rather too easy to accidentally brush and activate the mute button when adjusting the volume. The Nessie has a 3.5mm headphone port at the back that you can use for very low latency monitoring. There’s also a Micro USB port for connecting the Nessie to your PC, as well as a switch that alters the microphone’s recording mode.

Previous Blue Microphones devices at this price have involved multiple condenser capsules that can operate together in various modes. This setup lets the condenser capsules record different kinds of directional and ambient sound. However, the Nessie has just one condenser capsule that works as a cardioid microphone. In other words, it’s set up only to record sound directly in front of it. It also has a built-in DSP chip that can process your audio before it goes to your PC via USB. This processing includes equalisation, a de-esser to get rid of harsh vocal sibilants and automatic level control. These settings are applied in various ways depending on whether you’ve switched the microphone to vocal mode, music mode or are using it in raw mode, which doesn’t apply any processing.

The Nessie is an effective microphone with a particularly clear and natural reproduction of human voices, making it ideal for podcasters. However, when listening in detail, we weren’t particularly keen on the characteristics our sound picked up, particularly in the microphone’s vocal and music modes. Echo from the walls of our small room was particularly noticeable, and low tones had a slightly over-emphasised, almost booming quality, even when we recorded in a more open environment. This was most pronounced in vocal and raw recording modes, while instrument mode had slight treble emphasis that made it well suited to recording our nylon-string acoustic guitar.

The Nessie is rather susceptible to picking up ambient noise, although the EQ settings of its vocal mode seemed to do a better job of minimising this than either raw or instrument mode recordings in a busy environment. It’s also worth noting that if you touch the Nessie during recording, to adjust the monitoring volume level or microphone angle for example, it’ll sound like a hammer blow if you’re recording or monitoring at the time. The microphone’s sensitivity also means you’ll have to keep it well away from your computer while recording, as you’ll otherwise be plagued by a background hum from even a relatively quiet laptop or all-in-one PC. Fortunately, the Nessie comes with a 2m USB lead to help you keep your distance, but computer noise can still be a problem if you’re recording in a small space.

If you’re serious about audio quality and require a USB microphone then the Blue Yeti costs around the same price but has an array of three condenser capsules as opposed to the Nessie’s one. Meanwhile, the more expensive Yeti Pro, with its XLR output and 24 bit/192 KHz USB sound card, is the perfect choice for podcasters and live demo recorders keen to take the next step up. The Nessie’s perfectly decent, but other Blue microphones are much better.