Blue Microphones Nessie review

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.