Best Microphones for Streaming and Podcasting

The AM8 is the cheapest mic in this guide that you can keep. Both outputs are live on the same body: USB-C into a computer today, XLR into an interface later, without buying a second microphone. At this price that combination is unusual, and it is the reason this pick exists.

Being a cardioid dynamic, it does the thing that actually matters in a bedroom or a shared flat: it hears the front of the capsule and drops most of what is behind it, so a mechanical keyboard eighteen inches away sits well below your voice instead of on top of it. The body is metal, there is a touch mute pad on top, and a 3.5mm headphone jack gives you zero-latency monitoring so you can hear plosives as you make them.

The tuning is mildly scooped, with lifted bass and treble and a slight dip through the mids, which flatters a gaming voice and needs a little corrective EQ for spoken-word work. The supplied desk tripod is the weak part: it sits low, aims the capsule at your chin, and transmits desk bumps, so plan on a boom arm. The RGB ring is not switchable independently of power on all firmware revisions, which is worth knowing if you record at night.

The MV7+ is the mic that makes the Shure sound reachable without an engineer. It borrows the SM7B's close, midrange-forward voicing and adds a USB-C connection, so you can run it straight into a computer today and into an interface over XLR whenever you want to.

The DSP is the real product. Shure's desktop software adds auto level with SmartGate, a real-time denoiser and a digital popper stopper, which between them fix the three things that make amateur podcast audio sound amateur: drifting levels, room hiss and plosives. None of it requires you to understand what a compressor does. The onboard touch panel handles gain, monitor mix and mute.

There are honest limits. The DSP only works over USB, so the XLR side is the raw capsule and you supply the processing yourself, and reviewers consistently find the USB path thinner and more congested than the XLR path. Owners also report the mic misbehaving through USB-C to USB-A adapters and hubs, so it wants a direct USB-C port, and that the USB-C socket itself feels loose. The touch panel is easy to trigger accidentally when you adjust the boom arm.

The SM7B has been the default voice microphone in radio booths and podcast studios for decades, and the reasons are physical. The capsule sits inside an internal shock mount, so desk knocks and boom-arm handling do not reach it. The yoke and the supplied windscreen let you get close without plosives. The body is shielded against the hum that computer monitors and power supplies inject into lesser microphones. Two switches on the back set bass rolloff and presence boost, which covers most of the EQ a voice needs.

The result is a smooth, wide, authoritative voice that does not need rescuing in post, and an off-axis response even enough that turning your head does not change your tone the way it does on cheaper dynamics.

The catch is output. This is a very quiet microphone that wants roughly 60 dB of clean gain, which is more than many entry interfaces deliver without their preamps hissing. Most owners add an inline preamp such as a Cloudlifter or buy an interface with high-gain, low-noise preamps, and that cost is part of the purchase rather than optional. It is also XLR only, with no headphone jack on the body, so monitoring comes from the interface. It is heavy enough that a lightweight boom arm will droop under it.