Hollyland Lark M2 Wireless Lav Mic Review (I was SHOCKED!)

welcome I don't consider myself an especially stylish man on the whole but do you dig my new necklace in this video of course I'm reviewing the hollyland lar M2 it's a tiny Wireless wearable love mic from a company that's making some crazy Innovative strides with this different take on lav mic design I had questions most importantly does it sound good how does it compare to the market leading lav systems it's also got some lofty specs on paper and do they translate to the real world let's find out before we jump in I need to ask a favor I'm on the long and winding path to 100,000 Subs so every subscriber honestly means the well to me and it would make my day if you could just do that it would cost you nothing and um I appreciate it thank you in advance and of course I've also timestamped everything in this video so you can just skip to the bit you want this video is also unsponsored but is made possible by my patreon backers any funds from patreon go back into the channel I buy gear and then I give the gear to my backers like this lck M2 which is worth £150 which in this case haryan sent me on the condition that you know I can say what I like and I get to give it away to one of you guys so if that's of Interest get down below all the details there and let's press on obviously for this video you are hearing the lar M2 throughout but for reference this is what my main microphone sounds like it's of course the warm audio wa47 I love it I reviewed it recently definitely check it out if you like the sound of this and obviously you know I'm hiding the mic it's there and um I did a video about how I do that as well so do check it out I'll link everything like that below and um it's an unfair comparison of course because this is expensive and it's going through an expensive signal path um but anyway that's just for reference let's switch back now and press on again so I should explain the concept of the lar M2 for so long now lav mics have been either just really visible and quite ugly to look at and you know just obvious or they've been you know hidden and probably taped to a subject's chest and that can be kind of fiddly and awkward don't get me wrong those are still really good options but what Hol land have done is they've really leaned into the idea of a lav mik being a wearable item that's intentionally visible and you know it becomes more like a clothing accessory I think that's genius the lck g 2 is Wireless as I mentioned in the intro but what I didn't mention is that on the spec sheet of this it has a range of 300 M around 1,000 ft and if that's true that's impressive but of course I will test this in a bit holand say that you get 10 hours of battery charge and if that's the case that's pretty good I haven't sat there for 10 hours watching it to run out of battery but what I have done done is since I got this I've left one of the transmitters out and I haven't charged it at all and it's still seemingly going strong so that's pretty good it comes with a slick charging case which the feel of it reminds me of apple airpods and to this I say Bravo to hollyland and I hope it's something we're going to see more of for film making peripherals going forward I know aperture are doing a lot of this a lot of uh charging cases for some of their lights so it's all good news the case will get you to fully charge twice in just 1.5 hours so this really is super handy Holly lands say that with the battery case the system gives a total of 40 hours battery life and hang on a minute I'm modestly okay at maths but it doesn't take a genius to see that those figures don't quite add up 10 hours life from a transmitter okay and then two extra charges that's 30 hours and what if I'm using both transmitters and then I'm charging both of them in the case that's got to have an impact on the runtime surely this doesn't add up if you know what's happening here I mean maybe I've missed something let me know the luck M2 records at 48 khz and 24bit so modern sensible bit depths and Sample rates it also has a signal and noise ratio of 70 DBA and to give you kind of some context there you know the the higher that number the better and I would expect a recording studio microphon to have kind of a little better signal toise ratio of around maybe 75 or better DBA for example my AKG c414 XLS which I've got mounted on my road arm behind me has a signals noise ratio of 88 DBA which is I mean it's an exceptionally clean microphone but you know 18 DB different just saying it's rated to cope with a sound pressure level of 115 DB basically the volume in which you'll start to hear harmonic Distortion now more context to you again my c414 behind me is rated at 140 SPL so that's going to sound much cleaner at higher volumes whereas this will be more sensitive of course a big part of modern lav systems game is noise cancellation and this one has a low and then strong mode and it can be switched on and off just actually from the transmitter itself so that's really cool but of course I'll be testing it in a bit one thing this system doesn't have and I think would have been really quite amazing is internal storage in the receiver I know what you thinking it probably would need to be slightly bigger the receiver itself and the whole system would need to cost slightly more but again not much flash media is small and fairly inexpensive so just imagine the possibilities I just think that was potentially a little bit of a missed opportunity and would have been super cool there are a few bundles available there's one for use with phones there's this one which I got for use with cameras obviously and there's a combo version for basically any situation moving on to the build quality side of things and there's a fair bit of plastic involved but it doesn't feel poorly made at all in fact let me just show you and here it is I'm not much of an unboxer on the whole but you know let's let's show you what you get in the Box we've got instructions warranty card that kind of thing and these stickers these actually go on the mics themselves if you want to wear them I don't think they're for me personally we've got the charging case and the transmitters and receivers we'll leave that for the moment and just see what's underneath this is a bag full of accessories cables and everything that you need these kind of products often have just so many accessories and bits and nowhere to put them so I I appreciate having a bag uh now this is so that you can wear them as you saw earlier in the video they are magnetic almost everything here is magnetic and then we have these clips and also these are magnetic these are super handy as well they're very small very compact they're going to be really discreet to use and then we've got all sorts of other stuff we've got little dead cat attachments more cables you know what it's boring let's skip on and of course we have the case which is a charging case which I love and we have the transmitters and receiver I want all of these kind of peripherals to come with charging cases in future cuz it's so handy this thing feels really well made as I mentioned there's a lot of plastic but it was always going to be like that the mics themselves are incredibly light in fact they're actually only 9 G each which is about as light as I've ever heard of for this kind of lav mic overall I'd say everything here feels good quality yet supremely lightweight all the magnets are super strong feeling and it's just a a really thoughtful and yet convenient package let's move on next onto the user experience and user interface side of things and so far I have had a fantastic experience of using the lck M2 it's really its strength you grab the receiver and transmitters out of the case and they quickly switch on an automatically pair there's no fussing around with pressing pair buttons or holding buttons down to try and get them to connect it just works and feels really refreshingly easy after using products like the road Wireless goto and speaking of buttons on the receiver there's a volume control wheel which has three gain settings an onoff button if you need it and a button that switches between stereo and mono which is useful if for example you're just using one transmitter into your camera you can switch to mono and use both left and right channels the transmitters have just one button which switches between low and strong noise cancellation there's a free lar sound app which as you can see gives you largely the same kind of functionality that you get when using the receiver but you know it's nice sometimes to have a more visual experience plus you can do things like you can change the uh noise cancellation mode which is nice to have bear in mind though your phone and the receiver do need to be connected whilst using it I did wonder whether using the app I could monitor the audio using my airpods but alas but you know if you've been able to get this to work let me know uh I am interested anyway now let me show you how the lck M2 sounds in a few different situations and versus the road Wireless go 2 and this is what the lar M2 sounds like as you can see I've got it in the style mode center of the chest I've got the noise cancellation uh on low mode so what do you think how does it sound I'm going to switch now to the road Wireless go 2 and you know we can see if there are any differences and then this this is what the road minus 2 sounds like you are not going to believe what just happened I used this system about a month ago for a job um I got back I charged them I turned them off I was sure to and I put them away I got them out to use for this test and all of them dead the transmitters uh the receiver all of them dead and that's not good so really these could do with uh either a better sort of system you know which retains the battery life for longer or we need it needs some kind of charging case so that's a real flaw with the road system and it's something I've noticed before so really I should have probably just charged them prior to doing this test but anyway it's in the same position you can see how much bulky it is does it sound that different you tell me and well yes is the answer I couldn't believe how good that lock sounded with just no EQ no compression nothing and a big thing for me is how easy these are to work with in editing do they need work to get them sounding their best how do they react to EQ and compression so here we go before and after without processing then with and this is what the L M2 sounds like as you can see I've got it in the style mode center of the chest I've got the noise cancellation uh on low mode so what do you think how does it sound and this is what the L Mt sounds like as you can see I've got it in the style mode center of the chest I've got the noise cancellation uh on low mode so what do you think how does it sound so as you can see I've got it attached here I'm just going to walk that way uh back to the camera so it's not technically line of sight but we'll see we'll just see how far we go and um I'm going to walk that way just keep talking and fairly sure I've engaged the noise cancellation not that you really need it here but I will do a proper test of that coming up I'm a little way away let's see if you can hear me past this point now I could even go around the corner and see if that does anything to interrupt the signal here we go I'm going to dark this way and see if you can hear me I'm pretty far away I wouldn't be surprised if this is cut out I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't hear that but that's okay I'm going to keep walking always feel like a crazy man just talking to myself I should stick airpods in and pretend them on the phone shouldn't I editor half here and I just wanted to download my thoughts on what we just saw you could hear me walking along because I had it attached to my coat and looking at my audio it actually only cut out one time and that's when I went behind meters of thick stone walls so I think that's incredibly impressive I didn't measure the distance I honestly can't see myself needing to film from further away than this so it's a tick from me so I'm in a really busy Cafe and I've got the noise cancellation off you can probably hear tons of noise I'm just going to switch it on really simple test see it's gone green I should be on and it should be sound better uh what do you think I wanted to run just one more test so far I've just been running the audio straight into my camera onto the file but does it sound better at all if I run it onto something like my Tascam Port capure X8 handheld recorder which is an excellent product you should check out my review and then I want to see if I can get it going through my Heritage audio Brit strip which is kind of a cash No Object Channel strip so it's a really good uh preamp um EQ compression and then I'll have it going through my ssl2 I've reviewed all of these products you should look at the reviews I recommend them so this is what it sounds like through the camera let's switch to the task cam and this is what it sounds like going through my Tascam Port capture X8 I've had to turn the gain up on the receiver and quite high on the Tascam unit itself so um I don't know what it's going to sound like but in theory it should be better because all the components are you know better for audio than a camera is on the whole so yeah let's switch again and there we go this is crazy I mean you probably wouldn't do this in real life I've got this going into the DI of my Heritage audio Brit strip which you know I've I've cranked the preamp a little bit so you might get some some harmonic Distortion you you know you're going to get some of the EQ section going I've got some top and bottom boosted so so it might sound a little fatter and a little more crisp and then I've got it running through the amazing diode Bridge compressor you get in the britz strip this is just a crazy signal path but yeah I don't know does it sound good you tell me moving on now to value for money and Alternatives and to get some context and assess the value we need to start looking at the most obvious competitors firstly we have the DJI mic 2 DJI of course are a highly respected company the specs seem similar albeit not quite as good on paper in real world test well you know who knows but the price for the two transmitter one receiver bundle is quite a bit more than the price of the lar M2 then we have the road Wireless series I own the original and now the wireless go 2 you heard it so you can decide how they compare personally I'd say they're a little overrated the transmitters are Rel relatively heavy and I've never been totally happy with the sound but people buy them because it's Road yawn I've said it before I know they're the biggest name in on camera audio but in the recording studio World Road are not particularly highly regarded these are also priced far higher than the lar M2 you might argue that the wireless Pro is a better comparison as it comes with a charging case and some other cool features but I don't think that's particularly Fair seeing as it costs around 150% more than the lar M2 next to the pros and cons and I'll start with the pros cuz I'm a glass half full kind of guy so starting with the pros and I love the concept of these the idea of Leaning into them being a wearable item that actually kind of looks okay and not obviously a lav system I just think it's genius this system is so lightweight I mean 9 G per transmitter that's unbelievable this is such a convenient package everything is just really thoughtful honestly apart from a little bit of internal storage I'm not sure how I could improve the convenience factor this sound quality was impressive far more finished sounding than any Wireless love system that I've ever used the battery life has been incredible I've still not charged it since it arrived I'm just going to see how long it lasts this costs less than the competition and works brilliantly so I'd say this qualifies as being exceptional value and then the cons and this was kind kind of difficult I would have loved to seen internal storage is not really a con just more of a wish and again not really a con but I question the style side of things particularly the stickers that come with it I think they're they're not for me should we say that finally it's in my opinion and how has it taken this long for a la manufacturer to think differently like this you know to to think of um La systems as more something that you know that look okay as a wearable item almost most as a fashion item dare I say it but you know I think hollyland have been really kind of smart it's really Forward Thinking and using these I've just been so almost kind of blown away so impressed I would say as useful as lav systems are I don't think the kind of the lav sound is for me you know I came from an audio background using mics like this condenser mic and um I I always find that with lav mics I have to do a fair amount of surgical EQ cuts to kind of to make them sound normal and I think the reason I feel like this is that you know we don't usually hear people's voices by putting our ears next to someone's chest it's just a little bit unnatural compared to the way that you set up say a condenser microphone however the L M2 is different I feel it's probably the best sandling La system that I've used and I certainly think it's the most convenient and I think you get tons for your money it's amazing value honestly I know I'm giving I'm giving this away but I think I'm I think I'm going to have to sell my my road Wireless goto and buy another version of this for my use cuz I don't think I can go back honestly so anyway that's my review it's really good it's worth every penny it's smart as hell and this was an interesting review because I I like to be critical I like if you know if I'm going to recommend something I like to find all the flaw and tell you about them before you know if you were going to go and buy something uh so yeah and I couldn't find many so anyway I hope you found this interesting and helpful I want to hear from you what did I miss did did you agree definitely let me know po you know comments down below and I'll I'll be down there as much as candy I've now made hundreds of videos about video and audio of which the algorithm has recommended this video for you to watch next and the one below is my most recent upload until next time let's help each other out and shoot better video see you [Music] [Music] guys

Channel: Harv Video/Audio Stuff

Views: 14,384

Keywords: harv, video audio stuff, james harvey, sony, canon, nikon, harv video audio stuff, videography, photography, a7s3, a7siii, a7s iii

Id: WTBjfcL52W4

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024