SHOULD YOU BUY THE FIFINE K688??

I've been trying to avoid buying specific brands of microphones for review generally speaking it's the Amazon brands that I've been avoiding the most you know the mayonnos of this world if you will and I kind of lumped for fine or if I find or however you say it into the same category because they never really saw them anywhere else but I have noticed them popping up in Best Buy and such so you know what why not I saw they had a new XLR USB combo mic so let's do it now for this video I am an XLR mode for most of it the reasoning on that is coming up but for now let's just get into the build quality now my first thought when I picked it up was that it felt cheap and I'm gonna blame most of that on the weight it is super light it shouldn't mean anything and on closer inspection it's fine the shock mount is hard mounted to the mic so this is literally the presentation of it mostly a metal body with the inner ring of the shock mount in the clip being the only real exceptions now the rear of the mic looks like this with all the usual USB offerings the USB plug is a touch loose and it did crackle once or twice when I moved it so a bit of a heads up there also the volume knob is fine but on my mic the headphone knob is super tight and does not like to move whereas the gain knob moves easily and is fine kinda worried about quality control if this is the standard with this mic company also I should note the nose for this mic feels fantastic I have no idea what the material is and no idea how transparent it is but damn is it nice and soft also if you look under the hood there's an obvious nod to the sm7b here but that capsule is so much closer on this over the 7B all right let's do specs and this is a little weird because most of the specs are referring to the USB preamp but let's muddle through this what we got this mic is a dynamic cardioid it has a frequency response of 70 Hertz to 15 kilohertz Max SPL of 130 DB a signal-to-noise ratio of what they say is greater than 75 DB and if you do plan on using it for USB it is 16 bit and 44 1 or 48 and the one that really confused me is the sensitivity it's listed as neg 58 plus 3 DB I have no idea now let's take a look at the off-axis rejection of the fafine k688 this is me speaking about three inches off the front of the capsule now I'm about three inches off the side of the capsule and now I'm speaking directly into the rear of the microphone now for a plosive rejection test of the fine k688 Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers now for the proximity effect test of the fafine k688 this is me speaking about three inches off the front of the capsule now I'm directly in front of the capsule three inches in front of now for the handling noise test of this microphone the forfein k688 I swear I'll get it soon foreign k688 up against the sure sm58 and we only have a couple microphones that I really want to go through here uh the sure is the standard it's the Baseline it's the one that I think other companies really need to try to aim for if you're going for quality of sound and this is what it sounds like when I go between the two of them which one do you like now we have the fine k688 up against the SE dcm3 this is a relatively new microphone on the market from SE and one that I actually can recommend if you want a microphone kind of in the broadcast style that does actually meet expectations when compared to the sm58 and what do you think as I go between these two microphones this being the fine this being the sedc M3 now we have the fine k688 up against the SE dynacaster cheaper than the sm7b but this also has some settings on the back you've got roll-offs and you've got a high shelf on this microphone as well so as I go between the two of them which one do you like now we have the uh for fine k688 up against the Shure sm7b and this is the difference as I go between them which one do you like this one being the 100 I think give or take and this one being the four hundred dollars I think it's been a while since I bought an sm7b which one do you like as I go between them and now we get into why I'm not reviewing the USB portion of this microphone this is the USB connection it sounds like this and yep that's exactly what it sounds like when your sample rates aren't matched and it doesn't matter what I do I change sample rates between 44 1 48 kilohertz I played around with a bit depth didn't matter nothing worked I can't tell if it's an issue with the converters or the preamps but nothing I do fixes it now the big problem here and one of the reasons I avoid mics of this class is because there's really no fix here aside from returning it and getting another one and for me that's a problem there is no contact for technical difficulties when you go to their website and try to troubleshoot you just get sent to an FAQ page that doesn't even have this new microphone on there I mean I got nothing and the worst part is for USB mics they're supposed to just be Plug and Play when you plug them in they force your system to the settings that allow the mic to work automatically this microphone just does not work as a USB and that alone makes me not want to recommend this microphone and I'm not gonna lie I'm super disappointed by that because I actually kind of like the sound of this mic it's a bit muddy in the low mids though nothing a small EQ won't fix it actually stood up to a lot of the mics I put it up against and it even had a similar profile to the sm7b but here's the biggest problem the issue this mic has is one of two things first it's either defective or incapable of working with something in my setup second I'm the problem and I'm just too much of an idiot to fix it now if it is the first problem that's a major issue since my laptop is basically basic nothing special other than Windows 11 but again this is a brand new mic not an older model so that's highly doubtful most likely it is defective and I'm not willing to put this review off to figure it out if it is the second issue well that's an even bigger problem for fine considering I'm one of the best case scenarios for troubleshooting a simple USB microphone so if this is somehow over my head I feel bad for anyone else that gets this mic and has the same issues for a company with as much stock as they have they need a better troubleshooting system honestly I'm super disappointed with the turnout here quite possibly one of the better sounding XLR USB mics I have used by the way if the fine is watching this and you want me to redo my review hit me up my email is on my about tab otherwise I'm sending it back by the way if you did come here looking for a great USB mic one that I can actually recommend check out the new rode gaming mics pretty sweet [Music]

Channel: Dark Corner Studios

Views: 61,419

Keywords: Dark Corner Studios, Aiden Wolf, Fifine k688, fifine k688 review, fifine k688 vs shure sm7b, fifine k688 vs dynacaster, fifine k688 vs dcm3, Is fifine good?, is fifine microphone good?

Id: muWxydBYSw8

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022