The yoke holds the mic, and to always have the top-addressed position no matter what kind of mic stand you use, it also allows you to turn the mic all the way around. Don’t forget the crucial accessory hiding underneath the foam protection of the package - the stand! Not the arm type, but the sturdy base with the anti-slide pad that gives good stability. You can get the AM8 to work right away without extra spending.
Once you want to up your game with an XLR setup, the bulky connector will make a boom arm become necessary and the yoke also fits that kind of mic stand perfectly. With both the 3/8” and 5/8” threads inside the mount, you do not have to find a tiny little box to save the boom arm adapter.
The included foam cover plays a part in better audio reproduction in two ways: diffusing some of the air blowing to reduce the sibilance from a harsh voice and keeping you a little bit further away from excessive bass from the proximity effect. If the plosives are not mellowed out in your case, position the microphone 45 degrees off-axis and talk past it, you will get a pretty similar effect of using a massive foam cover but without its shortfall of blocking some part of your face.
The warm and pleasant audio may remind you that it is the type of gear used most often on the radio day. But at first glance, the square form factor is nowhere close to a traditional podcast mic, to make things better, it spices up the gaming aesthetic with the controllable RGB. From the shape and the lights alone, it is quite promising to spell success for another eye-catching point in your studio.
When you want a bit more separation, the cardioid pattern that picks up less sound from the side and least from the back of the microphone is not enough. It has to be combined with a dynamic capsule. Only then, even if a lot is going on in the background, like the crinkling, dog barking, or even road work, those noises will not come through on the microphone. And the FIFINE AmpliGame AM8 packs with the exact combo! More bucks are saved from treating the room or buying a single booth. You can even use it in an open and spacious room without worrying too much about the echo.
The idea of the USB & XLR combo connection is that you do not have an audio interface necessarily at the very beginning and the USB mode is capable of guiding you through the whole phase of learning the microphone technique.
But you might need to break through the USB limitation later on, the XLR setup makes it possible. Together
USB connection is the meat and potatoes of the FIFINE AmpliGame AM8, but it is far from tasteless and dull (in both features and audio terms). Hook up the USB with your PC, Mac, or even Play Station console, hold on seconds for the auto-installation of the driver, fire up the RGB with the control button and you are ready to rock and roll!
We go with the restrained RGB style this time to match the unobtrusive sound from a dynamic microphone. But the RGB control and color options are not skipped over. Three types of RGB modes and eight single-color lights, a total of ten colors to choose from, or just turn them off with the touch-sensitive button. With the AmpliGame AM8 bottom lights shining, your setup will never lose freshness and always has the RGB harmony to spice up the gaming experience.
Now throw the light on a couple of more practical features. Since you need to speak from the top, which side is the front and which is the back
Turn the AmpliGame AM8 around, a minimal and simple microphone suddenly becomes sophisticated. With the controls of the RGB, microphone input level, and headphone output level, you can play for a while before the game completes loading.
The perfect combo of a live monitoring headphone jack and a microphone level control is here to secure your gaming communication with consistent loudness. You do not have to wait till your teammates’ ears are deafened to adjust the volume because the mic audio that you hear through the headphones is the same as your team members hear at the same time.
It is not able to turn off the real-time monitoring unless you connect the headphones to the computer. But in some cases, if you do not want less distraction from the game audio or the game chat, you can turn the monitoring volume down a bit or to zero.
The party piece may not be found and used until you look for something to improve the sharpness of the hearing in your FPS game. The headphone jack of the AmpliGame AM8 supports the headphones with an impedance below 120 ohms. You can plug in a pair of wired earbuds or headsets that is for your computer or smartphone, or you can go with slightly higher-end headphones for a better sound stage. And all of them will sound perfectly fine on the AmpliGame AM8, neither too quiet nor too noisy.
XLR does not have the power capability to turn on the shining RGB, but it definitely can make your voice brighter instead and give more flexibility in terms of connections and usage. All these mean that the AmpliGame AM8 can help you move into something more professional in the future.
It is not necessarily to be connected to a mixer or an audio interface that we normally see (which is not included, nor the XLR cable), but also can be hooked up to a camera preamp for recording video with much better sound quality, or to a portable recorder to get more isolated audio on the go.
The best wallet-friendly bit of the AmpliGame AM8 (as well as the K688) is that it is not a gain-hungry microphone. Therefore even if you upgrade to an XLR setup one day, a decent interface behind it will be enough to power it up. Especially for live streaming, in which you do not have much room to play with or have the luxury of doing EQ in post-production, an easy-to-drive dynamic microphone will let you run into fewer issues.
Unlike the design and features, the audio quality is in line with the traditional dynamic microphones. That means if you have a high-pitched voice, it can tame and smooth out that harshness with its low-end regions.
It may not be able to give you the lively and exciting sound the condenser mics or the other FIFINE dynamic mics such as the K658 and K688 provide, but the treble is not completely muted, it can replicate the natural tone of a not super bassy voice.