Pop Filter For Mic Review: Auphonix
If you search Amazon for a pop filter, you’ll get more than 10 pages full of confusing lists. The items there look and sound similar, but we all know that they aren’t, To save you from that, I’ve reviewed this pop filter from Auphonix.
This is what I recommend to people who have no idea about pop filters and who’re not completely prepared to invest in high-end products yet. In a nutshell, this filter from Auphonix is what I consider the industry standard, and anyone, especially you, will definitely appreciate having one of these.
It Doesn’t Block The Good Stuff
First of all, if you have a Blue Yeti microphone, this is the pop filter for you. The best thing about this is that it doesn’t stifle your voice and won’t mask your inflections.
Also, it won’t heavily reduce the low and high frequencies of your voice. These frequencies can be pleasant or not, depending on the quality of your voice and the recording you made.
By the way, some singers and recording engineers perform low and/or high pass filters on vocals to remove these frequencies. It’s often done in post-production, and you don’t necessarily need to do this.
It’s best that when you record, the quality of audio that you create must be as raw as possible without unwanted elements like noise, reflections, plosives, and ambient sounds. And this creation from Auphonix can definitely help you achieve that.
It Works As An Excellent Spit Guard
And like with any regular filter, it protects your microphone from your antagonistic spit. Let’s face it. It happens. We cannot consciously prevent it from getting launched from your mouth. After all, we always put 100% of our mental processing in producing the best voice possible. Creating some drizzle in front of us is a small price to pay.
Aside from that, this filter gets the job done. It reduces pops or plosive to barely hearable levels. It’s large enough to ensure that no gust of breath will muddy the record. It’s size also helps break the wind, breeze, or gusts coming from the window, AC, and fans surrounding you.
Aside from plosives, it also effectively reduces hisses. In my experience, hisses are huge pain since unlike plosives, you need to distance your mouth further away to ensure that the hiss won’t reach the mic. Standard single-layer pop filters can’t eliminate it at all unlike this one.
In addition to hissing (not the electromagnetic kind), it can also protect your mic from sudden deep breaths. If you’re completely new at singing using a mic, let me tell you that it can pick up every breath you take and release. Regular listeners and amateur singers can’t easily detect breaths. Veterans will consider your song unprofessional and amateurish.
What Makes It Good and What It Does
Lastly, it boils down to its most crucial function: rerecording prevention. The most annoying thing about recording without a pop filter is that you’ll need to retake the lines to make sure that the final record will be clean.
Removing those pops, hisses, and breathes in post-recording should be a last resort. Not to mention that at the hands of an amateur sound producer, using digital pop, noise, and hiss removal tools will only ruin a pristine track.
The reason it’s good at what it’s supposed to do is not a secret. It has mostly something to do with the mesh material and the number of meshes it has. This one has two.
Look closer, and you’ll immediately discern it’s design’s distinction. The double-layer mesh is thick enough to reduce sudden loud outbursts of lines without heavily silencing quiet passages.
Materials wise, it’s gooseneck is reliable, stiff, and flexible. You can bend it and twist it without worrying that it will loosen up after a few times of readjusting it. You can even turn it around by 360° without hearing anything snapping or breaking.
At the other end of this device is the fastening adapter. It perfectly fits together with a blue yeti microphone, which makes this the most convenient choice as your mic’s pair. Of course, it doesn’t mean that it’s useless if you don’t own a blue yeti. You can attach its adapter to any microphone stands without any hassle after all.
The Caveat
Do note that you need a heavy-duty stand if you’re planning to install it on a mic stand. It’s bulkier than what you might expect from its appearance. It weighs 7.2 ounces, by the way. Adding a shock mount for the microphone and a portable isolation booth will definitely make your stand unbalanced and easily toppled with a light touch if it’s a cheap one. It doesn’t help that the neck is around 14 inches long. If you set it improperly, it can get hooked on your clothing, and this might get your precious gears rolling on the floor.
The only problem with this design is its functionality as a spit guard for your mic. Since it’s made out of mesh, the spit that sticks on it will get small particles like dust, dirt, and other debris stuck on it as well. Because of that, you need to routinely clean it after use. If you don’t, three things may happen:
Bacterial growth may occur on the mesh, and it can get smelly. Dirt may block the small holes in the mesh and ultimately reduce the volume and intensity of your voice. The mesh may weaken and can get damaged.
My Final Thoughts
It looks very professional. The material used is not just some third-rate stuff other manufacturers use in their products. In a nutshell, it’s a defined standard for the pop filter category of recording gear. Check it out here: Auphonix Pop Filter Microphone.
