Taking their name from the Swahili word for ‘vision’, Maono describe themselves as a “global bestselling Internet microphone brand”, and offer a range of keenly priced mics and accessories. Unsurprisingly, many of these are USB models aimed at podcasters and vloggers, but they also manufacture mics that are studio‑friendly as well as wallet‑friendly. Their flagship studio model is the PM500, a fixed‑cardioid capacitor mic that retails for the princely sum of $149.99 and comes with an impressive range of accessories.
The PM500 has a businesslike rectangular body that recalls some of the Lewitt models. Build quality seems very decent given the low cost: the headbasket is robustly put together and reasonably well damped. The aforementioned accessories include a pretty substantial shockmount, which does a good job of holding the mic at your chosen angle but is only moderately effective at isolating it from stand‑borne noise. A smart clip‑on pop shield attaches to the front of this, and you also get a 2.2m mic cable and a chunky desktop stand with a round metal base.
The specifications don’t make clear whether the PM500 is an externally polarised ‘true’ capacitor mic or an electret but, either way, it needs 48V phantom power to operate. It uses a single‑sided, one‑inch capsule of a type I’ve not seen before, with a black plastic surround, and is presumably transformerless, though this is again not stated. Sensitivity is a comfortable 18mV/Pa or thereabouts, and a self‑noise figure is given as 20 microvolts RMS; this is not directly comparable with the conventional measurement in dBA, but the mic seemed quiet enough to me.
When affordable Chinese‑made capacitor mics began to appear in the ’90s, many of them shared a characteristically over‑bright, edgy quality, typically because a K67‑type capsule was used without any de‑emphasis in the electronics. I was half expecting the PM500 to have a similar sonic footprint, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s actually a surprisingly soft‑sounding, smooth mic, and in comparison with staples like the Neumann U87 and AKG C414B‑ULS, has a noticeably less forward upper midrange.
It’s actually a surprisingly soft‑sounding, smooth mic... If you’re afflicted with a strident, harsh or sibilant voice, it could be just the ticket
Whether this is a good thing depends on what you’re recording with it. It wasn’t a good match for my own voice, which benefits from a bit of additional ‘bite’ somewhere in the not‑many kilohertz region, but if you’re afflicted with a strident, harsh or sibilant voice, it could be just the ticket. Equally, it might be a good choice for honky guitar amps and the like, though in practice I preferred my U87 in a side‑by‑side comparison on my Fender Vibrochamp. The PM500 also responds pretty well to EQ, so all in all, it makes for a versatile and very inexpensive addition to any setup.