Plays well with all voices, and offers the flavor of broadcast with the clarity of Earthworks Audio When I first took Earthworks’ new Icon Pro microphone out of its box, I was immediately impressed. Its stainless‑steel body and drilled metal grille are classy, and with a hefty weight of 700g it feels like a mic that’s built to last. Frankly, it looks stunning, and with video being an ever more important part of home‑produced content, aesthetics matter. The ‘energy drink’ look of some budget gaming and streaming equipment has become something of a cliché, and while it might hold appeal to younger Twitch viewers, content creators with a more mature audience will probably want to be seen using serious‑looking kit. They certainly won’t be disappointed with the Icon Pro. With that in mind, let’s get into the actual sound of the microphone. Until this review, I had been using the Icon Pro XLR as my daily driver. Its realism and clarity just trumped every other microphone in my collection, including heavy-hitters like the Audio-Technica AT4040 or Blue Microphones Bluebird . Unexpectedly, one of the easiest demonstrations of this was with the typing tests I recorded on my personal YouTube channel, Endgame Tech . Keyboard typing tests are usually at best seen as rough examples of how a keyboard will sound in real life. Not with the Icon Pro XLR. What goes into that mic is exactly what comes out.

Sitting further away doesn't drop the quality, though I recommend choosing a better recording location than my bare-walled home office. The simplicity and setup speed make this mic a little more versatile than a podcast-focused XLR model. there's a bit of low-mid honk, but a couple dbs of cut around 300-400 cleaned it right up. no need to EQ out any harsh high mids, and esses were under control. I didn’t have access to an SM7B or RE20 for this review, but I did have a Sontronics Podcast Pro handy, as well as a Sony ECM‑100U. The Sontronics is a good example of a dynamic mic designed for spoken word, with a HF response that starts to drop off at around 15kHz. And though the Sony is not at all aimed at podcasters, it is part of Sony’s premium ‘High Resolution’ range, and has a frequency response extending all the way up to 50kHz. But before I get onto comparisons... First Impressions

Earthworks Ethos vs Shure SM7B: The streamer’s choice

The key comparisons here, however, are made with the broadcast mics I began this article discussing. While those microphones undoubtedly sound great (they’re classics for a reason), the ETHOS stands apart in that it uses a condenser capsule instead of a dynamic capsule. Dynamic microphones often lend a similar presence boost, but the frequency responses tend to be compressed, leading to a crunched vocal sound. Condenser microphones, on the other hand, capture a much wider frequency band and sound more natural and true to life. The Earthworks ETHOS XLR is a Broadcasting condenser microphone with a Super Cardioid Polar Pattern. The ETHOS by Earthworks is designed to push warmth and intimacy to portray the charisma of each voice, while providing natural, smooth sibilance that is not fatiguing to the listener. ETHOS is naturally resistant to handling noise and thumps thanks to internal dampening and robust stainless steel construction. The included Triad-Orbit M2-R ball joint mic adaptor allows precise placement and adjustments and is ideally suited to pair with a heavy mic arm or stand for optimal results.

The ETHOS, on the other hand, takes that same principle and then tunes it to bring out the best in the human voice. In the graph below, you can see exactly how the microphone has been tuned, with a slight presence boost between 100Hz and 900Hz, and some gentle peaks and valleys between 2kHz and 20kHz. Naturally, you’ll sound slightly more bold and crisp. This isn’t overdone, however. It just puts you forward and lends you a bit more authority than the Icon Pro is able to provide. I use this microphone nearly exclusively for voice, but have tested it on acoustic guitar as well. It excels at both, but I've not tested it enough on the guitar to determine if it's clearly a better or more balanced sound than more traditional options like the KM184. The SR314's polar pattern remains impressively consistent across the frequency spectrum.In terms of its other specifications, the SR314 is very similar to the SV33. It can accept sound pressure levels of up to 145dB, though Earthworks don't state what level of distortion is reached at that point, and sensitivity is a comfortable 10mV/Pa. The SR314 requires 24-48 V phantom power, and like all Earthworks mics, it draws the maximum permissible 10mA current. At the price, it's likely to be used in professional environments where this shouldn't be an issue, but it's worth knowing about if you take it out and about to unfamiliar venues.

The premium package

Strengths: perfectly crystal clear, lively, crisp sound. Not overly sibilant, but still has a nice sizzle at the high end. The mids are rich, and the lower frequencies, while somewhat difficult to deal with in an untreated space, are manageable and sound nice. For that kind of sound, the Icon Pro works extremely well. Intelligibility is excellent, the sound is detailed without being harsh, and the fact that it works well at a slightly greater distance than typical radio mics arguably makes it more useful for video work. The fact that it looks gorgeous also doesn’t hurt! The Earthworks ETHOS isn’t your average microphone, and that makes sense because Earthworks isn’t your average audio company. Earthworks has made its name on precision. In fact, some of its most industry-leading products are measurement microphones, designed to capture detail with the utmost accuracy. This means that the microphones have to be fast. They have to be high resolution. They have to be, in a way, HD; the audio equivalent of 4K. As a result, you can find Earthworks’ microphones on stages and in studios around the world.

If they were the same price, I wouldn’t hesitate in pointing everyone toward the Ethos over the Shure SM7B. Earthworks Ethos Review: Is it worth buying? Importantly, as the ETHOS is an active condenser microphone, it offers a much hotter output than typical dynamic broadcast mics. This is yet another advantage as it will result in a lower noise floor. Additionally, as I found, it tends to flatter average mic preamps, as you won’t be as reliant on gain from your mic pre-amps.TLDR, I ended up buying 10 of the Ethos. The Austrian Audio had a very slight edge on sound, but the Ethos won out because its sound was also excellent and its mounting system is incredibly well-thought-out. Earthworks has built a reputation for delivering impact through authentic presence and clarity — and while those attributes alone might make for a compelling broadcast mic — the Earthworks ETHOS XLR Broadcast Microphone pushes further with intimacy and warmth that manages to feel as though it is responding to the charisma of each voice while simultaneously anticipating the needs of engineers.