My curiosity is always at its maximum when a company known for a specific thing comes out with something completely outside its comfort zone. Most often, however, the product is still within the confines of the company’s overall niche. The product in question today couldn’t be further outside the box.
Cherry is known mainly for their keyboards or, more specifically, their keyboard switches. All the best mechanical keyboards on the market have Cherry MX switches installed. So the product in question only has one thing in common with those keyboards: making noise. Cherry has entered the microphone market with a series of Cherry UM microphones, the most powerful of which being the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB Microphone, a USB mic with style and substance.
In the box, you’ll get the microphone with an attached shock mount and stand and a really nice USB-A to USB-C cable that was threaded with rubber grips on the plugs. It also comes in plastic-free packaging for the eco-conscious. On the microphone itself, you have a mic gain knob that feels a little cheaper than the rest of the mic and its accessories. In stark contrast to that, the headphone volume wheel on the back of the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro may be the best feeling knob or wheel I have felt on a microphone in the last year or so.
Underneath the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro microphone, you’ll find the USB-C port and headphone jack, as well as a button to control the RGB on the microphone. On the top, you’ll see the capacitive mute and LEDs meant to be a representation of the currently selected polar pattern (changed by clicking in the mic gain knob), of which there are several, including cardioid, bidirectional (both front and back or side to side) and omnidirectional.
“…the headphone volume wheel on the back of the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro may be the best feeling knob or wheel I have felt on a microphone in the last year or so.”
I am of the opinion that this feature can go the way of the dodo at this point. I’ve yet to meet a creator using a single microphone for multiple speakers, so the only reality for this function is that you can use it accidentally and hurt the quality of your audio in the process.
The shock mount is nice but it is built onto the microphone and, thus, not removable if you so choose. There is a screw in the middle of the bottom of the shock mount, the function of which still escapes me. It is a 1/4” thread that you could theoretically use for certain mic arms, but it would negate the purpose of the shock mount completely. Where you are supposed to connect to a mic arm, however, is where the mount connects to the stand. Given the shape of the mount, it sits awkwardly on a standard arm, but it can sit nicely on an arm with more axes.
The three-legged stand is made of solid metal. It isn’t as heavy as I like in a desk stand, although, full disclosure, I don’t care much for a desk stand. The one leg stretches out further than the other two to maintain balance when the mic is tilted back. The nicest part of the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone’s design, when sitting on a desk, is a cut-out space in both the stand and the mount for the cable to feed through.
The RGB on the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone is gorgeous. The colours are incredibly vibrant and come in a gradient that fades through the colours green, light blue, dark blue, purple, pink, and yellow. It adds to what I call their neo-classic aesthetic, where the body of the microphone is this beautiful copper colour, and the grill and shock mount gives it a classic, professional feel from earlier times, but with added RGB that shines through the grill in a way that is almost intoxicating.
“The RGB on the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone is gorgeous.”
Getting into the actual sound, you have a frequency range of 20Hz to 20 kHz, 24-bit bitrate and a sample rate of 192KHz and 32-ohm headphone amp impedance. Out of the box, the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone sounds really clean. It had a really pronounced mid and high-frequency sound, and, for my voice, the bass was fine but needed a little bit of a boost.
It must be taken into account, however, that someone with a more naturally deep voice wouldn’t need a boost. That’s a me problem, and that is precisely what processing is for. I tried adding some EQ and compression to the microphone. It got my voice to a much more desirable sound, and both noise gates in recording software and noise reduction in post did a great job removing the inevitable room noise that a condenser microphone can pick up.
The Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone doesn’t have any software to speak of, as it is a plug-and-play mic with no drivers or anything required. The setup on my PC was lightning-fast. While the software is not a mandatory thing for USB microphones and, in some cases, the software has been a real low point, I think that a USB microphone of this price, coming in at $149.99 USD, that doesn’t come with some level of software, feels like a little bit of a bloated price point for me.
“The Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone’s quality is worth a higher price than many standalone USB mics…”
The Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone’s quality is worth a higher price than many standalone USB mics. However, the fact that there are microphones from top content creator brands for the same price that come with a next-level software solution (Elgato Wave 3 with their Wavelink Software and RØDE X XCM-50 with UNIFY) makes their price point feels too high.
But are they just charging too much for their product? Not necessarily. They are giving you things for your money. The three capsules in the microphone, the two separate controls for gain and headphone volume plus a capacitive button at the top, and a higher-than-normal sample rate. These all add to the cost. So what do we need that is worth the cost? I would argue that a lower sample rate could save us a few bucks.
Nobody is using a USB microphone in a studio. The mic will be used primarily for streaming, and they can’t support that high a sample rate anyways. I’d scrap the extra capsule. If you insist on multiple polar patterns, let’s stick to cardioid and omnidirectional. These are things you’d actually find in the Cherry UM 6.0 Advanced, which comes in $40 cheaper (but there is no RGB on that microphone if that is important to you).
So that leaves us with the real question. In the saturated market of USB microphones, what place does the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro carve out for itself? I would argue that its look is the biggest draw. The copper body and RGB with the red highlights in the shock mount make for a gorgeous on-camera microphone, perhaps my favourite-looking microphone of the year.
It has the simplicity that a beginner might be looking for but the specs of a microphone that is more suited to detailed vocals. The Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB microphone feels like a natural successor to something like the HyperX Quadcast S, only arguably more well-designed. It is a mic that a streamer can be proud of, and all from a company not known for audio.
