The worst mic ever made

This mic is the worst popular, mass-produced mic ever made. This is one of those cases where the hype truly is 100% dead wrong. It’s an awful mic with baked-in capsule distortions, an unfixable harsh high-end, and a metallic bottom-end. It hates EQ, and in a mix it can’t sit anywhere. It’s awful, and the fact it’s so high up on this list makes me question other equipment here.

I’m a 30+ year audio engineer and product reviewer.

mighty fine performance to value ratio

this Rode mic offers mighty fine performance to value ratio... has the lowest noise floor of anything in its class, and produced fantastic recordings of anything you want a large diaphragm condenser on! i use it on vocals, acoustic guitar, drum overheads and more!

Needs Acoustic Treatment For Best Performance

Amazing microphone if you have acoustically treated your room.

If you're gonna use this microphone for instance for "Discord / Skype" calls it's gonna pick up all the fan noise & white noise from your computer.

Very good!

Honestly, I didn't give this mic much of a chance because of the high end, but after using a SM7B, and learning how to EQ mics better, this mic is actually really good, especially in a mix.
Pro tip with this mic, cut the high end at 14132 Hz to make the mic softer. I really love the low noise as well. If only the high end was smoother.

Great sound, requires a good room and a good preamp, has it's limits and build quality could be better

The highs are a little too pronounced, and it's not as full and lush as a truly great mic, but for just over $200, it is tough to beat. It picks up everything for fairly long distances, so you want to treat your room heavily, and put up baffles and shielding or an isolation booth or something to stop everything you don't want in your recording from ending up in the track. On it's own, it sounds a little thin, but with a good preamp it shows its full potential. A Tube preamp can help warm up the inherent coldness. If you have the right room or sound treatment, a good vocalist or MC, a half decent pre, good levels and a good recording engineer, this is a workhorse that can do more than you might think. It's pretty much exclusively a vocal mic, though it could do drum overheads if you had 2 of them, or a distant drum room mic for fill. It's a cheap knock off on a U87 but if you are comparing it to that, there's little comparison other than the shape. If you are used to a cheap mic though, this one will feel like a nice upgrade.

Incredible sound and amazing pickup!

The Rode NT1-A is seen as a little brother to the more popular NT1, this is not the case. These microphones are vastly different to each other. While the NTA picks up lower frequencies the NT1-A picks up higher frequencies delivering a punch lost with the NT1. This mic has been my daily driver from singing to sampling. The mic comes with various accessories such as, a compatible shock mount, 6m XLR cable, a mic sleeve and even Rode stickers. The first thing I noticed was the microphones build was extremely solid, after dropping it multiple times I can vouch that it is extremely hard to break, just don't go throwing it off buildings and you'll be fine. The rode NT1-A is a dynamic microphone using a cardioid condenser polar pattern, this basically means that it picks up sounds from a very specific area that looks a bit like a heart shape. This is what makes the mic great for vocals since it is so good at rejecting sounds from other directions. Overall the microphone is incredible for the price, if I was a beginner to vocal production, this would be my go to mic!

THE Intro Condenser

All due respect to the Australians but I got one built there and one built in China and they are both just kick-ass large diaphragm condensers for the hobby recordist. Throw these on a vocal with a pop-filter, mic an acoustic; if you have pre with a bad they actually are pretty durable and sparkly overheads (Though they clip quick so if your drummer pounds it out maybe get the M5s) These mics can NOT be beat for price and performance...

Not bad

It's dirt cheap and not bad. It's a bit sibilant. It's not creamy and smooth. But it's a bang for your buck nice mic.

If Pat Rockstar came over to my house to throw down some vocals, it's not the first mic i'd reach for. Or the second. Or at all.

But when it was my only mic except for an ST69 Crapling Audio then I would, I suppose, pull it out and record some noises and voices with it. And it would sound pretty good. Good actually. It's definitely worth the price and more.

One of the best cheap condensers

RODE NT1A won numerous prizes and #1's for its low noise floor, good sound and availability. I've got a pair of these I use for ambience and all the rest - vocals, woodwinds, acoustic guitar etc. It's a very good sounding condenser microphone, really warm and musical. The designers aimed for the cheapest design so it has only a cardioid pattern and no pads, but I don't miss that since it just delivers with what it's got. I've seen NT1A's in many studios I've been to and sometimes sound engineers preferred them to 414's, TLM's and other expensive and vintage mics for certain applications. A well-respected general purpose professional condenser microphone that costs way less than it should have been.

My No.1 Microphone

Coming in at the price tag of £150 for the whole kit this microphone is beyond amazing. I have a home studio so it's not sound proofer or acoustically treated but I don't get any background noise or interference at all. My vocals sound pretty industry standard if you ask me and it's mostly because of this Microphone