I'm an electronics nut, so the first thing I did when I got this mic was open it up. All the components look high quality. The caps are all film and electrolytic, and the resistors are all metal film. By the way, don't open up this mic, you have to desolder some wires to get inside there! There even appears to be some inductors, which you don't normally see in these cheap Chinese LDC's.

The body of the mic makes sense, but you can't swivel the mic within the shock mount, so that can make placement somewhat more difficult sometimes. But the think body should limit resonance and reflections and there's plenty of shock absorption. It also doesn't have a high pass filter or pad. Those are easy to do ITB and most preamps have those options anyway, so that's not really a big deal. Switches add to cost and subtract from sound quality anyway.

The sound of the mic is very bright. But it's a smooth bright. It's not harsh like many other Chinese mics. It has a very strong presence bump that gives a nice contrast to many of my other more neutral or darker mics (Audio Technica & Oktava). It was even brighter than my MXL 2003a, which is among my brightest mics. Bright is a term that's often maligned around here, and that's understandable. Bright usually means harsh. But bright can be real nice too. And this mic is smooth. I recorded a female vocalist with a breathy tone with it and it lifted her voice up against the other instruments very pleasantly and naturally. I've always avoided bright mics until now because the good ones were expensive, and the cheap ones were harsh. But this one is a nice surprise!

But the best thing about this mic is the value. It's hard to find anything that's not harsh in this price range from an LDC. It's not only good for a cheap first mic, but I would also recommend it for anyone looking for a smooth yet bright LDC on a budget.

I recently acquired an iSK Starlight vocal microphone and had the opportunity to try it out and compare it to a number of microphones. Here is what I found:

So there Starlight microphone comes in an aluminum case, has a built-in shock mount and its own little pop filter. It also ships with a thread diameter adapter for fitting onto different mic stands, has extra springs for the shock mount and an extra set screw for the pop filter fitting. There are no frequency plots for the Starlight mic which is sort of a bummer, but then it simply means one needs to listen rather than make assumptions or guessing as to how the mic will perform.

The microphone looks pretty good and has a resemblance to the Blue Dragonfly. I have never used the Blue Dragonfly, so I can’t say how closely the two mics operate and sound and if the iSK Starlight is an overt rip off or not.

I was just a bit skeptical of the built-in shock mount the pop filter. I could not help but wonder if the microphone was heavy on bling at the expense of quality of operation. But I tried to keep my skepticism under control so I could give the Starlight mic a fair set of test.

As it turns out, the pop filter is actually a metal screen—-the type of which seems to do a really good job of controlling pop sounds from singers in my experience. The pop filter on the Starlight microphone works very well in that regard. The tricky part was getting it to settle into its holder and lock down the pop filter in place with the set screw. The post of the pop filter is etched to for the set screw to grip against. It took a little bit of effort to place the set screw without cross threading and to at the same time lock the post of the pop filter in place. It was not impossibly difficult, it is just one of those things a user needs to do with some care.

When the Starlight mic was placed on a stand, it seemed to me that the built-in shock mount worked as it is supposed to. Okay, so quality of construction concerns over the mechanical parts of the mic were satiated. Oh yes, it it really do not take very long to pull the mic out of the case and set up the mic body, pop filter and shock mount onto a solid mic stand. Certainly no longer than it takes to set up any other large diaphragm condenser with a pop filter and shock mount.

As for the SOUND of the iSK Starlight…

I first set the Starlight up with a Behringer B2-Pro. The B2-Pro is a similar price point and it is a pretty decent value microphone. An engineer friend and I did some vocal testing. To our ears, the Behrigner B2-Pro sounded less direct and not as pleasing in its upper frequencies. The B2-Pro simply sounded more harsh. The Starlight had a pleasing directness to its audio capture. The Starlight in no way sounded dull, but it did not exhibit any of the harshness of the B2-Pro to our ears.

Next we set the Starlight up with a MXL 2003A. The 2003A sounded like it had less life to the audio it captured. It sounded less direct and the articulation of higher frequencies did not seem as smooth. The iSK Starlight microphone again sounded more direct and tighter with a more pleasing frequency reproduction. It sounded very good, in fact.

Lastly we decided to go out on a limb and compare the iSK Starlight to a Shure SM7b. Why not? The Starlight had proven itself to operate quietly, have a tight cardioid pattern that rejected room sound very well and it exhibited a smooth top end with a pleasing mid and low frequency capture from male vocals. To our very great surprise, the Starlight and the SM7b sounded very similar. So we adjusted the rolloff and frequency bump switches on the SM7b to listen for the differences. With the low frequency roll off, to my ears I preferred the iSK Starlight—in that setting the SM7b was sounding a lot like an SM57 with the same old ugly midrange honk to my ears. With the high frequency bump on the SM7b, I again preferred the Starlight—-there was nothing wrong with the SM7b like this, just in that setting with the vocalist, I thought the Starlight was a better choice.

I thought both microphones (SM7b and Starlight) had a similar tight, focused vocal capture with smooth high frequencies that were never lifeless or harsh. The low frequencies were well developed, not boomy but providing a large, robust voice. The one notable difference between the SM7b and the Starlight is the amount of gain needed for each to operate—it should come as no surprise to anyone who has used an SM7b before that the Starlight requires substantially less gain from a mic preamp to operate

The iSK Starlight mic stacks up well to what I had the opportunity to compare it against thus far. I will be keeping this mic and it will indeed get used for vocals in the future. I think it is a killer value. KILLER. And with its tight, focused cardioid pattern and pleasing frequency response for vocalists, I think it could easily stand up against many other microphones I have yet to shoot it out against. My next test will be against my very quiet Shure KSM44 to find out how they fair against each other. And it might be helpful to learn how the Starlight sits against my modded LDC with the RK-47 capsule and against my collection of Oktava MK-219 mics. And over time I will love to hear the iSK Starlight against some Neumanns as time and opportunity permit.

The one thing I want to add is I have no point of reference for consistency of product from iSK. The U.S. distributor (iSK Pro Audio) is doing some quality control, from what the owner Kris indicated. I like to think if I bought another Starlight it would sound similar to the one I own now.

I was excited to try this, but it doesn't work as well as I'd like for pro voiceover work. I'm an alto with a sibilant voice, so I got this one based on tons of positive reviews saying it had low sibilance. It's okay for that, but it sounds kind of muddy all the way through to me.

Personally, I think the $29 Pearl does a much better job than the Starlight in pretty much all aspects except for looks. The Starlight sure is pretty, but the Pearl sounds clearer, warmer, less sibilant, and just all around much better to me. I think the Pearl may have slightly more self noise due to the pencil condenser form factor, but the Pearl is an actual LDC (believe it or not).

I decided to sell mine when I compared it to the CAD E100S, which just sounds a lot clearer and cleaner to me, and it actually handles my sibilance better too. Between the E100S and the Pearl, there just wasn't a reason to keep the Starlight.