Rode NTG5 Kit

Bought an NTG5 in a camerashop, brand new. It worked for about 10 minutes and a couple of hours later, there was only noise. I switched to other XLR cables, interfaces, all with the same result.

Then I received the one I ordered with Thomann. Worked for about 5 minutes while testing it for the first time. Wasn't amazed with the sound quality but fine. After that I got this super weird skreechy sound over it and I've read that this happened quite often with other people. When I read about it, I thought "this is probably a rare occurence" what are the odds this would happen to mine after one already failed. Jokes on me, because it happened literally, 10 minutes after unboxing.

I've owned and used a couple of Røde mics before and was pretty happy with them, but I'm sorry to say I've lost faith in them. All the fun extra accessoires are useless if your mic doesn't work.

Returning it.

Great when it works. However, I suddenly suffered from a lot of noise when I used for the second time. I switched it out for another NTG5 with the same setup, and the noise was gone. I subsequently looked this up online, and apparently it's not uncommon for the NTG5 to fail in this manner - a lot of people have reported similar problems, even when using top of the range XLR cables and external recorders. Not everyone has this problem, but I do not want that level of risk, particularly with a mic at this price point.

On st. Patricks Day, Fermoy usually has about 1,400 participants in their parade with about 4,000 watching. This year (2020), because of COVID-19, we had no parade. Instead, we raised the national flag in the Square, while a trumpeter played the National Anthem and the Fields of Athenry. I used the NTG5 and a Zoom H6 to record the sound and an iPhone7 to record the video. You can see the result here. was brilliant at filtering out the passing traffic. Totally delighted with it.

If you compare the Rode NTG5 to other much more expensive and "professional" microphones like Schoeps or Sennheiser, you realize that the NTG5 in many cases actually beats those several thousand dollar microphones with its specs. And I am happy to say that it is not only fantastic on paper but also fantastic in real life!

This microphone has very good rejecton to the sides and in general the coloration from the sides is low and so it sounds natural both on axis and also off-axis. It is a nice and flat microphone, meaning that you can really EQ the sound in post exactly how you want it to sound.

This microphone also has very low self noise for a condenser shotgun microphone. And not only that, it also has an extremely strong output and only 25 ohm impedance, meaning that even really cheap and not great preamps will achieve fantastic sound quality with this microphone since you don't have to amplify the preamps much at all. So this microphone will keep the noise of your recordings very low in several ways: 1. its very low self noise itself and 2. it keeps your preamp's gain much lower, meaning less noise coming from the preamp as well!

Build quality is very good and I have had 0 problems with two of my Rode NTG5's. As long as you provide 48V phantom power, you should be all set!

Of course you get even more than just the mic, the shock mount system that comes with it is VERY HIGH quality and uses industry standard rycote shock mounting system which is really effective at eliminating any handling noise. Also the foam and fur cover work very well, though you would still need the blimp if you are gonna be recording in very windy scenarios.

Curtis Judd as well as Sound Speeds (a true location sound professional with a career including very high budget Hollywood movies) have both done extensive video reviews on it and both highly recommended it.