Maonocaster E2 Integrated Audio Production Studio Bundle Review

Alright, so I just unpacked this all-in-one podcast production studio bundle and started recording. Damn, they did a great job. All the settings were already optimized, but let’s not spoil them!

In today’s review, I’ll talk about the Maonocaster E2 Integrated Audio Production Studio Bundle, a kit that consists of podcast mixer Maonocaster E2 and the mic PM500.

Let’s dive right into it!

First, the setup took a few minutes just because I didn’t look at the manual in the box.

It’s actually straightforward to put it all together. There’s no need for a screwdriver or anything. It was up and running within a few minutes. There’s no need to install software since you have complete control over the sound through Maonocaster E2.

There are a few things essential to consider. I got PM500 in my kit, but in general, if you decide to plug in any other mic, make sure you know what you are plugging in beforehand.

You can choose from different settings on the back of E2. So, PM500 (the mic that I got in the kit) is a condenser mic, so just make sure if you get a condenser mic to select that on the panel. So since my condenser mic sensitivity is higher than -40 dB, I opted for the 40dB setting.

Again, if you decide to go with something else, just make sure what your type of microphone is beforehand. There are 2 more settings:  50 and 60dB. 50 dB setting can be used for mics like Samson Q2U/HD300T and the latter for mics like SM7B/SM58/MV7.

First Impressions

My first impression, when I turned it on:

After a few minutes of trying out things, I looked at the manual, and bam… all I needed to do was press a 48V button, and voila. Those 2 buttons in the bottom left corner are faders you can use to quickly mute or release mic sound.

Testing & Features

So I got it up and running, and now’s time to test some features.

There are a bunch of things you can actually play with. Of course, the most interesting one is pitch. You can switch between a deep barrel-like voice and a high squirrel pitch voice. Needless to say, you can use this knob to add the bassiness that your voice needs.

Then, there are highs and lows that you can play with and a cool simulator (led screen) of how well you adjusted them. Aim for the orange – it’s the sweetest spot!

I like the thing that you can connect your instrument, if you have one, to E2 and play with it as well.

There are slots for 2 mics, for me, PM500 and my other mic, which is a $50 mic but sounds much better with the right E2 settings.

Of course, on E2, you get to connect your headphones or speakers so you can live check the sound and test it and adjust it to your needs. For streamers like myself, there’s a really cool feature that you can use – Bluetooth.

So, you can connect E2 to your Bluetooth device, for example, a mobile device, and play music through it. That background music (which is by default set just right) makes a really relaxed, chill atmosphere.

There is one thing that bothered me, and I think they could’ve done better.

For example, even though the battery on a fully charged E2 can last up to 8 hours, it would be cool if E2 charged while plugged into the PC. So I had to use one of my phone charges to charge it and the one that’s included in the kit to connect with the PC. The battery capacity is 2000mAh, which leaves room for improvement.

That’s the only thing that I think could’ve been done better.

The good thing is that it takes around 3h for the battery to charge fully.

Now, on the right side of E2, we have a few buttons left, and those are presents, side chain, music only, dry wet, loop back, and denoise.

Denoise will automatically be turned on, and it’s a cool feature that cancels all noises if you don’t already have that set up on your streaming software. So, you’ll get free, distortion-free, warm sound.

You can turn on dry mode and what it will do is bypass all audio processing. That means you’ll get a pure microphone signal.