The Blue Encore 300 is Blue's only hand held condenser microphone to date. This significantly makes it much more different than Blue's other entries into the market of the live vocal mic. The 100 and the 100i are both dynamics, and the 200 requires phantom power, but this is the only condenser in that field of use for Blue so far. Because of this, it is the black sheep of the Encore line. Black sheep implies that it is bad. It is certainly not. The Aria capsule is combined with a reinforced chassis and special circuitry to keep noise low, and the floating capsule mount minimizes the noise that comes from handling the mic. As a condenser microphone it has the biggest frequency range out of all of the Encore mics. This one starts down at a quite impressive 35 Hz but it ends up going all the way up to a pretty cool but otherwise boring number of 20,000 Hz. It is a cardioid microphone like the others, but then again, you see more condensers are cardioid mics anyway. At any rate, because it is not a dynamic mic like the others but a condenser, it is only correlatively natural that it would not be able to handle as much sound pressure. This is only advertised as being able to handle about 140 dB of sound pressure as opposed to the dynamics in the Encore line which can get up to 147 before distorting and incurring potential damage.

OVERALL OPINION

If you want a good idea of what the Encore 300 is for. Watch American Idol. They used the Encore 300 in the latest season. The Encore is a real singer's microphone. It soars and is incredibly airy without being harsh or sibilant. However, it is not an easy mic to use. Unless you already know how to sing. It is not forgiving to the voice at all like many of the other more ubiquitous microphones like the Shure SM58.