Shure SM85

A hand-held condenser that had to survive the road before Shure would let it near a stage.

Overview

The SM85 is a cardioid condenser microphone built for hand-held use - on stage, in the studio, in front of a camera. The pitch Shure ran in DB-Magazine (April 1981, p.5) was unusually grand for a microphone: this one, the company claimed, would change the way people thought about condenser microphones. That's advertising copy, and it reads like it. The design brief behind it is real, though. Shure built a condenser that had to pass the same ruggedness and dependability tests the company demanded of its dynamic microphones. For a working engineer in 1981, that was the whole argument. Condensers sounded better and broke more often. Here was one that was supposed to sound better and not break.

A condenser's lighter diaphragm moves faster. That is why the SM85 could offer what Shure described as sizzling highs and a shaped midrange for vocal reproduction, rather than the flatter, more utilitarian response of a dynamic stage mic. The company leaned hard on that tailoring. This was not a measurement tool or an all-purpose instrument mic. It was voiced for the human voice, and the voicing is deliberate.

The low end is where the design gets clever. Shure gave the SM85 a controlled low-frequency rolloff and used proximity effect as a feature rather than fighting it. The manual notes the mic makes optimum use of proximity effect so the performer can control low-frequency sound, moving from the warm intimacy of close miking out to the natural sound of normal-to-distant work. Read that against the rolloff: the mic rolls off the bottom on its own, so a singer working up close gets the bass boost from proximity without the boominess that would otherwise pile on top of it. Shure's own copy described the rolloff as gentle, intended to minimize both handling noise and the boominess associated with close-up use.

Handling noise gets its own treatment. The SM85 carries an effective shock mount to reduce stand and handling noise, and an integral wind and pop filter - a dual-density foam windscreen, in Shure's description - sits inside the grille for built-in pop protection. The body is aluminum, chosen for light weight and ruggedness, with a steel grille and a durable black finish. Shure's advertising made a point of the mic being extremely lightweight and, in the company's phrasing, beautifully balanced - it feels good, looks good on-stage, on-camera, on-tour. That's marketing, but balance matters in a hand-held mic, and the claim is consistent with the aluminum construction.

Power is phantom, and the SM85 is unusually forgiving about it. Shure designed the mic for simplex (phantom) powering either from an external supply or directly from sound reinforcement, broadcast, or recording equipment, and it operates over a voltage range of 11 to 52 V DC. That span covers the DIN Standard 45 596 simplex voltages of 12 and 48 volts as well as the proposed 24-volt standard. The mic will run off essentially any console or snake input a working engineer is likely to plug into. Two dual-channel power supplies, the PS1 and PS1E2, were offered for feeding simplex power to the SM85 when the rest of the rig couldn't.

Shure also made claims about the electronics that count for more in the field than on a spec sheet. The mic was designed for very low RF susceptibility and reliable operation across wide temperature and humidity extremes. The company's advertising described ultra-low distortion electronics that made the SM85 highly immune to stray hum fields. Stray hum is a real problem for condenser mics on a stage full of lighting dimmers and amplifiers.

Two versions shipped. The SM85 was supplied without a cable. The SM85 CN came with a 25-foot Triple Flex microphone cable terminated with professional audio connectors. Both included an accessory foam windscreen and a swivel adapter.

The SM85's element found its way into at least one other product. HME built its System 85 hand-held wireless microphone system around what its advertising called the superb Shure SM85 element, and claimed Shure Brothers Engineering had verified the audio performance as identical in all respects to the SM85. That's a manufacturer's claim about a third-party product, not an independent measurement.

The SM85's launch was carried in the trade pages through 1981 and into 1982, with the same introductory copy appearing in DB-Magazine (May 1981, p.5) and again in Studio-Sound (January 1982, p.8). Those placements are a launch announcement, not an independent bench test. What survives is the advertisement itself, not a reviewer's verdict, so there are no measured frequency plots or distortion figures from a contemporary magazine. The claims about tailored voicing and ruggedness are Shure's.