Hollyland has announced its new Lark M1 wireless microphone system designed for vloggers, YouTubers and live streamers. It offers a massive 200-metre line of sight wireless range over 2.4Ghz adaptive frequency hopping to ensure you’re always getting the strongest signal. It has a frequency response from 20Hz up to 20KHz with 100dB SPL and 86dB of dynamic range. Like the Hollyland Lark 150, the Lark M1 microphone kit comes inside a handy charging case to keep everything together, but unlike the Lark 150, the Lark M1 transmitters only feature the built-in microphone without the ability to plug in an external lav. This lets Hollyland make them quite significantly smaller for those users who don’t need that functionality.
Each Lark M1 transmitter and receiver offers up to 8 hours of continuous use with a single charge, and the storage case itself acts as a charger which lets you full charge all three units twice over. And if your case battery’s dead, you can charge each of the transmitters, the receiver and the case in just an hour and a half from a USB power bank or wall charger. HearClear offers one-click noise cancellation with just the flick of a switch to enable or disable it when required. Hollyland says it filters out surrounding ambient noise for clearer voice recordings while disabling it provides a richer ambient sound for a more true-to-life recording. It also features “self-adaptive audio processing” to simplify operation and detect what device it’s being plugged into. This allows it to automatically set its own levels based on the needs of the device without having to fiddle around with manual settings.
Despite the device detection and gain automation, it does offer a 3-level volume preset, to help you prevent clipping depending on the environment you’re in or the position of the microphone relative to the sound source. It captures and transmits 48kHz 16Bit audio from its built-in omnidirectional mic to a distance of up to 200 metres with clear line of sight with automatic frequency hopping to minimise interference and always find the strongest channel. Even though you can’t plug in an external microphone, the transmitters are very small in themselves and easy to clip onto a shirt or jacket without looking obnoxious. Of course, they do have LEDs on them to indicate various statuses and settings, but many of us are used to seeing microphone transmitters clipped onto clothing these days, particular on YouTube or live streams and these do seem to be the least “LOOK AT ME!” microphone transmitters out there.
The receiver have a 3.5mm TRS socket with various cables for connecting to TRS sockets on cameras, TRRS sockets for smartphones. There are also optionally available TRS to USB-C and TRS t- Lightning cables for Android and iPhone smartphones respectively. With the variety of wireless microphones on the market these days, after a flood of them over the last couple of years, these ones from Hollyland aren’t exactly revolutionary, but for a mobile creator that’s looking to pack as small and lightweight as possible or a streamer that doesn’t want to have to deal with a condenser mic on a boom or desktop stand, these look potentially ideal. The Hollyland Lark M1 is available to buy now for $149.99 for the dual transmitter kit or $89.99 for the single mic kit. You can find out more about them on the Hollyland website.
