On the underside of the Fake SM57 box within the grey area that details the “Items included”, the microphone is listed as a “Sm57” (lowercase ‘m’), whereas on the genuine box it is listed as a “SM57”: It’s worth adding at this point that the signal generator did produce some audible artefacts, particularly as it was moving up through the lower frequencies (possibly due to it transitioning before the frequency could finish it’s cycle), which could account for the initial sound spike at the start. The reason I mention this is because the official frequency response ranges for the SM57 and SM58 start at 40Hz and 50Hz respectively, and the official frequency response of the Adam A7X monitor that I used starts at 42Hz. Once you have decided how your screen shall look like, you activate a virtual camera via the tools menu: On the fake version, the printed text on the band circumventing the base of the plastic capsule is not only less defined than on the real SM57, but it also uses ‘Ƶ’ instead of the standard “Z” to denote impedance. Also look carefully at the text on the silver label of the fake SM57 box, where not only does it list it as being a “vocal” microphone (despite it clearly stating it’s an “instrument” mic on top of the box), but it also states that it has an on/off switch; there are NO versions of the SM57 with an on/off switch. Box Text and Formatting:

Being a WDM/KS filter, VAC represents the lowest-level audio layer in Windows. It can be effectively used by any upper-level layer (KS-aware applications, WASAPI, MME or DirectSound subsystems, ASIOwrappers, and so on). Is it Free? When you play music from Windows Media Player, it is streamed out using Line 1 Audio and captured by Mic 1 Audio to the messenger. Since this is a virtual microphone Windows and not a physical mic, it will be noise-free. Stream What Your Friend Is Saying to a Virtual Speaker and Record It Using Audacity The counterfeit velcro tags are the correct length in comparison to the genuine ones but the white Shure branding is too close together and they will not lie flat, perhaps indicating that they are made from a less flexible, poorer quality material.Now the mic. It's a pretty good aesthetic match for the real deal. The Neumann logo is present, in the right place, and the colours match; though it's rough around the edges and doesn't sit perfectly within the diamond. The weight of the mic is slightly off; it's not light but it doesn't have the heft of the real thing. The external and inner shield look identical to the real deal. The underside of the XLR PCB says "KMS105" at a jaunty angle rather than "Made in Germany" inline with the pins. On the genuine models the rubberised inserts on either side of the wiring board can be moved away from the sides of the metal tube but will instantly return to their original position when released, whereas on the fake models they are barely attached to the interior of the mic at all. The boxes might look good at first glance, but an absolute dead giveaway is whether or not there is a serial number present. Quite simply, if there isn’t one, the mic is likely a fake. As you can see from the above images, the real SM57 and SM58 boxes have an additional barcode at the top of the end panel, under which sits the serial number (S/N); the counterfeit boxes have no serial numbers. I’ll freely admit that the test was a little crude, but it did provide an interesting visual representation of the frequency response of each mic, which can be seen below. I decided not to include the actual audio recordings of the test in this article because, quite simply, they do not make for a particularly pleasant listening experience.

On my laptop, I can enable Stereo Mix from the VIA control panel (the driver for my sound card), or by using the Sound icon in Control Panel. To record the floor tom, the mics were arranged in a similar fashion to the snare but positioned slightly higher, at around 2 inches from the skin. The individual preamp gains were then adjusted accordingly. Individual Hits The reason I want to do this is to stream audio to the microphone and set the microphone as input device for another program. This "other program" only allows microphone inputs to be used as its input device. The software only supports audio, but if you want to stream a video to your webcam or create a virtual webcam that the messenger program can use, I suggest you look at the list of Webcam Tools we discussed. This software only teaches you on how to make a fake microphone. Virtual Audio Cable Software allows you to create virtual speakers and virtual mic for PC. Even though they are programs, they are identified as hardware by any other program. That includes Windows Media Player or any messenger service like Skype or Yahoo Messenger. So now you can do two things:Whilst I can accept a deviation of 3.6g from the weight of my real SM57 to the official stated weight, the weight deviation of the fake versions was significant, with the fake SM57 weighing 48.2g less than it should and the fake SM58 weighing 61.0g less than the official stated weight, and a whopping 92.5g less than my genuine model! In an attempt to shed a little more light on the tonal differences between the genuine and counterfeit microphones I set up a simple test to help map out a visual representation of their individual frequency responses. Unscrewing the shield isn't a fun experience, the threading is dirty and poorly applied; the capsule is cheap and completely unlike a Neumann one. Even before unscrewing the main PCB, I can see it's nothing like the real deal. The Neumann capsule is directly attached to the PCB, this fake is loose with a 1" long grey wire connecting the two with a sloppy solder job on the PCB. When the microphone is the default, if you try to record something you will get sound from the microphone. Since you need silence only, there's nothing to do for you. By default, there will not be anything streamed into the input device, so it's silent.

Sometimes, you need to use the audio of one program to be used by another application. For example, if your friends want to listen to music over Messenger or Skype. The only option is to turn on your mic and play the music loud so they can listen. The problem is that the sound quality is not right and will also carry external noise. In this post, we will share software that can create fake speakers and fake microphone in Windows 10 and Windows 11 using Windows virtual microphone. How To Create Fake Speakers and Microphone in Windows 11/10 For the final samples we recorded drum roll with the floor tom. Each preamp was re-calibrated to accommodate the additional dynamic range that the recordings would require and during the warmups I encountered the same inconsistent clipping issues with the counterfeit mics, requiring additional attenuation to the gain of their preamps. I'm glad you allow this. For me, this combination of software does the job really well: Open Broadcaster Software plus OBS Virtual Cam plus VB Cable. My curiosity got the better of me, so I plugged the mic in. It functions; it's a microphone, but it is not a good microphone, let alone in the league of the real deal. So, for you to get the desired effect, you would need to set Stereo Mix as the default, and play some music on your computer. The audio is passed internally, and when recording you will get exactly what is playing on your computer. It doesn't make any difference if you speak into the mic, cover it up, or unplug it altogether. You're not even using the mic, you're using stereo mix.

Box and Paperwork

I used the signal generator plugin in Pro Tools to output a sine wave tone, which was automated to cycle up from 20Hz to 20kHz over a 40 second period. I set up a mic stand in front of one of my monitors that would hold a microphone in position approximately four inches from the face, equidistant from the upper edge of the sub cone and the bottom edge of the ribbon tweeter. Working with each microphone separately I initially calibrated the input gain of the preamp using another 1kHz test tone and then proceeded to record the 40 second cycle from the tone generator. Whilst the counterfeiters have ‘traditionally’ put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that their fake microphones look the part (on first glance at least), the same cannot be said for the interior workings and resultant sound quality, which can range from plain shoddy to nigh on unusable. VAC contains a Windows WDM/KS virtual device driver that creates virtual audio devices. This driver is a kernel-mode module that must be installed with administrator rights. Except for the audio part, this combination is free, also ok for commercial use. OBS and OBS Virtual Cam are both GPL2 licensed but VB cable has volume licensing for commercial use. Next, the mic holder; this is obviously a fake. Real Neumann clamps have the logo debossed; this fake has the word NEUMANN (incorrect font) printed on it. The adjustable thread isn't real; it cannot be removed. The bolt on the hinge is cheap, the wrong colour and ill fitting.

As with the boxes and paperwork, the microphones can initially look pretty convincing, especially if you’ve never seen a real one before; they’re the right size and shape, but they just don’t have the build quality that genuine Shure mics have, and the accessories don’t fare any better. Bag, Tag and Clip There are a few other listings for this mic, and other high-end microphones, that I can now see are fakes; and a few more where the price has me sceptical, but there are no red flags visible in the listing photos. As with the recordings of the individual tom hits, both genuine mics provided a solid, balanced sound with plenty of lower-end punch and higher-end definition. Here is an example using Windows Media Player and Yahoo Messenger. It works almost the same way for any other software. You need to figure out how to configure speaker and microphone settings for those apps. Play Music on Your Windows Media Player and Stream It to Messenger The box looks legit; my first KMS105 was old and didn't come with a box, so I can't comment on the accuracy, but it looks and feels as I'd expect. The wrap case is identical to my real one, and the weight felt about right, so far so good.

Weight

Yes and No, both. The free version has a limitation on several speakers you can create, and it emits a female voice after every few seconds. If you use it for personal use, you can ignore it, but if you use it for professional work, you can buy it. What About Video? If you now connect to a video conferencing system, e.g. online, it will present you a list of cameras which includes the virtual cameras (Screenshot from Firefox): There is a software called Solicall which actually allows this. But I would like to do this through VAC virtual audio cables because Solicall only allows one instance running. Thus, I can't do my audio routing method more than once simultaneously. I have yet to find a better solution however than Solicall. When stereo mix is the default, if you try to record something, you will get the sound that is currently playing on your computer