Table of Contents. Entry-level $200 Condenser Microphone Shootout. Matthew mcglynnWithout question, the quality of inexpensive microphones has skyrocketed in the past 10 years.
Most every mic company has a handful of entry-level choices now, and most of them sound pretty damn good. At least some of the time.But which ones sound the best for the sources you most need to record? We decided to find out.Aaron Lyon, a multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and producer based in Chico, CA, tested seven sub-$200 condensers on guitar and voice. If you’re shopping for your first condenser mic, or an inexpensive workhorse that won’t be embarrassed out of your mic locker, read on for Aaron’s review. The $60,000 Ribbon Mic Shootout. The market has seen a ton of innovation in ribbon microphone design over the past five years: new ribbon materials, high-end transformer implementations, acoustic impedance and passive equalization innovations, plus hundreds of new design ideas that improve frequency response and durability.
The result is an inventory of ribbon mic choices that is wider than ever in history. From a consumer’s point of view, this is an excellent problem to have: dozens of different models covering every conceivable application and price point. But of course, having too many choices makes deciding sort of a problem. That’s where this guide comes in. Subkick-test by Kris O'Sullivan. VO mic test: U87, L36B, AT4047MP, CM-87.
The Aseyer L36B is a premium large-diaphragm condenser microphone, made in China.
It has a fixed Cardioid pickup pattern, a beautifully simple amplifier circuit, and a transformer-coupled output. At a glance, it’s a very interesting mic for vocal and voiceover applications. (No, you’ve probably never heard of it, but that’s what RecordingHacks is for!) I invited my pal Blair Hardman over to record some voiceover samples through the L36B and a couple other mics I had lying around, one of which was a vintage Neumann U87. Blair is a bassist, studio owner, and professional voice actor, with a shelf full of CDs, radio spots, and audiobooks to his credit. Well, not really. Voiceover Audio Samples All tracks were recorded dry at 24-bit, 44.1 kHz using the BLA-modded preamps in my Digi-002. Vo1.mp3 vo2.mp3 vo3.mp3 vo4.mp3. A/B / SHOOTOUT / COMPARISON AUDIO LINKS, post and find them here!
I thought it might be a good idea to gather all links to A/B-type recordings in one place.
This might help those of us who for various reasons have difficulty comparing certain equipment. If you know of either a website or forum thread that has audio of a comparison for download (preferably) or streaming, then help your fellow slutz out by posting a link here. If you wish, you may also give a short description of what there is to find at the links destination, e. g. a mic comparison. Fortunately, our forums contain lots of comparisons, let´s just bring them together! Whether it´s a comparison of the sound of different models of the same brand or different brands altogether doesn´t matter, as long as it´s something compared to something else (A/B test).
That being said, it doesn´t need to be a perfectly calibrated test, or else we wouldn´t find anything to post here. In short: Size doesn´t matter: Small shootouts (only two things compared) to big, anything is welcome. The Listening Sessions. Handhelds: Microphone Shootout Part 2. August 11th, 2006 At the end of our studio announce mic shootout we plugged-up a few popular handheld mics used for interviews, to get a sense of the different sonic character of each mic.
For this particular test, to eliminate other variables, we stayed in the large, soundproofed room at indre Studios in Phladelphia. So this test does not address how well each mic would behave in a more typical, noisy environment, we merely focused on the sound of a voice on each mic. In the interest of keeping the recording levels as consistent as possible, all mics were plugged into the studio’s SSL board, rather than fed into a more typical field recorder. Nonetheless, these recordings should give an idea of the different characters of the mics. When recording the examples, we identified the mics only by letter code, to try to avoid preconceptions about which mics we preferred.
View the answer key page >> Handheld versus Lavalier. The Transom Mic Shootout: Blindfold Test. August 28th, 2005 As part of an ongoing training initiative, AIR: The Association of Independents in Radio helped organize a mic shootout, seeking to compare a wide variety of announce mics in a neutral setting.
In the large, quiet room of Studio A at indre Studios in Philadelphia, a few independent producers set up 17 mics side-by-side. The mics ranged in price from less than a hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. We concentrated more on the less-expensive mics, and the mid-range popular standards, rather than pricey esoterica or cult-classic mics, hoping to find some bargains that might be practical for the independent producer, or to confirm that some of the pricier industry standards might be worth the expense.