whats the deal on mics?

CoolCat

CoolCat

Well-known member
I was listening to all these mics on the huge Sweetwater shootout again.

Vocal Mic Shootout | Sweetwater

But clicking on about all of them during this pandemic, I wonder is it just me or does the $58 Behringer C1 sound about as good as the $10,000 mics?

:wtf:
 
You've spotted the problem! The clear thing about audio is that technical excellence does NOT mean it sounds 'nicer' - it sounds more or less to our individual tastes. I've got a few mics that I really don't like, and never use, but out of my favourites, their 'rating', as in my personal one, depends on their distortion of the actual sound being perceived in a positive way. So those with response peaks and troughs that react favourably to the sound source get talked about as being good, and the reverse - where their performance on a source is destructive, get categories as poor.

I got slammed on a forum for liking a Samson cheap condenser. The reason? Snob value. It's pocket money price compared to the studio favourites, and a pittance compared to the boutique microphones that go for 4 or 5 time the price of something professional in quality and standard.

Add in our different hearing and our different studios and the playing field is nowhere near flat. My favourite and most versatile mics are the AKG 414. My current pair never get put away. The Shure SM7B never comes out of its box. However, in my studio at the moment is a counterfeit Shure I deliberately bought to check out how dreadful it was, and discovered it actually sounded quite nice. It does not sound like the genuine article, but as a mic, it's fine.

I'm old, set in my ways and pretty unshakable in my opinions, and I think mics are like guitars. As long as they play OK, then the differences are personal. Who cares if they have a solid maple top, or of it's veneer, or hell - even a photograph covered in varnish. You pick it up and play, and it sounds just right - then it is right. If it's an Epiphone and not a Gibson, or a Mexican Squier or a Fender Strat - does it matter? We don't use totally flat measurement microphones for recording do we? Science suggests that the flattest most accurate mics capture the truth - trouble is, we don't want truth, we want 'character'. Maybe just careful eq could do the same thing?

If you like the sound of the cheap mic, buy it and be happy - nobody will ever criticise the sound of a track for using a cheap mic, until you tell people you used a cheap mic, THEN they point out the problems. Nobody ever says the vocal was spoiled by using a cheap mic, in case it was a U87, and you just liked the eq you used.

How many people have ever spent two grand on a mic then said "you know, I like the sound of my SM57 better?" Your brain won't let you! You will find the excuse, rationalise the thing you didn't like - because the two grand mic MUST be better, it was two grand!
 
I'm sure I told the story before but back at uni, when they opened the doors for studio bookings, damn near everyone signed up for studio A and the u87.
I'm looking at this chart, booked out solid for 2 months or whatever...

I just needed to do voice work so I decided to book the mastering suite and an sm7b. Got in next few days in a row and that was it done.
Didn't hinder my grade at all. ;)

I have sm81s now and I do like them better but I used to have cheap Samson pencil condensers from a cheap 7-kit and, to be honest, they were perfectly fine.
I don't know about a well controlled head to head with expensive mics but my ears are plenty sharp and I got great use out of those.
 
good story....I hadn't read it.
"to be honest"....they were fine comment" is what Im kind of amazed in still, not the first time, but really the Huge Sweetwater Mic Shootout was done so well and all that, its almost bewildering per my ears.

have you listened the Shootout mics? the dry vocal vs vocal in mix etc......I was doing it for hours last night, and my mind is fried because really....aside from some subtle differences, especially in the full mix versions, the $58 Behringer C1 hangs equally with the rest, including $8000 and $10,000 mics....but thats where the mind is confused that $10,000 mics should be obviously, gretaly, undeniably much better.

yeah Im a Shure mic fan, as I posted before. I dont think Shure are better than Sennheiser or AT or AKG or Behringer really.....but when I went into the rabbit hole, I realized I wanted to compare patterns and mic types and not brand names....there were just too many choices.
SM58,57, KSM27,32,44, and the SM81,pg81, 109... and the SDC 's... Ive dabbled with...and the SM7b. Havent tried the Ribbons yet..353 etc.
I wont lie, the SM7b having all the pro's name drop it, the Abbey Road using the KSM32, the Eagles and others using the SM81's on acoustics etc...
and they are reasonably cheap, used..

but the Sweetwater Shootout made me wonder "is it my ears not hearing some magical huge difference between a $58 mic and a $10,000 mic?"
the Shure selections KSM44 and 32 Im more familiar with and they show the very subtle high freq touch of the 44...but neither sound $900 better than the $58 C1? lol
 
A freind of mine Paul, would look at the Microphone range data scribble. Then he would isolate a width by setting a HPF and a LPF. Then boost particular parts in the EQ. He could find character differences in the microphones.

I cannot. When its me setting them up, they do sound similar.
 
The voices that they've chosen may not be the best to bring out the differences but the differences are there. I found it easiest to listen for differences in the high frequencies - the cheaper mics tend to be 'zingier' because the capsule resonances are less well controlled. This effect can be seductive at first and make the cheaper mics sound more attractive but, once you've used them for a while, this becomes grating and you start to realise that a more expensive and better controlled mic is useful.
 
I spent a fair amount of time on the Sweetwater mic comparison. It was good information, but I found it hard to judge with some of the singing, plus it wasn't 50 mics all recording the same instance of the vocal. It was just not possible.

The comparisons that Soundpure post on their channel are more interesting to me. They do blind comparisons and you have to email them to get the information on which is which. Usually it maxes out at 4 mics at a time. You tend to see two types of comments in their comparisons..... people who complain that you just wasted their precious time because you didn't tell them which mic was the best ( aka most expensive), and people who will give varying opinions on which is the best. Rarely does it come off as "#2 is clearly superior" type of comment from everybody. You'll have half a dozen people picking different mics.

Then when someone does post the identities, it becomes "oh yeah, #4 is the U87 and its clearly wipes the rest of the field".

I also went through a comparison where someone set up each mic in the exact same position, and used a Yamaha Diskclavier grand piano to make sure that the performance was as close as possible. That was a really good comparison. It would be cool to see Sweetwater doing one like that. For sure, they have enough pianos in that building! Sweetwater is an amazing place to visit!
 
This is a helpful mic resource Audio Test Kitchen | Compare the gear. Trust your ears.
Also Microphone Database | Audio Recording News | RecordingHacks

I have about 30 or so mics and they range from inexpensive MXLs and Oktava's to more expensive tube and LDC mic's that could be considered "Pro" or "Semi-pro" and while I have done most of my recording with "good" quality condensers, I am frugal enough to try anything and everything.Which leads me to my point.

I have taken every single mic i have and tested them on every source i can and while IMHO just about any mic can be used on any source,(with more or less eq moves), the fact is, some sound better on source a, some on source b, etc and some are "bad" sounding on some sources in comparison to another mic. Not unusable , just needing more eq to work, and maybe just not working "well".

The differences are not all price dependent, for instance, i have four of one model sdc and three of them are pretty close to indistinguishable from each other, the fourth has a noticeably different coloration.

I have an inexpensive chinese ribbon that works great for recording distorted guitars and i will choose it over more expensive models for that purpose.

If you are getting the sound you want, no need to change. If you have a bit of gear lust, buying and selling inexpensive mic's can be fun, and who knows,you might find something cool.
 
Yeah, it depends a ton on what is being recorded and where how much the mic makes a difference, and then if it's going into a mix of any size, it pretty rapidly narrows the differences to the vanishing point. Where it can matter is if you have a fantastic "instrument" in an equally fantastic space going into a very exposed mix - something like Alison Krauss' vocals in some of her acoustic recordings. I certainly like to think the $58 Behringer would make the wrong kind of difference.
 
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