Well, guess what just arrived from MXL? That's right, a pair of "Cubes" and a 190. Tonight after some sessions, we set up the Cube, the 190, and our Studio Projects T3 (as our reference), and put them all thru their paces. I listened on headphones (a pair of
Sennheiser HD201's) while Alex listened over our big JBL system. No eq or effects. Here are our first quick "impressions":
The T3 always sounds nice and has a nice high end sheen, without sounding edgy, and as usual, it sounded great, with proximity starting at about 18" out and becoming more pronounced as I moved in closer.
We switched to the Cube, and Alex' first comment was that it sounded like the T3, but I disagreed; I heard a sharp high end peak which made it sound very bright. After switching back and forth between the T3 and the Cube, Alex heard it too. Proximity effect kicked in from around 12" out.
I thought the Cube might be useful as a drum overhead mic; Alex thought it might do well on guitars, and he plans to try it out over the weekend on different sources. It's very bright to me, but damn it's cheap for a LDC mic. The cage is very open and has a large mesh. Noise was low enough, no hum pickup, and the Cube has a pretty open sound.
Back to the T3 and switching with the MXL 190. The 190 has a smoother warmer sound without much of any peaks that I could hear. But either the proximity roll-off switch was stuck in the on position, or this mic doesn't have a lot of proximity effect. I'll check the switch tomorrow. Overall it's a pretty nice mic, but it does overload pretty easy up close. I didn't try the -10dB pad to see if that would fix it.
It's a little smoother than the T3; it doesn't have that high end sheen like the T3 has. But it's not a "dark" mic either. Alex said it reminded him of the "N" word. It definitely has a M149 kinda vibe to it. The new shock mount is amazingly well crafted and works for the Cube as well.
More testing to come. These are just first impressions.
