© 2009 East Anglian Radio Services 01502 568021 07885039092  VAT REG. GB 904 1987 19 Contact: Paul Johnson paul@earsmedia.co.uk

This is an information page, and is not a permanent feature of this web site. It is available for a limited period.

Firstly - please bear in mind there are a number of errors in the video. Some are important, others just annoying. Even more so for me, as I didn’t notice the mistakes until far too late!

The worse fault in a video intended to demonstrate what microphones sound like is that some of the individual microphone tracks have some low level hum. I could give you plenty of excuses, but the reality was the portable recorder I used I sat on top of an amplifier and the transformer induced the hum. By the time it was noticed, it was too late to re-record. One microphone is the own brand of Thomann, in Germany. I don’t know why I said they were American? Probably the late hour! I also refer to the Sennheiser 416 microphone at one one point as being an AKG - again, I have no idea why. I also nudged an audio track in the edit (no prize for spotting it) and the lip sync is out for a few seconds. All these things could be fixed, but this half-hour project ended up taking a day and a half, and frankly - I can’t spend any more time on it at the moment - maybe I’ll come back to it later.

Useful information when listening. In the downloaded files pack you may need to normalise each one. Each microphone is recorded as stereo .wav files, at 48KHz (Note: NOT 44.1Khz) Each channel is a duplicate - so can be used stereo or mono, as you wish.

One segment is not quite what it should be. The radio microphone review is compromised. I’ve left it in because the problem could be useful to others. The DPA microphone should sound much better, but it has a higher output, and I didn’t adjust the sensitivity, to the limiter has cut in and squashed it quite badly - These microphones are amazingly good - and this review makes the cheap one sound better - which I cheerfully admit it is not.

The entire point of this recording is to show how subjective the ‘quality’ of microphones is - some of the microphones on my LCD domestic TV sound exactly the same - I cannot hear as one mic is crossfaded, yet in the studio, it is obvious. Some mics are warm, some rather clinical/hard/edgy (insert your own descriptive words) so your preference is down to your own hearing. My own thoughts are that the Samson microphone that is really cheap sounds quite good, and some of the more expensive ones sound...... different?  I do subscribe to the idea that I’ll use whatever microphone I have available that will do the best job. I’ve no doubt that for boom work, I’d pick the 416 - but if I needed the longer reach of the AT815, I’d use it, even though perhaps it doesn’t sound so good. Don’t forget that all these tracks are without any eq - something that could easily make a big difference.

So download this zipped pack of the files uses to make the video and listen carefully. There are no right or wrong choices. My intention is just to share a collection of different recordings and encourage everyone to let their ears judge, not their wallets!