If you are in the market for a shotgun/cardioid...

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Ben Syverson

Great article!

I wish someone would do something similar with just hypercardioids -- the Schoeps, Audix SCX-1, AT4053, Octava, AKG 483, etc...

Hi Ben:

But then someone will say, "I wish someone would do something similar with just long shotguns - the Schoeps, Sennheiser MKH-70, Neumann KMR82i, etc.

I can see it now, the next two years of my middle age spent testing and writing about just microphones...Ahhhhhhh, can't take it, can't breathe, thump (head slumps down on computer keyboard).

D

[Brooks Harrington]

Incredible reviews.. well written....great photos... accurate info...!!!

[Ben Syverson]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

But then someone will say, "I wish someone would do something similar with just long shotguns - the Schoeps, Sennheiser MKH-70, Neumann KMR82i, etc.

LOL, that is true. :)

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Brooks Harrington

Incredible reviews.. well written....great photos... accurate info...!!!

Hi Brooks:

You want to be my agent? ;-)

Dan

[Steve Oakley]

OktavaMod is at http://www.oktavamod.com/

they have some samples of large condensers on their site pre / post mod, but not the 012

to bad AKG didn't want to play. even so, it was worthwhile and well done. I'm sure it was a lot of work, but fun work !

I'd also vote against generically labeled clips. I opened them all up in QT player and spread the across the screen to listen. it was more useful for me to know what I was listening to. It served to confirm some experiences I'd had in the past with some mics which I didn't like ( pretty much anything AT ).

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

OktavaMod is at http://www.oktavamod.com/

they have some samples of large condensers on their site pre / post mod, but not the 012

to bad AKG didn't want to play. even so, it was worthwhile and well done. I'm sure it was a lot of work, but fun work !

I'd also vote against generically labeled clips. I opened them all up in QT player and spread the across the screen to listen. it was more useful for me to know what I was listening to. It served to confirm some experiences I'd had in the past with some mics which I didn't like ( pretty much anything AT ).

Hi Steve:

You didn't think that the AT875r sounded impressive for a $189.00 mic? I shot a two day shoot last week with it and I am listening to the results now on my Genelecs, I found it to sound better than most of my $500.00 to $800.00 mics.

Different strokes, right?

Dan

[Steve Oakley]

Hi Dan,

didn't know it was $189. for that price, ok, no complaints, its pretty decent.

its not like I'm a snob, I've just had some experiences with AT... there was this one time I did a 3 cam shoot with 3 PD-150's about 5 years ago and some how the main audio bag stayed home :(. the solution was to remove one of the PD-150's mini shotguns from the camera and mount it onto a C stand arm.... and ... well.... it was ok. not great, but certainly clean enough and went on to international distribution. I guess the point is without a side by side comparison, especially within a single piece, its ok. As long as its reasonably clean and understandable, no one except the trained ear will notice, especially coming out of a 3" speaker. with some EQ in post, maybe no difference. its when you put them side by side that the strong and weak points of a mic will become apparent. its not like any of them truly are junk - noisy, poor sensitivity, really funky sound like poor LF or HF - just different. I listened on my studio B&W speakers turned up a bit and you had to listen to hear the difference, the casual listener would think most of the sounded the same except maybe the MKH50 with its "live" in your face sound.

[Meryem Ersoz]

Hi Dan: That's an excellent piece, one of the best audio comparisons I've read, because you provide so much context.

I especially appreciated how you compared your expectations based on the mic's reputation against your actual findings, because there is so much conflicting opinion online--I found that very helpful.

I think it is the best data on the MKH-60 anywhere. I purchased this mic as a sound upgrade, and I've always liked the sound it produces, but I've read many negative things about it--the standard forum user line seems to be "designed to replace the 416 but not as good", which clarifies nothing and made me a little concerned that I had made a poor choice. But listening to your comparisons and feedback have put my mind at ease.

One thing that I still don't get--there are some differences in tonality between the MKH-50 and the MKH-60, but I still don't understand if there is a difference in their pick-up pattern. Is there? Can you clarify this? My (poor) grasp of this is that the 50 has a little bit more off-axis ambient range than the 60...true?

Great job! Now I can just send people who ask me this very question straight to your article.

In the category of "why didn't you..." (can you hear the audio god's hollow laughter???), I would like to see the addition of the Rode NT-2. Can you get on that right away???

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

...
In the category of "why didn't you..." (can you hear the audio god's hollow laughter???), I would like to see the addition of the Rode NT-2. Can you get on that right away???

never mind <grin>

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

Hi Dan: That's an excellent piece, one of the best audio comparisons I've read, because you provide so much context.

I especially appreciated how you compared your expectations based on the mic's reputation against your actual findings, because there is so much conflicting opinion online--I found that very helpful.

I think it is the best data on the MKH-60 anywhere. I purchased this mic as a sound upgrade, and I've always liked the sound it produces, but I've read many negative things about it--the standard forum user line seems to be "designed to replace the 416 but not as good", which clarifies nothing and made me a little concerned that I had made a poor choice. But listening to your comparisons and feedback have put my mind at ease.

One thing that I still don't get--there are some differences in tonality between the MKH-50 and the MKH-60, but I still don't understand if there is a difference in their pick-up pattern. Is there? Can you clarify this? My (poor) grasp of this is that the 50 has a little bit more off-axis ambient range than the 60...true?

Great job! Now I can just send people who ask me this very question straight to your article.

In the category of "why didn't you..." (can you hear the audio god's hollow laughter???), I would like to see the addition of the Rode NT-2. Can you get on that right away???

Hi Meryem:

Thanks so much for your lavish praise. I am glad that you are finding the article helpful, that was my intention, to provide a place where anyone can just go and read about and listen to these mics. I have no bias for or against any of them, I tried to be open minded in approaching how they sounded to me. Bottom line is that you can make up your own mind from listening to them. Everyone hears and listens for different qualities.

If you look at the polar patterns that accompany each mic in the "contestants" section, that will show you exactly how each microphone's pickup pattern compares to the others. There is a definite difference in the pickup pattern between the MKH-50 and 60. The 50 has a wider pattern, so you will hear more ambient sound than you will with the 60 in mids and lows. If you look at th little dotted line in the pattern, you can see with higher frequencies, the 60 picks up a much narrower angle than the 50.

As far as the Rode, nope, didn't include any Rode, DPA, MKH-416, AKG, Gefell or Audix microphones. I tried to really go for the mainstream brands and up until lately, I had never heard a buzz about the Rode but it seems over the past 6 months, it's the go to cheap mic. At some point, I had to cut off the trying to obtain samples process and just test what I had so I did not get any of the above mics.

Best,

Dan

[Cole McDonald]

I wish the author had just linked to the mp3's rather than zip files of them...it would make the review much more interactive. I stopped following the test based on the amount of work I had to do to hear all of the samples. Rather than just previewing them in separate browser windows, I had to download, unzip, locate, than play them...I gave up, too time consuming.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Cole McDonald

I wish the author had just linked to the mp3's rather than zip files of them...it would make the review much more interactive. I stopped following the test based on the amount of work I had to do to hear all of the samples. Rather than just previewing them in separate browser windows, I had to download, unzip, locate, than play them...I gave up, too time consuming.

Sorry Cole:

Free web page/massive information resource + no advertisers or sponsors = massive bandwidth bills with no way to pay them.

If you have free server space and bandwidth for us and will host all of the 52MB per viewer download each time someone clicks on the page, we will be glad to move the media to your server and embed all of the MP3s into the page as many are asking for. So far, about 4,000 views in three days. I think over a month or year, if the article has "legs", you will see about 50k to 100k views x 52MB ea. Yikes, that's a mess O' server space and bandwidth.

Did I mention the website is free?

Just educating you to the financial realities of life on the web,

Dan

[Steve Oakley]

if you got 100K full downloads X 52mb, thats 5.2gigs. in a year thats really nothing. most real ISP's give you 100g+ per month of transfer for well under $10/month. 1and1 is 2000g per month ( at least on the server package I have for a client). their base plan is $18 for 3 months, so thats not really much to worry about.

as for zipping the files, a best about 10kb or less per file was saved. another way to think about it. everyone who has to decompress those files uses up some CPU time doing the work, burning a few watts of electricity. if it were just 10w X 100K downloads, thats 1 MEGAwatt of electricity used just to decompress the zip files. most of the power comes from green house gas emitting coal power plants. sometimes seemingly small things have significant effects. the internet consumes huge amounts of power, something like 5% + of the power used in the US.

that said, if a couple of people are willing to put up some space so the DL's could be shared, I'd be willing to be one host and spread the load around.

[Jim Boda]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

...Take a look. I hope that you find it to be an informative read. Let me know if you found the article to be a good resource.

Dan Brockett

Well done Dan. You have certainly assembled an excellent resource. Be ready to do it all again in 5 years.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

if you got 100K full downloads X 52mb, thats 5.2gigs. in a year thats really nothing. most real ISP's give you 100g+ per month of transfer for well under $10/month. 1and1 is 2000g per month ( at least on the server package I have for a client). their base plan is $18 for 3 months, so thats not really much to worry about.

as for zipping the files, a best about 10kb or less per file was saved. another way to think about it. everyone who has to decompress those files uses up some CPU time doing the work, burning a few watts of electricity. if it were just 10w X 100K downloads, thats 1 MEGAwatt of electricity used just to decompress the zip files. most of the power comes from green house gas emitting coal power plants. sometimes seemingly small things have significant effects. the internet consumes huge amounts of power, something like 5% + of the power used in the US.

that said, if a couple of people are willing to put up some space so the DL's could be shared, I'd be willing to be one host and spread the load around.

Hi Steve:

My math may be wrong but isn't 52 megs x 100k expressed as a file size of
43620761600000 bits
5452595200000 bytes
5324800000 kilobytes (abbreviated as KB or Kb*)
5200000 megabytes (abbreviated as M or MB)
5078.12500 gigabytes (abbreviated as G or GB)
4.959106 terabytes

Big difference between 5GB and 5TB, right?

Dan