what's the best bang for your buck, the audio technica at-897 or the sennheiser me66

I have the audio technica at-897 and it's awesome

Check out this thread for discussion of this.

<http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=55898>

Jim "not a fan of the ME66" Feeley

Personally, I think there's way too much ME66 bashing that goes on in these forums. At one time I owned both those mics and ended up selling the 897 and keeping the ME66. I think they're both nice mics. The ME66 seemed a little more directional, and crisp. The 897 sounded more natural and was a little better in interior environments, but neither one does well indoors. Overall, I felt the ME66 was more useful to me.

The 897 is definitely a better deal if you're just looking for a shotgun. But the ME series is modular. I've since bought a CS3e and never use the ME66 anymore, but I love the ME64. It's my favorite on-camera mic. Boomed, I definitely prefer the ME64 to the 897 in most indoor environments.

I think one reason so many people get turned off by the ME66 is that they use it incorrectly and try to make it work for every situation. There really is no magic mic like that. There's no point in investing in the ME series if you're not going to take advantage of it as a modular system. If you have phantom power, there are better sounding modular systems too.