hey folks, i recently bought the sE elctronics X1 & project filter which i have to say i'm really impressed with. i mainly use the mic for vocals & acoustic guitar. i have owned plenty more expensive mics from Rode, AKG & Oktava but the sE X1 to me sounds up there with the best i've owned.
i have not had the pleasure of trying a Neumann yet but i noticed the tlm 102 recently & i'm wondering if it's likely to shred the sE X1 in performance or if the difference is not worth me spending over £400.....
has anybody here had experience with these 2 mics?
Hi Zyakk - since your question is basically is the 102 better than the X1, people may be avoiding this post to avoid stating the bleedin' obvious. I've no experience of either, but I've been in your situation = Get ok mic which does the job and immediately start thinking 'what if?' and planning an unnecessary upgrade.
Is Neumann's entry level LDC better than SE's? We should all bloody well hope so! But do you need one when your setup is working for you? Not really. Also, the better the mic you have, the more the limitations of your recording environment are exposed. My 2p worth is enjoy what you have and learn to get the most out of it.
What Darren says. There are obvious commercial forces at work trying to convince us that we need to spend a load of money on kit. People who have spent a load of money on kit will tell you that you need to do so too, but I'll leave it to you to decide on their motivation. Posh kit sounds nice, but not that much nicer than the relatively cheap stuff. You can certainly do serious, commercially viable work on very cheap kit indeed.
If you want to record other people's music in exchange for money then yes, you probably do need the best kit you can get your hands on. If you're recording your own music then you just need whatever you feel is good enough. Most people listen to music as 128kbps MP3s using crap earbuds. Most people decide to buy an album based on FM radio, whatever crap speakers are built into their TV or a YouTube clip played on laptop speakers. High Fidelity is absolutely, 100% dead. It's the preserve of boring men in Richer Sounds who spend more on speaker cable than they do on CDs. The music buying public does not give the slightest fragment of a toss about how clean your preamps are. They want a chorus that they can sing along to.
Burial recorded two albums using nothing but Sound Forge - one got a Mercury nomination, the other named the tenth best album of the decade by the Guardian.
Skream is the hottest property in Dubstep and he exclusively uses FL Studio.
Bruce Springsteen recorded Nebraska using a Tascam Portastudio and two SM57s.
Mike Skinner moved out of his bedroom for a proper studio after the second album and promptly lost the creative plot. I don't think that was any coincidence. Admittedly he did have a Neumann in that bedroom, but it was stolen from Jo Whiley.
The TLM is a very good mic for the price, and i absolutely adore mine but if your running on a budjet you might be better of looking for something to complement your existing X1 maybe with a different tone or even variable polar patterns rather than going for one which won't offer anything new just better what you've got already
I've no experience of either, but I've been in your situation = Get ok mic which does the job and immediately start thinking 'what if?' and planning an unnecessary upgrade.