Yet another mic comparison!

[Sam Inglis]

I've found that recording an entire song with the same mic is quite a good way of getting to know its qualities, so here's a comparison that I think is interesting. This is a demo recording where every acoustic part was tracked using the same three mics, placed as close together as I could get them. The sources are dreadnought guitar (panned left), parlour guitar (panned right), nylon-strung guitar, brushed snare drum and vocal (all panned centre). There's also a bass guitar which was DI'd.

There's some compression on the vocal, plus a little reverb on the vocal, snare and nylon guitar. No EQ other than a high-pass filter on most sources set at about 100Hz. All the mics were recorded flat through a Focusrite ISA 828 preamp. Any pads or filters were switched off, and the mics were all either fixed cardioid or set to the cardioid pattern. You are hearing the same takes in every case.

I did my best to level-match each source for each mic, but in practice this isn't very easy - I matched the preamp gain across the three mics using test tones but then had to do further adjustments after recording to get things closer. It's not perfect, but I think close enough to reveal the similarities and differences in sound between the three mics.

All three are vintage models that are long discontinued. One is very well known, the other two are a lot more obscure...

[Drew Stephenson]

Well, it's bedtime now but I'll tee that up tomorrow.

[Random Guitarist]

To my sad old ears they are similar.

A seems a bit bright, a sort of micro transient spikyness?
B is nicest to me, seemed to bring out a bit more of the snare detail?
C maybe a bit too soft?

The only guess I'd hazard is B being a D19, but that's a wild guess.

[Drew Stephenson]

Just having a quick listen now (in between the construction work next door). On a quick listen, A seems to have the most healthy low end, C seems a bit less open at the top end and I'm not so keen on the sibilance. B sounds both a bit scooped and less airy in the top end than A.
As to what's what though, not got a clue!

There's something funny happening with the polarity on A though. Running both B & C together gives the typical boost of signal level, but running A&B or A&C gives significant cancellation of everything but the bass.

[Sam Inglis]

There's something funny happening with the polarity on A though. Running both B & C together gives the typical boost of signal level, but running A&B or A&C gives significant cancellation of everything but the bass.

Ah I know what's going on there. That particular mic needs a DIN to XLR converter and one of mine is wired the wrong way around...

[Drew Stephenson]

That particular mic needs a DIN to XLR converter...

So there's a small hint to the experts!

[Hugh Robjohns]

... running A&B or A&C gives significant cancellation of everything but the bass.

This is gives an interesting clue as to the massive LF phase shift involved in creating its cardioid pattern too!

[Sam Inglis]

Nothing so interesting -- it's just that the bass was DI'd and thus not part of the test.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Phew!

[Drew Stephenson]

Yeah, sorry, wasn't very specific there. It's quite obvious from the cancelled sound that the bass (instrument) is not affected at all, rather than the bass (frequency component) being partially affected.

[Arpangel]

I preferred example number two, just sounded clearer and less muddy.

[Sam Inglis]

OK... so, the reason I did this was that I was excited about finally having tracked down a mic I've been looking for for ages. That mic is the Neumann KM88i, which is example C in this comparison. It's noteworthy for being the only solid-state mic Neumann produced with a nickel capsule. Apparently they had a bunch of these capsule assemblies left over when they discontinued the KM56 valve mic and designed the KM88 to use them up. It has the reputation of being a good sounding mic but rather brighter than other Neumann models, which I think this comparison bears out.

Mic A is my trusty Neumann KM84, and Mic B is the less well known Sony C55p. I was interested to include these two mics in the comparison because the Sony is sometimes considered a good substitute for the KM84, which has become prohibitively expensive. And to my ears they do indeed sound very close. I think there is probably enough variation between different KM84s that you could include this mic in a bunch of them and it wouldn't stand out.

Incidentally, the Sony has a unique feature whereby the capsule can be rotated within the headbasket, allowing it to act either as a side-address or an end-address mic. These examples were recorded in side-address mode. Supposedly it sounds a little different in end-address mode.

So, a mic comparison that basically confirms all the received wisdom as far as I can see.

[James Perrett]

I certainly felt that Mic C had sibilance issues that weren't so apparent with the other two. It might have been interesting to try a KM184 as well to see whether it showed up the sibilance in the same way that the KM88 did.