If you are considering a shotgun/cardioid...

I found your review excellent and well written. I wish there was something like this when I first started getting interested in recording.

The zipped audio files, on the other hand, I found to be a bit of a hassle for quick comparisons.
 
Great great article Dan! I agree with all of your your findings (with the mics I have experience with) and I would trust the other comments very much! I was impressed that you tested in so many enviornments! I really liked that that you suggest using a high end shockmount with the oktava and that you noticed the schoeps 641 does exteriors well. With a BBG and furry jammer it does wind too!

Great job!
 
First, I'd like to say thanks for the excellent and useful article! I think it answers the longings of many people here, and should be quickly stickified!

Now 2 little issues though, if you want to modify the article a bit...

1) I think your presentation is potentially confusing in regards to the level of ambience, especially for the 4073. That is, you are not normalizing the level of the dialog, so you're reporting that the 4073 picks up more ambience than the other mics just because its output signal is hotter overall. I think it would be a lot better if you were to normalize the dialog level (or at least present the information as if the dialog level were normalized... that is, discuss the RELATIVE levels of dialog to ambience, which is very imprtant information, rather than the OVERALL level of ambience, which is useless in practice. I know that you did indeed address this... but it seems to me that someone could easily misunderstand given the way it's laid out currently. In any case, in use, audiographers will (hopefully!) be setting their levels appropriately for each situation... that is, more like the normalizing approach.

2) The Oktavas are well known for being highly sensitive to wind noise... or rather "air motion" noise, since it doesn't really take much of a wind. In fact, often what's thought to be handling noise is really noise from the "wind" of the mic moving through the air. So, in this case at least (and perhaps for other mics as well), you may want to do the handling-noise test with wind protection (or, better yet, with and without).

Again, I'd like to emphasize that these are minor points and the article is a great contribution to the forum. Thanks!

P.S., and if you get a chance to add in results from the Rode NTG1 and the new DPA shotgun...
 
he did not done any tests with rf or humidity - so really there is alot of info but sertanly not complete .
how does it sounds is very subjective issiue and if the saken sounds not as german mic , what does it mean ?
sorry dan ,does the neumann 81 sounds as the mkh 60 or 416 -)
8 minus -
 
grant-o said:
I found your review excellent and well written. I wish there was something like this when I first started getting interested in recording.

The zipped audio files, on the other hand, I found to be a bit of a hassle for quick comparisons.
Click to expand...

Hi Grant:

Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the zipped audio samples are a pain, but from a web bandwidth and server point of view, it was the best solution. Think about it, if we embedded all of the clips into the article, each person who downloads just the page to look at it downloads all 59 audio clips. That person may listen to just 2 clips or all 59 but regardless, Ken's server takes the hit for the bandwidth for all 59 clips. Plus that would make the page load super slowly for low bandwidth connections. We think this article will easily top 100,000 views over the next few months so the bandwidth would be enormous and we want to make it fast to download for readers in areas where DSL/Cable connections may not be as common as here.

If you are really web saavy and have a better way, we are all ears. Neither Ken nor I are web tech-heads so we set it up the best way we knew how for bandwidth management while still making all of the info accessible for all of the readers.

All my best,

Dan
 
saneproductions said:
Great great article Dan! I agree with all of your your findings (with the mics I have experience with) and I would trust the other comments very much! I was impressed that you tested in so many enviornments! I really liked that that you suggest using a high end shockmount with the oktava and that you noticed the schoeps 641 does exteriors well. With a BBG and furry jammer it does wind too!

Great job!
Click to expand...

Hi Mike:

Glad that you found the article helpful. Yes, the Schoeps did surprisingly well outdoors, it's a really nice mic.

All my best,

Dan
 
ullanta said:
First, I'd like to say thanks for the excellent and useful article! I think it answers the longings of many people here, and should be quickly stickified!

Now 2 little issues though, if you want to modify the article a bit...

1) I think your presentation is potentially confusing in regards to the level of ambience, especially for the 4073. That is, you are not normalizing the level of the dialog, so you're reporting that the 4073 picks up more ambience than the other mics just because its output signal is hotter overall. I think it would be a lot better if you were to normalize the dialog level (or at least present the information as if the dialog level were normalized... that is, discuss the RELATIVE levels of dialog to ambience, which is very imprtant information, rather than the OVERALL level of ambience, which is useless in practice. I know that you did indeed address this... but it seems to me that someone could easily misunderstand given the way it's laid out currently. In any case, in use, audiographers will (hopefully!) be setting their levels appropriately for each situation... that is, more like the normalizing approach.

2) The Oktavas are well known for being highly sensitive to wind noise... or rather "air motion" noise, since it doesn't really take much of a wind. In fact, often what's thought to be handling noise is really noise from the "wind" of the mic moving through the air. So, in this case at least (and perhaps for other mics as well), you may want to do the handling-noise test with wind protection (or, better yet, with and without).

Again, I'd like to emphasize that these are minor points and the article is a great contribution to the forum. Thanks!

P.S., and if you get a chance to add in results from the Rode NTG1 and the new DPA shotgun...
Click to expand...


Hi Ullanta:

Thanks for checking out the article and for your thoughtful feedback.

1. It may not have been clear from my writing, but I did manually adjust the relative output levels of the AT4073a. I tried to make sure that all of the clips from all of the mics were output with the peaks reaching a nominal -12dB. The major differences I heard in ambient with the microphone were a result of the AT4073a's hot output, I was just reporting what I heard through the headphones as a first impression as I recorded. As far as the clips, if you look at all of them with a level meter, you should see that they all match fairly well in nominal level. I did not use normalization though, I did it manually, Perhaps I should have but I wanted to make sure that nothing was clipped off or overly compressed. Thanks for pointing this out. I may add some copy to the AT4073a test to better clarify this.

2. When I performed the handling test for the Oktava, while I did hear a bit of wind noise, even in the quiet room I was recording in, I could tell that the boominess and thuds that are heard were obviously from the microphonics in the body of the Oktava as I was causing them with my clumsy boom technique. Honestly, I did the best I could and I even say in the article to take this test with a large grain of salt since I am not any kind of great boom op. I did notice that several of the mics seemed to pickup wind noise when I hand boomed with them but unfortunately, I was limited on space for the amount of audio clips I could include in the article. If I was an engineer, I would have recorded every mic both without without wind protection, with all capsules, with all rolloffs on and off for every test scenario, but the end result would have been closer to 175 to 200 audio files, more time and effort, more writing and more delay. As it was, it took me about 6 months to do what I did for the article and Ken really wanted to publish it this week. I could have also waited also for AKG and Sennheiser to come through with the requested Blue Line and MKH-416 mics but once again, it would have resulted in months more of delay. At some point, you just have to move on ;-)

Glad that you found the article interesting and I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

All my best,

Dan
 
Last edited:
Oleg 2 said:
he did not done any tests with rf or humidity - so really there is alot of info but sertanly not complete .
how does it sounds is very subjective issiue and if the saken sounds not as german mic , what does it mean ?
sorry dan ,does the neumann 81 sounds as the mkh 60 or 416 -)
8 minus -
Click to expand...

Hi Oleg:

Thanks for checking out the article and for the suggestions.

Yes, true, I did not test for humidity or RF. Honestly, I would not know how to really. Since I live in Southern California, there is no such thing as humidity here, we are basically in a desert with artificial plant life from irrigation. I guess I could have steamed up a shower and done some tests in a steamy room? That actually would have been a good addition, sorry I didn't do that. As far as RF testing, how would you do that? I did test some of the interiors in my edit bay with a lot of monitors, decks, computers but I suppose that is not a very RF rich environment? You mean test each mic with a wireless transmitter? Not sure how you would test a normally wired mic for RF shielding, please let me know how you would.

My words my have been inadequate, but to me, the CMC641 did not sound like the other German mics, it sounded completely neutral and uncolored whereas most of the other German mics had a more colored, smooth, bass/mid enhanced sound. Does that help?

The Neumann? To me, it sounded a bit more toward the MKH-60 although not as much bass emphasis and not as dynamic. As far as an MKH-416, I unfortunately did not have a test sample to A/B compare to but from memory, the Neumann seems to present with more smoothness and more bass than the MKH-416 but I could be wrong, it's been a few years since I have used a 416.

Hope that this helps to clarify some of your points. Thanks for the feedback.

All my best,

Dan
 
Great Stuff Dan!

Just curious and sorry if I missed it.

Is there a button where I can download all of the sample sounds in one zip file?
 
ESTEBEVERDE said:
Great Stuff Dan!

Just curious and sorry if I missed it.

Is there a button where I can download all of the sample sounds in one zip file?
Click to expand...

Hi Estebeverde:

No, but you are the third reader to request this so we are seeing if it possible to do that. We had no idea that so many readers would have the time to dowload and listen to 59 .mp3 files. We thought most people would target the one or two mics that they were most interested in and just listen to those but obviously some of you want to listen to them all.

From what I have heard, it is mainly a concern about bandwidth, that single file with all of the .MP3s will be a very large file and we are anticpating tens of thousands of readers so I am not sure if Ken can allocate that sort of bandwidth.

Would love to do it for all of you and will if it's possible. Ken's site has no advertisers or sponsors and is totally free so I have to see if he can afford to set it up this way, it may make sense or it may end up costing im a bloody fortune. I recall I had a hot trailer on my website at one point and it received 9,000 downloads in two weeks. When I got my $1,800.00 extra bill from Earthlink, I had to take it down. You can become a victim of your own success ;-)

Dan
 
Right... bandwidth can be expensive.

Maybe we can just make a torrent?

If even just a few of us seed the file we can get it out there pretty easy free of charge.

Let me know if you are interested and I can seed it right away.
 
Also, with the naming convention it is hard to sort.

Perhaps detailed id3 tags so we can sort by test type as well as model?


Who's male voice is this in the tests?

Whoever it is, they have a very pleasant voice.
 
ESTEBEVERDE said:
Right... bandwidth can be expensive.

Maybe we can just make a torrent?

If even just a few of us seed the file we can get it out there pretty easy free of charge.

Let me know if you are interested and I can seed it right away.
Click to expand...

Hi:

Remember, I am not an internet techie guy. What is a torrent and how does it work? It is up to Ken, it's his website but yes, bandwidth is a big concern. Ken's site is free and has no advertisers or sponsors, which is cool because we can say whatever we want but not so great when we need tons of server space and huge downloads for thousands of readers.

What is "seed the file"? Sorry, I am not familiar with torrents and seeding files.

Best,

Dan
 
ESTEBEVERDE said:
Also, with the naming convention it is hard to sort.

Perhaps detailed id3 tags so we can sort by test type as well as model?


Who's male voice is this in the tests?

Whoever it is, they have a very pleasant voice.
Click to expand...

Once again, I plead ingnorance. What are id3 tags?

The voice is my own basso profundo car wreck of a voice. Seriously, I hate my voice but I am stuck with it.

Thanks,

Dan
 
Wow.. your voice rocks Dan!

Wish I had that voice.



A torrent file is just a way for ordinary users to share the file by using their home computers.

Instead of download the file off your server, the files are put into the torrent format and then a few people download them.

From there, the file is shared from the computers of people who downloaded them and not from the server.

It is a way to move huge files and share the bandwidth.
 
Hi Este:

Sounds interesting, sort of like P2P stuff like LimeWire or Gnutella? How is a link posted to Ken's website though for the "big lumped all togther" .zip file? What tells the link to link to all of these various home computers? Is it a bit torrent website that directs all of the traffic?

Sorry I am so lame on all of this, I just have never done it before.

Thanks,

Dan
 
You actually pretty much have the gist of it.

Yes.. there is a file called a torrent that directs all the pcs.

It is decentralized.

Here is a link with an FAQ

http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/

Sorry I don't have a better prepared explanation at the moment.

It would probably be worth me doing one.
 
hi dan thanks for your job. many people, included myself, will appreciate it.
i have to say that i missed two things:
one is something that you probably did years ago when you published the low cost shotgun comparison, which is to consider -and may be test- the on camera use of each mic;
the other, somehow connected, is that besides the off axis rejection test i would have liked to hear how the mics sound when their positioning is not ideal but not necessarily off axis, that is to say farer than we would like. in your off axis test you went 3 feet away from the mic, off axis of course. i think it would have been very interesting to hear how each mic sounded when 3 feet far from you but still on axis.
in my job, mostly documentaries or anyway live, run and gun shooting, i often find myself struggling against the most basic rules of audio recording. very noisy environments, wide shots, booming dialogues with people far away from eachother (sometimes with people speaking languages that i can't understand).. or shooting with the mic placed on camera.
i hope i did explain myself well enough, not a real english speaker here, and thanks again.

pietro
 
pietro jona said:
hi dan thanks for your job. many people, included myself, will appreciate it.
i have to say that i missed two things:
one is something that you probably did years ago when you published the low cost shotgun comparison, which is to consider -and may be test- the on camera use of each mic;
the other, somehow connected, is that besides the off axis rejection test i would have liked to hear how the mics sound when their positioning is not ideal but not necessarily off axis, that is to say farer than we would like. in your off axis test you went 3 feet away from the mic, off axis of course. i think it would have been very interesting to hear how each mic sounded when 3 feet far from you but still on axis.
in my job, mostly documentaries or anyway live, run and gun shooting, i often find myself struggling against the most basic rules of audio recording. very noisy environments, wide shots, booming dialogues with people far away from eachother (sometimes with people speaking languages that i can't understand).. or shooting with the mic placed on camera.
i hope i did explain myself well enough, not a real english speaker here, and thanks again.

pietro
Click to expand...

Hi Pietro:

Thanks for checking out the article. Both of your points are valid but I have written numerous articles telling people why they shouldn't use on camera mics for anything other than ambient so to actually test that I feel would have been kind of contrary to what I have been teaching about using the mics that way for years.

Same with the second test, if you cannot locate a mic within the prescribed distance from your subject, there is no refuting the laws of physics, it's going to sound bad. I would have felt strange doing a test on how to obtain bad sound, you know what I mean? Although from three feet, you could probably still get usable sound but it's definitely the outer edge for most types of production sound. Although I did not do a test for the second scenario, I did feel that the Audio-Technica AT4073a would be the best mic out of all of them for picking up distant sources, mainly by virtue of it's extreme sensitivity and frequency response.

Good suggestions but for 99.996% of the readers, using a camera mounted mic or miking from a distance are both recipes for poor sound quality. BTW, your English is very good.

All my best,

Dan
 
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