Micophone shoot out between Schoeps and Neumann

Neumann by far.

But this is a music application.

The Neumann gave a more natural "guitar" sound, more of the natural resonance and ambiance, more tone with less fretting and finger noise.

Schoeps ARE used a lot in recording studios also, but there's a reason the Neumann km84 is a legendary as it is.
 
It's funny I think Schoeps by far.

I used to own 84's (I'm aware these are 184's) and currently own MK41's so I do know both pretty well.
When recording an instrument like this I want the instrument sound to shine through. The 184's while sounding a bit more full
it feels muddy to me compared to the schoeps. I did listen on studio speakers for this.

Lets be honest here though the differences are incredibly subtle. The increase or decrease of bass could be a matter of an inch in placement.

I use schoeps almost exclusively for dialog. I feel talking voices should sound as neutral as possible which is
why I'm not a huge fan of sennheiser for booms (used to own a mkh 50 and 60).

Now singing voice most likely I want some kind of "color" to the mic.
I also tend to like warming things up through my neve pre's rather than mics but that's just my preference.

No right or wrong here, just 2 great sounding mic's on a well played guitar.
 
Rippie said:
It's funny I think Schoeps by far.

I used to own 84's (I'm aware these are 184's) and currently own MK41's so I do know both pretty well.
When recording an instrument like this I want the instrument sound to shine through. The 184's while sounding a bit more full
it feels muddy to me compared to the schoeps. I did listen on studio speakers for this.

Lets be honest here though the differences are incredibly subtle. The increase or decrease of bass could be a matter of an inch in placement.

I use schoeps almost exclusively for dialog. I feel talking voices should sound as neutral as possible which is
why I'm not a huge fan of sennheiser for booms (used to own a mkh 50 and 60).

Now singing voice most likely I want some kind of "color" to the mic.
I also tend to like warming things up through my neve pre's rather than mics but that's just my preference.

No right or wrong here, just 2 great sounding mic's on a well played guitar.
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Ahhh - human ears!

Yeah, I never quite liked my KM84's on dialog. Even the most OUTSTANDING studio mics are usually only that good on a few select sound sources. That's the studio owner's curse - you have to buy a ton of mics to have everything covered.
 
DPStewart said:
Neumann by far.

But this is a music application.

The Neumann gave a more natural "guitar" sound, more of the natural resonance and ambiance, more tone with less fretting and finger noise.

Schoeps ARE used a lot in recording studios also, but there's a reason the Neumann km84 is a legendary as it is.
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Not sure it's a slam dunk for the Neumanns..... They have a bit more high frequency sibilance, where the Schoeps have greater detail, and more mid range bass response.
 
Michael Thames said:
Not sure it's a slam dunk for the Neumanns..... They have a bit more high frequency sibilance, where the Schoeps have greater detail, and more mid range bass response.
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While these types of things may be factually correct - 25 years of record production has taught me that those things do not equal "sounds better" ... only "sounds different".
On a smallish speaker system the Neumann recording sounded very pretty to me. The greater midrange and overall different tonal characteristics of the Schoeps made it sound less beautiful, less appealing as music. These are two assessments that have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with scientific accuracy of a transducing device.
If you want THE MOST accurate transducing devices (microphones) you get Bruel & Kerr. And if you put a bunch of them on instruments playing music it will sound GOD AWFUL.

Put a bunch of Vintage Telefunken tube mics that technically have raging distortion and sibilance and coloration on those instruments and it will sound like heaven.

A better pre-amp? I'd reach for a WORSE pre-amp. A tube pre-amp with distortion and coloration and probably even a noise floor!
 
Michael Thames said:
My friend and guitarist extraordinare Matt Palmer did a shoot out between a Pair of Neumann KM 184's and Schoeps MK4's. I lent Matt my Schoeps to compare. What do you professional audio guy think?
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I think it's hard to tell from the compressed audio of youtube. I own a factory matched pair of Schoeps mk4s, and mine sound a lot better than this. I've heard comparisons of the mk4s and the 184s on guitar and piano where the comparison mk4s sound like mine, and the 184s sound like they have a HF lift. It makes the 184 brighter, with some edge, and extra airiness. It's not unattractive, but it's also not accurate. The Schoeps by comparison are a bit darker, flatter, more detailed, very accurate (unforgivingly so), and somehow more musical (the Schoeps "secret sauce" that's especially true of the mk2 and mk2h omnis and the mk21 sub-card, IMHO of course).

I'm not hearing any of that in this particular comparison however. So I don't know what to make of it.

Part of what I'm hearing here seems to be processing. I don't believe the reverb to be natural, and there seems to be a fair amount of EQing taking place on both versions. And of course youtube has re-encoded and compressed with their own algorithms.

My advice is to take it with a grain of salt and not use this comparison, or indeed any other single comparison, as your only source. There's lots of comparisons out there, so listen to a number of them; more samples are better than fewer samples. If you're trying to decide what to buy, always try to rent or borrow a pair (or several different pairs) and try them out directly in your workflow, with your equipment. That's always going to be the best way to find out what really works for you personally. If you can do it of course.

But really, the thing to remember with mics of this caliber is that it's more about placement than it is about brand. Neumann, Schoeps, DPA, Microtek Gefell, Sennheiser, and a bunch of others all make excellent mics, and a good recording engineer can make excellent recordings with any of them.
 
I vote for the Schoeps.

DPStewart said:
The Neumann gave a more natural "guitar" sound, more of the natural resonance and ambiance, more tone with less fretting and finger noise.
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The Schoeps sounded like it had more bass, but that's not why I voted for it. It sounded like it has more bass because of the Proximity Effect: simply because it was closer. I don't like that.

Rippie said:
The increase or decrease of bass could be a matter of an inch in placement.
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Yes. In the shot I can see that they put the two mics further apart than I would have for a test. One, which looks like a Schoeps, is much closer to the guitar than the other. The test is inconclusive.

Is that why DPStewart hears more ambiance from one, and I hear more bass from the other?

Rippie said:
Lets be honest here though the differences are incredibly subtle
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Yes, despite the Schoeps seeming to me to have more Proximity Effect than I like, I picked it. But to pick it I had to listen to my feelings more than the sound, because it's so subtle and I'm not a trained musician or audio engineer. My ears feel more at ease when they're listening to the Schoeps, like they're straining less. They felt that way when I listened first on my cheap earbuds and when I listened on my JBL LSR305 studio monitors (I didn't notice the extra bass until I switched to the studio monitors).

But this also needs to be a blind test. I was already sweet on the Schoeps. So who knows? When I saw the titles, they may have colored my opinion.

One mic is closer, it's not a blind test, and it's compressed on YouTube. All bets are off. :)

Michael Thames said:
I made the guitar too.
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Say what? Awesome! It looks great.
 
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Having used both on various things the biggest thing that struck me about the Schoeps over really any other mic I have used was the response time of the diaphragm. I didn't think they were necessarily brighter but the slightest impulse came through where other mics seem to react slower and would round off the impulses. I was doing FX so this was an important thing because sometimes you want that detail and sometimes you don't. We had mics we brought out on the Foley stage specifically because they tended to respond even slower. They would tone down the grit on footsteps, where a Schoeps would accentuate that grit.

This is probably what people are referring to by "detail".

As for "shootouts", I find them only slightly interesting partly for the above reason. All they really do is show which mic used for that purpouse on that source with that placement compares. And you only get that IF the poster really made sure to be consistent, which is often not the case.
 
I hear you kinda....... but not sure about a tube preamp for classical guitar, although I must admit I've never tried it.
 
combatentropy said:
I vote for the Schoeps.



The Schoeps sounded like it had more bass, but that's not why I voted for it. It sounded like it has more bass because of the Proximity Effect: simply because it was closer. I don't like that.



Yes. In the shot I can see that they put the two mics further apart than I would have for a test. One, which looks like a Schoeps, is much closer to the guitar than the other. The test is inconclusive.

Is that why DPStewart hears more ambiance from one, and I hear more bass from the other?



Yes, despite the Schoeps seeming to me to have more Proximity Effect than I like, I picked it. But to pick it I had to listen to my feelings more than the sound, because it's so subtle and I'm not a trained musician or audio engineer. My ears feel more at ease when they're listening to the Schoeps, like they're straining less. They felt that way when I listened first on my cheap earbuds and when I listened on my JBL LSR305 studio monitors (I didn't notice the extra bass until I switched to the studio monitors).

But this also needs to be a blind test. I was already sweet on the Schoeps. So who knows? When I saw the titles, they may have colored my opinion.

One mic is closer, it's not a blind test, and it's compressed on YouTube. All bets are off. :)



Say what? Awesome! It looks great.
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Thanks for the kind words.

I do believe he kept both mic equal distance from the guitar which was 24 inches. At 24 inches I think you can forget about the proximity effect.
 
Ah, thanks. Maybe the focal length is longer than I first thought, the perspective different than I had guessed. I'm sorry that I did little more than heap more nonsense onto the Internet ;)
 
When recording music one must always remember that technical concepts mean NOTHING compared to "how does it sound AS MUSIC"... It took me about 3 solid years of professional studio work to really get that lesson through my head.

For example: some folks have said here that the Schoeps recording was "more detailed"... you say that like it's a good thing. In MUSIC recording that is very often a BAD thing. Especially on solo instruments. The high frame rate of "Video" is technically WAY more accurate at reproducing movement in a video recording - yet we almost ALWAYS prefer the look of 24p over video's 60 frames. How did those 60p screenings of Peter Jackson's THE HOBIT go over? Yeah..they BOMBED. People didn't like it.
SAME THING.
Why on Earth do you think tube gear is so raved about? It is FAR from being as technically accurate but we all know how HUGE a market and demand there is for tube gear in the music recording world.

Then Response Time, which could be compared to amplifier slew rate, is mentioned. Again, in MUSIC recording that's very often a BAD thing. Ever heard of folks using "fast compressors"? Yeah, that's to UNDO a too-fast response time. Ever heard of "Ribbon Mics"? And heard how revered the good ones are? Yeah...ribbon mics have BY FAR the slowest response time of all mic designs. And when a recording engineer reaches for a Ribbon mic, they are usually doing so because those fast transients being generated by an instrument are exactly the part of the sound they want to get rid of. There is also a huge market for "Tape Simulation" plugins, and one of the main characteristics of analog tape recording is a softening of the transient attacks. I list all things things to illustrate the fact that you're probably already aware of all these products and their popularity. That's WHY they are so popular.
"Accuracy" is of no use whatsoever to me or any other experienced music recording engineer I know for MUSIC recording. It is virtually NEVER a factor in my decisions of what microphone or other sound recording or processing device to use.


All this is REVERSED when recording Foley, sound effects, film dialog, or anything for "documentary" purposes.
In these applications accuracy is generally the FIRST factor considered when choosing microphones and mic-amplifiers.

It really is two totally different worlds of sound recording.
 
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DPStewart said:
When recording music one must always remember that technical concepts mean NOTHING compared to "how does it sound AS MUSIC"... It took me about 3 solid years of professional studio work to really get that lesson through my head.

For example: some folks have said here that the Schoeps recording was "more detailed"... you say that like it's a good thing. In MUSIC recording that is very often a BAD thing. Especially on solo instruments.
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I hear this from studio recordists a fair amount. I submit that if you're recording classical music, that is acoustical instruments, especially ensembles in a decent sounding hall (not a dry studio), that "more detailed" is not only a good thing, but it's a highly prized good thing. It's the reason for the existance for the Schoeps mics, Josephsons, Sonadores, etc. Indeed, this is where Neumann made their initial reputation. The Neumann M50 is still one of the most highly prized mics around (used even selling for over $20k USD).

If you're doing classical music recording at remote locations (performance halls), that's when you find out how much you want highly detailed mics, and how nice omnis are. In the studio, especially a relatively (compared to a performance hall) small and dry studio, it's a different story all together.

DPStewart said:
It really is two totally different worlds of sound recording.
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I absolutely agree.
 
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Bruce Watson said:
I hear this from studio recordists a fair amount. I submit that if you're recording classical music, that is acoustical instruments, especially ensembles in a decent sounding hall (not a dry studio), that "more detailed" is not only a good thing, but it's a highly prized good thing. It's the reason for the existance for the Schoeps mics, Josephsons, Sonadores, etc. Indeed, this is where Neumann made their initial reputation. The Neumann M50 is still one of the most highly prized mics around (used oven selling for over $20k USD).

If you're doing classical music recording at remote locations (performance halls), that's when you find out how much you want highly detailed mics, and how nice omnis are. In the studio, especially a relatively (compared to a performance hall) small and dry studio, it's a different story all together.



I absolutely agree.
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I agree Bruce, I guess we end up paying for detail and was the reason I bought the Schoeps. I have a pair of Oktava mk-12's that were modded by Michael Jolly, those sound like the Neumanns. I also got the MJE K47H capsules for them which turn them into a Neumann U67. I love them all, but the Schoeps to my ear are the best.

I was a bit surprised though to hear how well the Nuemanns competed with the Schoeps. I sent Matt my Schoeps to try out because he was considering getting a pair, I thought it would be obvious the Schoeps would be the winners........ But.......
 
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