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Neumann Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphone Shootout | Vintage King


mono

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Lynn Fuston did the best recorded shootout of this type about 10 yrs ago, with a singer repeating a few bars of a cappella singing pretty exactly, with matched distance and pre levels.  ("3D Mic CD")  If you can find one it is the next best thing to an in-person comparison.  The latter is a very tough thing to find even in big cities anymore, and is gone from markets like SF.

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11 hours ago, JonG said:

They have a bunch of mics set up in a room with foot switches to try, but something is off in there any it’s hard to make a real comparison.

 

Are you referring to the video or the regular setup at the store? When I was there I found the setup with the foot switches really useful. What I remember most was the fact that there were 2 mics that really stood out from the crowd and no, they were not U47 clones. Everybody I was with that day picked those 2 as the standouts.

 

In this video I don't hear anything conclusive, other than that the U47fet sounds rather underwhelming on vocal,(there's a reason you only see those in front of kick drums) and that the cheaper variants, while generally holding their own, appear more sibilant. Interesting also the differences in pickup pattern (all are cardioid, I assume), you can really hear the room differently in all those mics when the  guy sings. I was surprised about the U87AI, the guy must not be hitting it very hard since those mics are so easily clipped rather unpleasantly by strong voices.

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8 hours ago, Werner Althaus said:

Are you referring to the video or the regular setup at the store?

The regular setup in the store. I found it difficult to really make a good comparison with the way the mics were set up in the room. I seem to also recall there being cheap headphones and some anomalies like unequal levels and some mute boxes not working. Not to say that they haven’t improved things since my visit, but it felt a lot like when Guitar Center has something poorly set up and it barely works from a bunch of people misusing it.  

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58 minutes ago, JonG said:

The regular setup in the store. I found it difficult to really make a good comparison with the way the mics were set up in the room. I seem to also recall there being cheap headphones and some anomalies like unequal levels and some mute boxes not working. Not to say that they haven’t improved things since my visit, but it felt a lot like when Guitar Center has something poorly set up and it barely works from a bunch of people misusing it.  

I forgot to mention, I went to the Nashville location, I think it's much newer and maybe in better shape. Got to listen to some fine mics but nothing at VK could touch the mics I heard at Shannon Rhoades' "mic-rehab", he's Blackbirds "mic curator" and makes his own capsules for Mitek CV4 mods. That's where I'd spend my money if I was in the market.

 

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The room at 1176 (!!) Blvd in LA is pretty useful, but some caution is always needed in doing any shoot out.

 

First off, you shouldn't use your own voice. All of that skull vibration going on when making sound is really misleading. I always use a third party to do the sound making.

 

Secondly, balancing out the perceived volume is key. Different voices will peak differently mic to mic, so there is no way to calibrate it. I insist on having someone tweak the inputs to normalize them when doing an eval. The LA store has an antelope interface last I was there, and twisting those knobs made a world of difference.

 

VK will record the session for you to take home and judge more.

 

I have found the VK staff to be very cool about helping with all of this.

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