Mic Listening Room

There are now 65 mics in the Mic Listening Room. The latest models to be added are the Audio Technica AT 804, Sony ECM-55B and the Logitech USB.

The microphone is the all-important link between live sound, be it the human voice, musical instruments, ambient sound, etc. – and the electronic reproduction thereof. Here in the Mic Listening Room are listening tests for an assortment of microphones. They enable the listener to compare the reproduction of the male voice on a variety of modern microphones (and a few vintage ones).

The mics which have been included on this site run the gamut from inexpensive mics manufactured overseas for the mass market, to high-end mics found in broadcast and recording studios. Amateur musicians and project studio hobbyists now constitute a mass market which is catered to by retail chains such as Guitar Center and Sam Ash, as well as e-tailers zZsounds.com, Sweetwater.com, fullcompass.com, B & H Photo, etc. Due to economies of manufacturing, mics can now be had for under $100US with performance which rivals or surpasses models costing much more (the politics of outsourced manufacturing shall remain the topic of another discussion).

Manufacturers of yesteryear -- American, Turner, Altec, RCA -- have been replaced by an even longer list of new suppliers: Behringer, Samson, Marshall, Audio Technica, Rode and Nady, to name a few. In some cases, mics are part of a larger retail product line geared toward the amateur musician market. Several long-time manufacturers are still around: Shure, Electro-Voice, Sennheiser, AKG, Neumann and others. Today their product lines and marketing encompass the live performance/project studio mass market as well.

The listening tests enable you to compare the reproduction of the male voice in a controlled recording environment. In the real world, microphones are subject to a wide range of operating conditions: ambient sound recording in news and documentary work, live and recorded musical performances, environments with high ambient noise levels or extremes of temperature or humidity, and situations where a microphone may be subjected to rough handling. Some of the characteristics the tests do not reveal are:

– Ruggedness/durability

– Rejection of unwanted off-axis sound and gain before feedback

– Handling of high sound pressure levels

– Reproduction of specific musical instruments

– Rejection of handling and wind noise, as well as plosives

– Unit-to-unit manufacturing variances (one mic off an assembly line may sound better or worse than the one before it).

In order to accurately evaluate the "sound" of a microphone you need to listen on a speaker you trust to be accurate. There is no answer to the question of which speaker is “best”; it is the subject of endless debate. The speaker currently used in the Mic Listening Room is the Event Studio Precision 8.

The recordings were made at close range in a dead studio with a minimalist preamp circuit based on the THAT 1512 IC.

After dealing with 62 mics I have opinions on which ones I like best for male speech. Personally, I have a preference for dynamic mics over condensers as there is no external amplification and hence less noise. The Shure SM48 sounds natural to me and is crisp and distinct. Not far behind are the SM57 and SM58, and the Sennheiser e835. The e835 has a neodymium magnet and thus a hotter output than the Shures. I also like the RCA 77DX for the sound it imparts. The Sennheiser MD441 also has a ribbon-like sound when used close up. The Behringer XM8500 is a little boomy but is a good choice if you only have $20 to spend on a microphone.

I am of the opinion that price is not the ultimate indicator of sound quality. There are other mics I would rather own than the $2,800 Neumann U87a. I would rather own an AKG C 414 at almost one-third the price.

The listening files were mastered using 24-bit samples at a frequency of 48 kHz. They were then downsampled to 16 bits and edited using the Goldwave audio editor. There are two ways to listen to the mics:

1. Download the zip file which contains FLAC files of all mic samples and save it to your hard drive. You can then listen to the files again and again without waiting for them to be transferred over the Internet. As FLAC is a lossless compression scheme, you will hear a bit-for-bit reproduction of the original wav file.

2. The full recording of each mic has been compressed using Ogg Vorbis at a bit rate of 192 kbps (-q = 6). If lossy compression doesn't suit you, an abbreviated version of each recording has been compressed with FLAC, a lossless audio encoder. Again, by saving the files to your hard drive you can listen to them again and again without waiting for the Internet. Audio players for Windows (such as Winamp version 5.31 and higher), Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and others can be enabled to play Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files using free tools available on the Web.

Below are links to several audio-related web sites. If you would like to see a link included, post your suggestion in the discussion forum (as well as reporting broken links).

Special thanks to:
Bob Sudock
Bruce Knopper
Bill Pasternak
Gary Brainard
Dave Clementson

Disclaimer: Neither The Mic Listening Room nor its owner has any financial, commercial or other interest in any manufacturer, dealer, distributor or reseller of any of the products or services described herein. The Mic Listening Room does not recommend or endorse any particular product or service. All posts in the Discussion Forum are the opinions of their respective authors.