Here are the results of a somewhat unscientific shoot-out between three mid-priced mics on some voice-over material.
- Brauner Phantom C
- Neumann TLM103
- Microtech Gefell M930
I've randomly labelled the Mics A, B & C for those who want to hazard some guesses, and I'll check back and reveal all later on!
The tests were not conducted in vocal booth so you can hear some room ambience and extraneous noise. The source material is my own voice - I started with a hard-sell commercial and switched to a softer reading from a book so you can get an idea of two very different types of material. The takes are very 'rough and ready' so I haven't really got to work cleaning them up etc and I certainly wouldn't present them as a completed job, not least because it's tough to get good artistic results when you're engineering your own session. There's a few plosives etc that I didn't have time to fix.
The tests are necessarily in pairs as I only have two pre-amps, so you're best comparing A/B within each discrete test as opposed to across tests otherwise you'll be comparing different takes. For example, as it turned out the commercial on Take 3 was definitely better than say Take 1.
I used Elemental Audio's Finis plug-in to bring up all the volumes to the same level (note, NOT to perform any limiting), to cater for different output levels. Some will inevitably object to any form of added processing but I think it's the only way to focus objectively on the sound quality rather than raw volume, and it's nothing that you wouldn't automatically do in a realworld situation anyway, and the treatment is the same for all 3 instances. I will reveal the relative 'hotness' of each mic later, as there are differences.
This somewhat unscientific test is certainly open to criticism from the point of view of positioning as it's tricky to speak into the sweetspot of two LDC's simultaneously, and the optimum distance from the mic is clearly different for each mic. As any self-respecting engineer will point out with complete justification, fine-tuning the position of each mic individually will improve its performance, although perhaps not equally.
Making meaningful price comparisons these days is tricky as so many of us can score great deals from certain dealers on certain makes, exchange rates fluctuate wildly and eBay make a mockery of actual new cost, so for the moment I'll just say that for a "European € ballpark new price" the Gefell is easily the cheapest of these three, with the Brauner and the Neumann both costing +/-50% more.
So please don't think of this as anything definitive - it's just some fun pointers!
Right - enough excuses, here's the test!
Testing equipment was:
Metric Halo ULN-2 Pre-amps (set to +32dB of Gain) & A-D conversion
Logic 7.1
G4 Powerbook
Belden/Neutrik cables
(Sony MDR-7509 Cans)
All files are mono WAV's at 24/44.1k and are around 7MB each.
For each TAKE I slung up two different mics as close as possible, armed the tracks, hit record and started speaking...
TAKE ONE: Mic A vs Mic B
Mic A Mic B
TAKE TWO: Mic B vs Mic C
Mic B Mic C
TAKE THREE: Mic A vs Mic C
Mic A Mic C
NB: Thanks to Nico for the loan of the TLM103, the other two mics I already own myself.
EDIT: I have now revealed the identity of each mic later in this thread so if you want to blind test don't scroll down!