Flat freq response.

[desol]

Anybody out there aware of a currently made microphone...that is completely flat?

No 4-db boost at 10k... No 2-db cut at 1k... etc etc.

Flat.

Thanks,

D.

[nandoanalog]

Lots of flat mics hanging around.... Schoeps, earthworks etc etc etc.... Do a litle search.

If you need a flat mic just for measuring purposes, behringer has a 50$ mic that is flat enough.

[Blast9]

DPA 4011? Very natural in any case, if it isn't flat

[desol]

Originally Posted by nandoanalog

Lots of flat mics hanging around.... Schoeps, earthworks etc etc etc.... Do a litle search.

If you need a flat mic just for measuring purposes, behringer has a 50$ mic that is flat enough.

Thanks for the reply. It's not for measuring...it's for recording.

D.

[desol]

Originally Posted by Blast9

DPA 4011? Very natural in any case, if it isn't flat

Nice, but very expensive.

D.

[Jim Williams]

I don't know about the unidirectional model, but the B+K (I'll always call them that) 4003/4006 has a 2~3 db rise at 16k.

AKG 460/480's are flat.
AKG 414's are also pretty flat with a but of wiggle above 10k.

I love flat mics. Why would I want an EQ built in that I can't set the amplitude, bandwidth or frequency?

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

I love flat mics. Why would I want an EQ built in that I can't set the amplitude, bandwidth or frequency?

No kidding. I have a DPA 4090 and it's fabulous. When I play back a track it sounds exactly like what I just heard acoustically in the room. What more could you ask for?

--Ethan

[andy_simpson]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

I don't know about the unidirectional model, but the B+K (I'll always call them that) 4003/4006 has a 2~3 db rise at 16k.

AKG 460/480's are flat.
AKG 414's are also pretty flat with a but of wiggle above 10k.

I love flat mics. Why would I want an EQ built in that I can't set the amplitude, bandwidth or frequency?

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

It is interesting to me that these mics are always called 'flat'. I hear resonance issues.

How much diaphragm (or other) resonance does it take to make a mic have a 'wiggle'?

When we see a 'tiny' .5dB deviation in a frequency response curve, what does it actually represent in the time domain?

Frequency domain measurements are a one-dimensional perspective on the performance of a mic and often hide great problems.

And if it were as simple as mics having 'built in EQ', then we could make them 'flat' again by equalisation, but this is not so.

The most significant part of timbre comes from impulse response, which cannot be altered with equalisation, any more than reverb can be removed with it.

Andy

[jnorman]

i have owned schoeps cmc64s, DPA 4011s and 4006s, and AKG C461s and C481s, among LOTS of other mics (gefells, neumanns, ATs, etc), looking for a flat response mic for classical recording. i havent ever found any LD condensers that sounded flat to me, but the DPA 4011s and the AKG C481s are about as close as i have found so far. both of those mics are pretty accurate and transparent. the DPA 4006s seemed a bit honky to me in comparison with the cardioid 4011s. i did a bit of body modification to the 481s to eliminate a little body resonance in those mics, but once that was accomplished, i can rarely hear any diffrence between them and the 4011s. several of the omni mics out there test out as being quite flat in freq response, but still do not deliver a pleasing sound to my ears. hard to define exactly, but i generally always favor a cardioid mic to an omni.

[Jim Williams]

Originally Posted by andy_simpson

It is interesting to me that these mics are always called 'flat'. I hear resonance issues.

How much diaphragm (or other) resonance does it take to make a mic have a 'wiggle'?

When we see a 'tiny' .5dB deviation in a frequency response curve, what does it actually represent in the time domain?

Frequency domain measurements are a one-dimensional perspective on the performance of a mic and often hide great problems.

And if it were as simple as mics having 'built in EQ', then we could make them 'flat' again by equalisation, but this is not so.

The most significant part of timbre comes from impulse response, which cannot be altered with equalisation, any more than reverb can be removed with it.

Andy

Perhaps, but most are using these on axis so polar deviations are not a real problem with close micing studio techniques. Impulse response is also effected by the poor state of microphone electronics, so much more can be done to improve that.

There is so much crap following a quality capsule it's amazing we can hear what we can through that stuff.

No way one could flaten out a complex capsule like a kk 87, it would be like pushing down a ping pong ball into water with your thumb, it just keeps rolling around it.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[u b k]

Originally Posted by desol

No 4-db boost at 10k... No 2-db cut at 1k... etc etc.

Flat.

are you really concerned with something that measures flat, or are you more interested in something that sounds neutral? ime, the two don't always correlate.

the mics people are recommending here are among the most neutral mics in production, which is what i think everyone is assuming you're after. but some mics --- josephsons come to mind --- measure pretty damn flat but have a lot of character.


gregoire
del
ubk
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