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Careful, Elk, you are sounding far too rational to be an audiophile, they might ban you
I hope not. the in between stuff is fun, too.
What do you think of the Rode NT1-A as far as condensers go?
I like Rode a lot. Primarily because they make everything in-house and in-country.
As a point of reference, Tony Faulkner(one of my heroes in the recording industry) thinks very , very highly of the omni capsules that go with the NT-5.
And modestly priced. An excellent buy.
Claimed to be one of the quietest mics made at 5 dBA.
I happen to be looking into mic noise these days since I'm finding it to be rather high in the low cost measurement mics. I'm aware that electrets are known to be noisy and that the Rode is a true condenser.
Interesting that true condensers have no current component to the noise, and no resistive thermal noise.
Ribbons on the other hand should have very low resistive thermal noise because the resistance is so low. Resistance in the transformer probably contributes more than the ribbon itself.
5 dBa is astoundingly low self-noise.
Condensers are the most quiet as a group.
Self noise shouldn't be a problem with most mics in most circumstances, but there are exceptions (using ribbons on a quiet instrument at a distance with lots of pre amp gain, etc.)
That's getting very close to the atmospheric noise level, too!
just stay away from Earthworks omnis and DPA 4060 or 4061
not good...especially for acoustic music.
My gefell MK221s are very, very quiet and ruler flat...but they come at a premium... they have a measurement capsule pedigree.
It is very important to look at the noise *spectrum* if you're worried about noise level. Nearly all mics with noise floor below about 10 or 12 dB SPL, A-weighted, achieve this by allowing the microphone capsule to be more efficient, i. e. less damped, around the middle of the A-weighting curve. Then the response is equalized in the electronics to return the mic to flat. This is a much lower noise way to accomplish this than the usual way, which is to add more damping to the capsule resonance. This damping makes the response flat inherently ... but adds noise. These mics with EQ to fix the capsule response have much more high frequency hiss and low frequency rumble than you'd expect for their A-weighted ratings, so be sure to listen to any before assuming that some maker's sub-10-dB(A) mic is actually quieter than some other maker's 15 dB(A) unit.
Wes Dooley's new powered ribbon (AEA A-440) also has extremely low noise, and this is achieved without EQ.
my coles and my gefell mk221 (with josephson c617 bodies) are my all time favorites, but id happily use anything really...(well, not chicomm crap)
one of the worst mikes ive heard is the Sennheiser MKH800. They are widely lauded, but they utilize EQ in the design, and dont sound very good, in my opinion.
Gefells in action
http://www.mil-media.com/LargeEnsembleListeningTest.html
Great recording porn. Those curious should check out the purist stereo pair v. multi-miking examples.
My favorite phrase in the article: " recall that omni mics are not omni-directional at all frequencies, hence point does matter." YES!
Any opinions on the Grado HMP-1? I recently heard some recordings by Peter Mcgrath where he used them:
http://joegradosig.com/petermcgrathtestimonial.html
It will be interesting to see if David Schwartz manages to take the idea of the laser/smoke microphone to and beyond current pro mic capabilities.
The concept has been shown to work, but a lot still to do as it is still in prototype and poor sound quality stage, still could this the future for mics (if the challenges can be resolved).
Starting to make more news now.
Older news info on the prototype:
http://www.avtechnologyonline.com/article/36758.aspx
Cheers
Orb
Cool.
Now hep cats can again smoke by the microphones during recording sessions.
I know only what I have read.
I would love to give them a try.
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