Tested: Where Does The Tone Come From In A Microphone?

[WhiskeyJack]

Awesome video. This guy does great videos and this is probably the best one i have caught so far. Very cool.

[Tadpui]

I watched that last week and I loved it, just like all of his videos. I love that someone out there is busting myths in the best ways possible (scientifically...the best way is scientifically). And his janky DIY mic actually sounds great to boot!

[WhiskeyJack]

I watched that last week and I loved it, just like all of his videos. I love that someone out there is busting myths in the best ways possible (scientifically...the best way is scientifically). And his janky DIY mic actually sounds great to boot!

He does a fantastic job of all his .. research? Yes. I think the myth busting thing is what i enjoyed the most.

I really enjoyed the capsule breakdowns of shoot outs. That was fairly impressive to me. Kinda curious about those DIY mic kits. not that i need another distraction at even remotely in the least but maybe down the road I'd try one out.

[Tadpui]

He does a fantastic job of all his .. research? Yes. I think the myth busting thing is what i enjoyed the most.

I really enjoyed the capsule breakdowns of shoot outs. That was fairly impressive to me. Kinda curious about those DIY mic kits. not that i need another distraction at even remotely in the least but maybe down the road I'd try one out.

I was particularly entertained by how different the same vintage microphones sounded, like they're all different from each other even though they're identical makes and models. I guess it goes to show how a few decades of spittle, cigarette smoke and weed resin can really change the character of a mic. And it makes me appreciate how consistent modern mics sound.

I'd love to build a mic from a kit. I think it'd be the right bridge between the few pedals that I've built, and the amp that I'd love to build in the future. I'm not ready to stick my fingers into a live amplifier and its terrifying voltages yet. But the 12-48 volts of a condenser mic might be a good stepping stone.

[Greg_L]

I was particularly entertained by how different the same vintage microphones sounded, like they're all different from each other even though they're identical makes and models. I guess it goes to show how a few decades of spittle, cigarette smoke and weed resin can really change the character of a mic. And it makes me appreciate how consistent modern mics sound.

It probably is some of that...smoke, spit, etc....but it's probably more due to component drift and lax QC from the get-go. It's the same with vintage amps. A lot of vintage stuff was built using parts with sometimes as much as a 20% tolerance. You know, a 50s/60s era carbon film resistor that is nominally rated to be 100k ohms could actually be anywhere from 80k to 120k and it's going in. And that was a new resistor. That's a wide margin and a big difference. So you could very realistically get two pieces off the same assembly line on the same day built by the same person that sound quite different even when brand new. Nowadays it's pretty common for things to start with parts that have much much tighter tolerances and resistance to drift. 1% tolerance metal film resistors are the norm and they pretty much never drift out of spec, and probably never will in our lifetimes.

[vomitHatSteve]

Oh yeah, I've been meaning to watch this one

[Armistice]

I got about half way through... what was the answer?

[Lt. Bob]

It didn't really come to a conclusion but it was sorta interesting.

What I got out of it is it all really depends on how you EQ it.
A LOT of the mics sounded similar to my ears .... the graphs were exaggerated to be more easily seen.

However some of the mics were so dark/bright/raw sounding that I find it hard to see how they were useful in some of the recordings I know they were on without significant tweaking of the EQ orrrr, perhaps they sit well with some particular pre that has deficiencies the mics offset and the two together work well.

So to me it simply says use what mic you like and EQ to need.

And while I have a LOT of mics ..... really, I tend to just grab one ..... they all work fine.
I'm the same way with guitars ..... whatever is close by.

But for mics I might start using my Art Channel Strip so I can EQ on the way in .............. it's just so easy to simply go into the Focusrite and I like easy ...... but maybe.
lol

[Armistice]

I was watching it on my phone in the car whilst I was waiting for my GF at the doctor's so some of the subtleties were lost but I could see the EQ curves being remarkably similar for lots of them. And I could definitely hear the less subtle differences.

The most expensive mic I have I never use because I haven't found anything it works well on, in the small world of acoustic sources I record.

I have a channel strip too, in the cupboard, and I was thinking of firing it up again, just for a different flavour. Might dig it out next week and try something with it.

[rayc]

Ah, the world of nice outboard gear that doesn't get used much. I'm the same. I have a an half dozen of more pieces of outboard gear in a rack system sitting doing nothing. I put it on a dolly so I could pull it over and use it but it's only been used twice this year.
The one annoying thing/conceit is having the 57 as a straight line and then graphs compared to that line.
That does force the ears to work but a) Utube isn't subtle and b) he still provides the graph for the 2nd mic.
Unless he'd supplied the 57 graph or corrected all subsequent graphs by removing the 57 values they're relatively valueless for comparison aren't they?

[Lt. Bob]

Ah, the world of nice outboard gear that doesn't get used much. I'm the same. I have a an half dozen of more pieces of outboard gear in a rack system sitting doing nothing. I put it on a dolly so I could pull it over and use it but it's only been used twice this year.
The one annoying thing/conceit is having the 57 as a straight line and then graphs compared to that line.
That does force the ears to work but a) Utube isn't subtle and b) he still provides the graph for the 2nd mic.
Unless he'd supplied the 57 graph or corrected all subsequent graphs by removing the 57 values they're relatively valueless for comparison aren't they?

also, unless I missed it, he didn't really show the scale the graph was ...... I feel like those graphs were pretty extreme

[Armistice]

Ah, the world of nice outboard gear that doesn't get used much. I'm the same. I have a an half dozen of more pieces of outboard gear in a rack system sitting doing nothing. I put it on a dolly so I could pull it over and use it but it's only been used twice this year.
The one annoying thing/conceit is having the 57 as a straight line and then graphs compared to that line.
That does force the ears to work but a) Utube isn't subtle and b) he still provides the graph for the 2nd mic.
Unless he'd supplied the 57 graph or corrected all subsequent graphs by removing the 57 values they're relatively valueless for comparison aren't they?

Yes, interesting thing to do, but just because there are a zillion SM57s in the world doesn't make them a good reference point - but I suppose this is part of the entertainment factor in doing these videos.

The other thing I thought odd was recording music then re-playing it through a speaker so you have, theoretically, a controlled test. Except you don't really use microphones to mic recorded music, which will already have changed during the process of recording. Mostly we use microphones to record a single instrumental source in one way or another. So, original thinking, but not sure it's valid in a measurement sense.

[Greg_L]

I applaud his dedication, myth busting, and being able to take something mundane and make it entertaining but this one is pretty useless IMO. Like no one already knew different mics sound different? It seems to me like he lost the plot...like I still don't know what the goal was of this video. What are we actually proving here?

[rayc]

I applaud his dedication, myth busting, and being able to take something mundane and make it entertaining but this one is pretty useless IMO. Like no one already knew different mics sound different? It seems to me like he lost the plot...like I still don't know what the goal was of this video. What are we actually proving here?

He's proving he can spend the money, have his own sort of fun and offer semi/pseudo science on Utub in the process I suppose.
I'd have thought, at the very least, a graph of "difference" as well as displaying the scale would've been essential if it was to be anything but entertainment.

[Greg_L]

He's proving he can spend the money, have his own sort of fun and offer semi/pseudo science on Utub in the process I suppose.
I'd have thought, at the very least, a graph of "difference" as well as displaying the scale would've been essential if it was to be anything but entertainment.

Well there's nothing wrong with being entertaining. He achieves that for sure. His videos are very good. It's just to me, this particular one, it doesn't really answer anything like most of his others do.

[vomitHatSteve]

He's less concrete in the conclusion (I suppose the data his results were less absolute than with the guitar), but his major conclusion seemed to be that the thing that most affects the sound is the capsule and how much it affects the sound can mostly be measured in capacitance.

I think he did EQ sweeps to build his curves and just used the music sample for demo purposes in the video. It'd be nice if he released his samples as impulses so that you could have a fake 57-to-whatever-mic library.

[rayc]

Well there's nothing wrong with being entertaining. He achieves that for sure. His videos are very good. It's just to me, this particular one, it doesn't really answer anything like most of his others do.

100%

[WhiskeyJack]

I think he did EQ sweeps to build his curves and just used the music sample for demo purposes in the video. It'd be nice if he released his samples as impulses so that you could have a fake 57-to-whatever-mic library.

I am 90% sure i saw in one of his vids this week he sells IR;s... brb.

[WhiskeyJack]

I think he did EQ sweeps to build his curves and just used the music sample for demo purposes in the video. It'd be nice if he released his samples as impulses so that you could have a fake 57-to-whatever-mic library.

I am 90% sure i saw in one of his vids this week he sells IR;s... brb.

Yea not from that particular video but he does have some IR's available. For 40 USD.

https://jimlillmusic.com/product/nashvi ... s-ir-pack/

[vomitHatSteve]

Them' some pricey impulses!