MOTUnation.com

Valuable information or clever marketing?

https://www.sweetwater.com/feature/voca ... ocial-push

You decide.

Zenpro has an even nicer thing that covers more than mics: http://www.zenproaudio.com/clipalator

Great company too.

I understand shootouts and understand that they can be very helpful, but there is no substitute for auditioning a mic for the particular application. For example, one of my favorite go-to mics for vocals is the AT4050, but every so often it just sounds horrid on a particular voice and I'll have to try something else. The shootouts give you a good sense of what various mics sound like, but don't make the mistake of putting too much faith in them. Just saying'.

Phil

50 MICS??!? I don't think even Rupert Neve could judge that many at once.

Phil O wrote:I understand shootouts and understand that they can be very helpful, but there is no substitute for auditioning a mic for the particular application. For example, one of my favorite go-to mics for vocals is the AT4050, but every so often it just sounds horrid on a particular voice and I'll have to try something else. The shootouts give you a good sense of what various mics sound like, but don't make the mistake of putting too much faith in them. Just saying'.

Phil

I agree, and in my experience the 4050 is a good all-arounder mic. Lately my band has been cutting vocals and doing 'shootouts' after the fact with the Slate virtual mic system, which I am very very happy with. We choose different mic profiles not only per vocalist, but even per song, depending on the song dynamics, vocal range of the part, solo vs stacked/doubled, etc. It's working great and it's fun- "wow, that 800M sounds great!". My wife and bass player/singer is not a techie but she can easily pick out the mic models she likes and dislikes and we almost always agree. It's a fun and efficient way to work vs trying every combo of mic and mic pre like we used to do. We spent a lot of hours doing that in the past and it will drive you a bit batty after a while.

These shootouts can be sort of helpful I guess but I personally find them of limited use. Maybe helpful in narrowing down a purchase I suppose.

There were 2 or 3 mins that really stood out. Fascinating

I thought it was interesting. To me it proved that, while having thousand$ will get you a very nice microphone, having a low budget isn't the end of the world.

I would have liked for a few ribbons to have been included, however.

There are so few mics on that list that I like, that I didn't find it a very useful shootout compared to the Clip-a-lator at Warren Den's Zen Pro Audio site, or the videos at Sound Pure's site and even the occasional video or audio demos at Alan Moon's Front End Audio site.

Nevertheless, this shootout will benefit a lot of people -- especially those just starting out, and those who have a limited budget.

For those of us who have grown tired of the constant incremental mic upgrade and how expensive that gets, and who just focus on higher-end mics anymore, there's not a lot of interest in that shootout.

More to the point, however, this shootout is strictly for vocal mics. I'd rather see someone finally do an exhaustive shootout of piano mics. Saxes have been done a couple of times by some trusted sources, but long enough ago that a lot of newer mics aren't included. Other acoustic instruments would be nice to hear in shootouts as well, and also stuff like nylon guitar, steel string guitar, upright bass, mandolin, violin/viola/cello.