New Condensers Give Good Sounds

From: www.Radio-Guide.com

by Mark Shander

In the late 1980s, controversial talk show host Tom Leykis programmed an Arizona AM station that had recently changed from a country music AM/FM simulcast to news/talk. Leykis did double-duty and served as the afternoon drive host for the station. Management gave him a lot of flexibility to do whatever he felt was right to build an AM audience.

CREATING A SOUND
I learned a lot about the business end of radio and, surprisingly, radio engineering from Leykis, as well as from the station’s Chief Engineer. Being a creative talent, he knew exactly how he wanted the station to sound for it to succeed in the Phoenix market. We would have extensive conversations over compression, microphone selection, microphone processors, air-chain processing, and, believe it or not, even how much plate reverberation to dial in for the station. The station sounded louder and cleaner than many expected – different enough from other stations to be considered somewhat unique. (There was a bit too much reverb initially, which was eventually tuned down to become just a bit more subtle.)

SELECTING MICROPHONES
The microphones in the talk studio were all Shure SM-7s, run through Valley People Dynamite limiter/levelers before hitting the DA feeding the board input and router selector. The air-chain program feed was sent to a finely tuned Optimod. Listening to pre-delay was like listening to silk. As we sought the right setup for producing liners, promos, etc, we sampled the AM production studio with its Sennheiser MD-421 microphone and then moved quickly to the FM production studio, which had just been completely renovated. The FM production studio had a unique configuration. There was not a lot of flexibility, but there was a lot of new, wonderful equipment. Instead of a dynamic microphone, as the rest of the studios in the facility had, the FM production studio had a Neumann condenser microphone.

CONDENSER MICS
The Neumann had a small diaphragm and was mounted in a quirky, hands-off position near the console. Since everything was new and set to flat response characteristics, it was a great opportunity to put a condenser through its paces. Leykis and I spent about an hour in the studio comparing the characteristics of this microphone to others. One advantage to the condenser is that the noise floor tends to be extremely low. While it is not really fair to compare a several-thousand-dollar Neumann to a $500 Shure dynamic microphone, it is fair to say that dynamics do an excellent job of reproducing voice frequencies while condensers appear to have a much greater range of sensitivity and sonic accuracy. If they were more durable and less fragile, condensers could have easily replaced dynamic microphones in a number of broadcast studio situations. A lower price would not have hurt, too. At the time, it was sort of wishful thinking.

NOW THEY CAN
Moving forward to the present, microphone choices have changed. There now are very high quality, brand-name condenser microphones with a street price that is lower than most broadcast studio dynamic microphones. It only takes a low-end production mixer to supply phantom power. Two condenser microphones sold as studio packs crossed my desk recently and I decided to put them to the test against a high-end condenser with characteristics similar to the Neumann condenser Tom Leykis and I used for production in the late 80s. These inexpensive condensers are giving their more-expensive high-end counterparts a run for their money. In many cases they have a higher noise floor, but similar sensitivity and dynamic range as their multi-thousand-dollar counterparts.
 
DUAL CONDENSERS
These two-packs each consist of a large-diaphragm microphone for voice and a small-diaphragm microphone for something like an acoustic instrument. They are typically marketed to musicians and guitarists who would use the large diaphragm model to sing into, while pointing the small diaphragm microphone at an acoustic guitar. The MXL 2001/603 pack from Marshall Electronics includes a large gold diaphragm studio microphone and a small diaphragm condenser. The other studio pack I evaluated was the AT2020/AT2021 pack from Audio-Technica. In the Audio-Technica pack, the large diaphragm microphone had a cardioid pattern, which did have a bit more prominent proximity effect than that MXL appeared to.

SONIC EVALUATION
The MXL603 and the AT2021 sounded very similar when applied to musical instruments, though they differed when used as voice studio microphones. They both sounded a bit thin when compared to a dynamic microphone like a Sennheiser MD-421 or a Shure SM-7. One nice thing about the tonal quality of these microphones is that they appear to have a more open sound and better frequency response on the high end than their dynamic counterparts. These microphones do make great FM studio microphones and I can easily see using any of them as extra microphones for talent in a studio. However, for a host microphone, I would consider getting into the next higher class of condensers. These packs are an excellent value for the money, but they just do not produce the thick sound most broadcasters like to hear from primary studio microphones.

Mark Shander has used many microphones in his career in radio, TV and on the Internet. He can be contacted at mark@shander.com