Honestly, there are so many good mics on the market right now that it makes me drool.
I own some good ones, some great ones, some expensive ones, and some mid-priced ones…but when I see a review like the one in the current digital guide: ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN… my pocketbook starts to vibrate.
I’ve blogged links to Electronic Musician many times before on these pages. Yes, it says “musician” in the title, but virtually all the articles, ads, columns, and reviews in this online mag are fodder for voice actors.
This particular review is loaded with stuff I’ll bet you didn’t know about microphones. You’ll see mention of all the standard names: Neumann, Shure, Audio-Technica, Electro-Voice, Lauten, Sennheiser, etc… plus a few I’d never heard of: Coles, Brauner, Josephson, Placid.
Some of the articles within: Top engineers talk their favorite models, Keep noise out of your recordings, and Miking home spaces. 20 pages total. Surely you have time for THAT!…but keep your drool bucket handy!
Electonic Musician 2016 Mic Review
CourVO
O, my drool cup runneth over. Among the monumental mics lauded there by Electronic Musician is the Coles 4038 ribbon. It’s the size and weight of a small meteorite, and sounds… one has to say… stellar. It’s smiley and natural on voice, though (as I realised after buying mine) not quite right for hard-sell over music.
We trained on the Coles at the BBC and, feeding their legendary monitors, it could be hard to tell if it was a repro or someone actually in the room. It’s a tribute to golden-eared techs that a mic evolved for broadcast in the 50s is still in the running, still in production.