5 Boom Microphones for Indoor Dialogue: Cardioid, Super-cardioid, and Hyper-cardioid

in this episode let's have a listen to five different boom microphones you might use for indoor dialogue that range from cardioid to hyper-cardioid Selva listen a few notes before we dive into the comparison first of all we're recording all of these microphones in my unfinished basement and which is a studio and I've got a sound blanket hanging over here I've got concrete floors I've got plastic covering insulation on the ceilings which is somewhat reflective and I do have a rug underneath me here I have all the microphones boomed just here out of frame about 50 to 60 centimeters from my mouth in each case we're recording with the sound devices 6:33 mixer recorder now I realize that's kind of a higher end recorder than most of us are using I'm in the process of doing a review of that if you'd like to hear what it sounds all of these mics sound like recorded through a more prosumer type of recorder in this case specifically the tascam dr-60d mark to go ahead and check down below i've got a link to my website where you can listen to the wav files of all the recordings through all of the mics both into the sound devices recorder and into the tascam now when it comes to the noise tests what we're really testing here is a practical noise floor what i mean by that is that yes it's recording room tone in addition to any self noise generated by the microphone and the recorder for the noise test we use the zoom f8 which has quite clean preamplifiers so we kept that variable static so it's the same in all of the different microphones the room is the same the only difference is the microphone and that again is a practical noise floor in each of these cases where you hear the audio from the microphone we did no processing aside to loudness normalize the audio to minus 23 l u FS which is a European broadcast standard for TV loudness you're now listening to the Samsung c02 which is a super cardioid small diaphragm condenser microphone a super cardioid is a sort of a middle ground between cardioid and or cardioid that is to say it has a tight pickup pattern but not quite as tight as hyper-cardioid and a little bit tighter than cardioid so it actually is a very very good I think versatile pickup pattern for recording indoor dialogue this particular mic comes in at $110 us for two mics so it actually comes in a kit up to that is an amazing price for a microphone of actually of this quality I think it does not have a high-pass filter again because it's a fairly budget priced mic it comes in at a hundred and seventy grams weight which is you know okay in terms of build quality it's surprisingly good it does come with these sort of simple shock mount clips for booming on a boom pull or on a microphone stand and this is the only one that actually came with any sort of shock mount so that was actually pretty interesting they're not the most perfect or most advanced shock mounts but they do a decent job in terms of power the microphone does require 48 volt phantom power like most small diaphragm condenser microphones and it does not have an internal battery option in terms of our practical noise floor test this was recorded with the Samson co2 into the zoom f8 recorder and all of the room tone that comes along with that which is actually a fairly quiet room I recorded my basement here with a sound blanket over here on this side and a rug right underneath me and we got 2 - 61 DB on the noise floor so that's once it's normalized to - 23 Lu FS which is the European broadcast standard for loudness that's actually quite pretty good I'm normally aiming to get the noise floor under - 60 DB so this definitely falls in that category in terms of handling noise if you are hand booming the microphone if you have it on a boom pole and you're cueing between different talent as they talk this microphone actually did quite well with its built in or its included shock mount it is not amazing but it actually does pretty well and any of the mics we talked about here actually generally are going to need a more sophisticated shock mounting system if you are going to do a lot of hand booming in terms of warranty comes with a 2 year warranty you're now listening to the otic CX 1 HC which is a hyper-cardioid pickup pattern microphone and in this particular case also know high-pass filter in terms of weight it comes in at 114 grams and in terms of price $500 USD approximately at the time of this comparison excellent excellent build quality this one actually definitely inspires confidence in terms of power it does require 48 volt phantom power and there also is no internal battery option in terms of unique features this is the smallest of the mics that we're comparing today and also the foam windscreen is actually probably the highest quality of the microphones that we're looking at in terms of the practical noise floor using all the same parameters that we used on the previous one again recording into the zoom f8 with room tone and everything else we came out at minus 63 DB so this one actually is even better than the Samson co2 in terms of handling noise this mic did very very well it must have something to do with the design of the mic itself so when your hand booming this mic it tended to handle handling noise very very nicely in terms of warranty it comes with a three year warranty you're now listening to the AKG blue line with the CK 93 capsule this is also a hyper-cardioid pickup pattern microphone this does actually have a high-pass filter at 100 Hertz which is a nice but not too aggressive filter which helps to sort of reduce low-frequency Rumble and noise without affecting the bass response too heavily that's going to come especially in handy when you're working outdoors and maybe just the lightest of breezes and when your hand booming the microphone in terms of weight this mite comes in at 150 grams and the price at the time of this comparison was 480 dollars USD build quality also very very good in terms of power does require nine to 52 volts of phantom power so you have some leeway there I'm not sure in most cases these days whether you really need that but you do have those different options and of course just like the others there is no internal battery powering option unique features this is a modular system with additional add-on capsules including cardioid omnidirectional figure 8 it also has a -10 DB pad if you're going to be recording especially loud sound sources for dialogue not usually necessary but it does make this microphone a little bit more versatile so you could use it for other as well for our practical noise floor test same exact methodology as the others we found a noise floor of minus 64 point 5 DB which was actually quite good handling noise this microphone also did very very nicely on that front when you are going to be hand booming it and it comes with a 2-year warranty you're now listening to the audio technica 84 T 53 B which is also a hyper-cardioid pickup pattern microphone it does have a high-pass filter that sits at 80 Hertz which again is a nice not too aggressive filter which helps to reduce low-frequency Rumble and noise it also does have a -10 DB pad which helps if you're recording especially loud sound sources in terms of weight it comes in at 129 grams and price is currently $600 USD it does require 48 volt phantom power just like all the other mics and it does not have an internal battery option in terms of unique features it comes with a vinyl padded case and again as I mentioned a -10 DB pad so those are the kind of unique features in terms of the practical noise floor test this microphone did extraordinarily well and we using the same methodology as we described before came out with minus sixty eight point seven DB so very very good terms of handling noise it was good I would say it was prions par with the samson co 2 but not quite as good as the Audax or the AKG in terms of warranty it comes with a one-year warranty I should also mention of all the microphones we've discussed so far there are only two of them that I own this is one of them the audio technica but the other one I'll as well is the rode NT 5 which we'll cover next you're now listening to the road NT 5 in this particular case this is a different mic is a cardioid mic so I wanted to put this one in here so you could hear the difference between super cardioid hyper-cardioid and cardioid cardioid is probably the least narrow pickup pattern so it's more likely to pick up more ambiance and you can probably hear that here in terms of this particular mic it does not have a high-pass filter it comes in at a mere 100 grams so this is the lightest of the microphones we've looked at here in this comparison and in terms of price it comes in at 220 dollars USD at the time this comparison the build quality is quite good it's all metal and in terms of power it requires 28 to 48 volt phantom power which almost any recorder or preamplifier should be able to provide and it does not have an internal battery option there's really nothing special about this mic in terms of unique differentiating features I guess aside from the fact that it is a cardioid as opposed to a super super cardioid on the practical noise floor test this microphone did extraordinarily well when recording into a zoom f8 with all the same methodology that we use for the other microphones including room tone and everything else this microphone came in at minus 72 DB which is the best of all the mics that we've looked at and I would just add here that having a great noise floor is not the only aspect of a mic when I listen to these five microphones for indoor dialogue this one is not a horrible choice but it's probably not the one that I would use on a normal basis and I should also say in this particular case I do own this mic and I don't use it a whole lot for indoor dialogue in terms of handling noise if you're going to hand boom the mic it does a good job it's probably on the same part with the audio technica and the Samsung but not quite as good as the Audax or the AKG in terms of warranty this comes with the industry-leading 10 year warranty I hope that was helpful for you if you have any questions go ahead and leave those down below my kind of thinking on this is all of these microphones are actually pretty good if I were to make a recommendation I would say listen to all of them and look at your budget and see which one of them you like the sound of best and what you can afford so I don't think you can go completely wrong with any of these microphones can you do better than the Samsung co2 well yeah if you have more but more spend I think some of the other higher-end mics sound a little bit better and they are a little bit cleaner and they're a little bit more so insensitive in my particular case about a year and a half ago or so is when I bought one of these microphones I ended up with the audio technica do I regret that I don't regret it at all I think it's a great microphone and it's serving me very well in terms of my corporate video shoots so again I hope that was helpful for you if you haven't subscribed already make sure you get yourself subscribed for more great Theo's on how to improve your lighting and sound for video talk to you soon

Channel: Curtis Judd

Views: 248,707

Keywords: Audio, Sound, Video, Film, Microphone, Boom, Cardioid, Supercardioid, hypercardioid, Mic, Mike

Id: q-b_1gOYOEQ

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2016