Sennheiser MKH-416 VS MKE-600 | Save your MONEY!

come on YouTube quit being inappropriate these are microphones microphones in my face nothing else so in today's video we're going to be comparing the mk416 to the MK 600 and also in this video I will be using both these microphones and I will label which one you're hearing on the bottom of the screen as I switch between the two so what I'm curious about is is the extra money worth it for the mk416 because this m phone comes in at $11,000 as of recording this video today and the MK e600 you can get for around $330 as I'm recording this video the MK e600 seems to have more features than the mk416 but why does it cost more does it sound different is the quality really that much better even after post-processing which in this video I'm going to do very minimal processing all I'm going to do as of right now on this video is just bump the microphones up to have equal equal levels I will not be adding any compressor EQ anything of the sort to the audio unless I say otherwise on the screen somewhere I will let you guys know I'm worried how the autofocus is doing from this perspective so right now you are hearing the mk416 I'm going switch to that right now this microphone both microphones are actually about say 15 in 16 in away from my face we all know audio is important and I do want to say right off the bat that both both these microphones are great microphones and I don't think you'll go wrong going with either one but I don't know how they sound yet myself is there a huge difference I have heard the MK 600 before and I know I loved it and actually I'll link a video that I did before comparing this microphone to the Audio Technica at897 but in this video I want to compare it to the MK 416 because this is a microphone I've always loved and always wanted for the longest time audio is important and we all know that but is it worth the extra cash difference between these two microphones that's what I want to know so both these microphones are shotgun condenser microphones which means they have super cardioid pickup patterns and kind of Imagine like a cone like a shotgun blast right out the front of these microphones coming right at my face stop it stop it now this perspective probably does make them seem like I it kind of looks like I'm a little further away than here but I'm about 15 16 inches away from these microphones and I don't have any kind of sound protection or wind muffs on them just the raw audio straight off the microphone so I'm running both these microphones into the zoom F6 which is about the cleanest preamps that I have access to right now which is recording 32bit float it is a super clean recorder so I'm hoping to get the most untouched raw sound out of these microphones so at this point in the video I will take these microphones in different environments to see how they sound and do some other tests with them but I am currently in a small office and I do have Sound Treatment it is a carpeted room I do have some Sound Treatment on the ceiling and some in the corners and a little bit on the wall so it is a decently treated room right now so both microphones should sound pretty good should sound good let's start with the mkh 416 the mkh 416 is popular in the professional content creation world and has been used in television documentaries and narrative films this has been the go-to microphone for a lot of professionals out there it does have a nice finish and a good weight to it and it's coded to be weather resistant but not waterproof and it does come with this nice little case which I I did like I don't use this though um and it did come with this little microphone mount which is not the highest quality I prefer these R coat ones I bought this R coat carry case which I do like which I can talk about this later there's some things I like and don't like about it but it was expensive and took too long to get a little budget hack for carrying shotgun microphones is order a curling iron case a curling iron travel case works perfect to transport both these microphones and I use them all the time now over to the MK 600 the MK e600 is usually referred to the baby brother of the mkh416 but is the quality good enough to compete you tell me leave a comment below tell me if you think that this sounds better or worse than the MK 416 this mic comes with a few toggle options for the EQ on the mic to add a low cut filter from 40 HZ that can be toggled down to 100 HZ this microphone did come with a soft case and a shoe mount to mount directly on the camera and it also came with this XLR to 3.5 mm cord which I think is actually something pretty neat and some people might find useful to run this also as an on camera microphone too if you wanted to for some more Run and Gun situations or if you have a mirrorless body that only has 3.5 mm Jack this is an option here for you that you can run right into that and it does have the phantom power option but you can also run this one off of a doua battery whereas the MK 416 is phantom power only so for the next part of this video I'm going to take this microphone outside and see how they do in an outdoor environment that show up it's so I'm going try to get through this quick before my set blows over again I basically just created a giant Sail Out Here for diffusion so we're outside again and I'm hoping our set doesn't blow over I basically built a giant sail uh hopefully the SE stands hold up and we are on the senheiser mka 416 and I have the M siser MK 600 here as well with only the sound or with only the wind protection that came with the microphones and nothing else applied to them cuz I kind of want to see how they hold up it is pretty windy out here today so now this is the MK 416 outdoors I hear some birds or some background noise I don't know how well the rejection is working on this let me know what you you think how's it sound and now we're going to switch over to the MK 600 how does that sound got some wind coming through right now both microphones are about I'd say what about 2 feet from my from my face pointing down toward my between my mouth and my chest right now we got a plane going over here's the plane on the mka H 416 here's the plane on the MK 600 okay I don't know if I said this before but both microphones are going into the zoom F6 and they are unprocessed right now so typically with as windy as it is today I would not run with just these microphones With the Wind protection that came with them I haven't heard them yet but I'm going to assume they're not doing as as well as something like a blimp would do and I guess we can go ahead and Show an example of what a blimp would do for both microphones but I only own one so I have to switch them back and forth one at a time so now some clouds come out so the exposure is going to be a little not not as consistent but it's not what we're doing here so now I am on the siser mka 416 and I'm running it through a blimp which I'll link in the description below this is what you would normally want to use if you're going to shoot on a day like this or or at least a dead cat but this is a dead cat probably due today but this will work better than just a dead cat and I figure this will help get a better isolation of what the sound sounds like coming out of the mk416 when Outdoors the wind is coming and going kind of want to wait for a gust I hope a gust comes through like I did in the previous shot so you can hear the difference here comes a gust all right so now I'm talking with the wind coming through it's not as powerful as it was earlier but I'm sure that would have been picking up if the mic was naked okay now we're going to switch over to the MK 600 I am losing the sun is okay the sun is moving on me and clouds are moving so the exposure is going to be a little inconsistent here but that's not what this video is about here is the MK 600 we got some wind coming through right now it's uh it's a powerful one not say powerful whatever it's enough to disturb audio so the MK A600 is in the blimp and this is what it sounds like with proper audio protection Outdoors on a decently windy day I mean it's not overbearingly windy but it's definitely a concerning day to have audio with no protection on so how does that sound that's the mka 600 and now we're going to go into a untreated environment probably one of the worst environments to film in which will be a empty why it's somewhat empty a lot of hard surfaces in a two-car garage okay how those microphones do there which one did you prefer sounded better in the outdoor environment let me know below now let's go to a more exaggerated not treated room a two-car garage with very minimal Sound Treatment now we're in the two-car garage now this is probably the worst place to shoot any kind of audio um if this was an actual job this would just be a nogo or you'd have to bring a lot of treatment in here so if you want to see what this room looks like um there's more footage of it in another video I did on a talking head setup that was inspired by a development conference that I seen Microsoft put on that was done by Mighty media which they do awesome work for Microsoft so if you want to see how big and the layout of this garage it's about the same it's about a 24x 24 it's like a 23x 24 22x 24 something like that two car garage and I do have the door open right now which is just adding some more light back here cuz it is dark in here and I didn't want to bring too much lights out here because this is not a this is not a lighting tutorial or lighting setup or whatever we're just here for the audio so I'm going to switch between the microphones here the siser mk416 which one's doing better at U rejecting the the Reverb sound in this garage and it I'm sure both of these are not going to sound great but this is just more of an extreme test here and honestly these super cardioid pickup patterns on these on these types of shotgun microphones would not be the ideal microphone you would choose if given the option for a situation like this if you're given a smaller room this I wouldn't say this is small room but it's probably not ideal for this at all not probably it's not this room isn't ideal for anything really when it comes to audio so I have shop podcast in here but it requires a lot of treatment and uh post production but the uh ceiling is exposed and I do have base traps in the corner and I've built a a sound absorbing wall but um I say sound absorbing wall it's on Wheels you'll see it in the other video if you want to curious to see that so hopefully I've talked enough to give you an idea of what these microphones sound like in a awful sound environment and see which one actually performs better if either one performs decent at all which you know maybe you are in a situation where this is all you got it's what you got to do but I figured giving the examples in the most extreme case scenario in a bad Reverb room might help you justify one purchase over the other if there's any difference at all don't know if you've noticed but my hair is a little bit longer and I grew a little bit of facial hair it has been months since I started this video only a few months I started in the summer it is now going into fall so just wanted to explain why my hair grew a little bit and hopefully I didn't age too much in those months I'm uh moved away for my light now so this is an access rejection test I'm going to do with the microphone I'm talking directly into the senheiser MK 416 as I'm talking I'm going to move it off to the side is it rejecting my voice yet this is the siser mka 416 I am now talking at the side of the siser mka 416 I am now talking to the back of the siser mk416 and now I'm back talking to the front of the mk416 this is the siser mke600 I am talking directly into the microphone the siser MK 600 I am talking to the side now of the siser MK 600 this is the side of the siser MK 600 I am now talking to the back of the siser MK 600 this is the back of the senheiser MK 600 now this next test I'm going to take these microphones and point them at a Bluetooth speaker so I can get the same consistent volume and sound with no changing variables and compare them right beside each other so for absorb uh we charge project prices uh we did attempt hourly for a little bit and very very quickly found out that that is not what we should be doing it's not sustainable and any freelancer or a company in the creative field charging hourly so for absorb uh we charge project prices uh we did attempt hourly for a little bit and very very quickly found out that that is not what we should be doing it's not sustainable and any freelancer or a company in the creative field charging hourly it's it's it's an easy way to kill your okay so I have been listening to these examples and um I'm actually super impressed on how the siser MK 600 pulled through to compete with the 416 let me know what you guys think do you think that it sounds like a $650 difference I don't think so I don't think so either if you agree with me I don't know maybe you did hear the difference some true audio files out there there was some differences I'm about to go over though between the two microphones by the way what do you guys think of the setup is it too warm is it too romantic with the little candle here is there such thing as too romantic so starting off in the office the first shots with these microphones I noticed that the senheiser MK 416 sounded a little bit I want to say warmer I'm not sure if I'm using the right terminology here warmer it sounded more a little more full it's hard to describe audio especially if you're listening to this on just your phone uh I recommend putting headphones on listen to this all the way through but the siser mk46 in the office sounded a little more full to me not full and like the bass end just a little more like the mid frequency sounded a little more natural and the mka 600 in my opinion sounded a little more Hollow but I'm really getting nitpicky right now because in the office setting they really sounded close to one to one uh I would I would not be able to pick them out from each other for listening to it with a Blind Eye Blind ear BL Blind Eye Blind Eye especially in that scenario does it sound like a $650 difference also with the proximity effect there uh like I said I was pretty close to microphones you can see I I think I said they were about I thought they said they were about 14 inches from my face so there's a proximity effect if you're not familiar with it the closer the microphone you get a different sound based on where the microphone is located in the distance from the subject of your recording so if it's closer you're going to get more more of the low end out of the microphone if it's further away you usually lose that typically overall the siser mk416 was a little bit more sensitive than the mka A600 moving on to the outdoor setting the senheiser mk416 I think did a really good job at um rejecting the background noise a lot better than the MK 600 again not not enough to where I think it was it's worth spending $650 more to get the sin Heiser I don't think it's was that big of a difference when it came to the plane rejection I couldn't really tell the difference that just happened to happen when I was filming and I think the Sennheiser did better at rejecting or the Sennheiser for the 416 these are both sisers I don't know I would love to know what you guys think which one do you think did better in the outdoor case again though in the outdoor I feel like I noticed the MK sounded a little more I don't want to say Tenny it did not sound Tenny a little more Hollow I feel like it's missing a little bit in the mid frequencies somewhere in there but the Sennheiser again just sounded a little more natural but not too far off and then when I did the blimp test that did a huge difference with the wind there which I wanted to do that because the wind was pretty bad when I was doing that outside and I wanted to get a true example of just the background noise without the wind interfering so I did do the blimp test for that reason and I think they both did great they sounded awesome with the same character characteristics as I mentioned before so in the garage setting um it did not sound as bad to my ear as it did so I want to say both those microphones did a good job at rejecting but uh as I mentioned before that location is not great it is worst case scenario they sounded worse to my ear in person like I said so both microphones did do a good job at picking up less of that Reverb and rejecting the sides and there's a lot that can go into that on like your mic placement is a hard flirty of a rug what's on the ceilings there's there's a lot that to consider with that so this was not super scientific but the garage I did when I mentioned the door was open it was just the side door that I walked in not the giant car door I I do think that's worth mentioning so it was mostly closed off I just had the door kind of slightly cracked about a foot open which this stuff does affect sound depending on this this the room has an Open Door a closed door obviously it can affect it if your windows open um there's just so many little things to consider with audio so I tried to give a variety of extreme examples here and hopefully that was enough to hear for yourself I do want to say in the garage setting the 416 did a lot better than the MK 600 and I think that's due to the 416 having a better off AIS rejection and having that more natural warmer sound I think really helped bring my voice out from the background I do want to mention and stress that I did nothing to this audio throughout the whole video all I did was boost the levels and I didn't add no limiter compressor nothing I just Tred to get them bouncing around -6 and 12 DB to match the levels that is the only thing I did to these microphones and if you're curious of what each one sounds like when you EQ them against each other I will give you a quick examples of them eqed in each case scenario the MK e600 seems to have more features than the mk416 but why does it cost more does it sound different is the quality really that much better the MK e600 seems to have more features than the MK 416 but why does it cost more does it sound different is the quality really that much better doing here so now I am on the siser mka 416 and I'm running it through a blimp which I'll link in the description below this is what you would normally want to use if you're going to shoot on a day like this okay the sun is moving on me and clouds are moving so the exposure is going to be a little inconsistent here but that's not what this video is about here is the MK 600 we got some wind coming through right now which they do awesome work for Microsoft so if you want to see how big and the layout of this garage it's about the same it's about a 24 by 24 it's like a 23x 24 22x 24 something like that two-car garage and I do have the door open right now which is just adding some more light back here because it is dark in here and a which they do awesome work for Microsoft so if you want to see how big and the layout of this garage it's about the same it's about a 24x 24 it's like a 23x 24 22x 24 something like that two car garage and I do have the door open right now which is just adding some more light back here because it is dark in here and as you can tell with a little bit of post-processing you can really Elevate the MK e600 to boost it up to compete with the price of the siser mk416 now a lot of people online say the 416 is the microphone that almost sounds like it's pre eqed and it does but I do recommend adjusting your EQ and putting some thought into the postprocessing of your audio just like you would your videos because every person is going to sound different depending on the microphone and every location is going to sound different and I do think this is important to post-process your audio in some sort of way even if it's just a little bit of EQ and a slight compressing preset because shooting video and log and color grading you're going to have to color grade the footage and even if you are shooting in a standard Rec 709 you're typically going to have to adjust some exposure highlights contrast maybe nothing extreme but you're just slight little tweaks and I think that's the same for audio is it depending on where you're filming and how it sounds you might have to tweak it a little bit and I think most of the time you should there's a lot you can do with EQ to just bump up the quality of your microphone the MK e600 and the siser mk416 are both super cardioid pickup pattern microphones and those microphones are typically not meant to be filmed indoors especially in small spaces like this pencil microphones and cardioid pickup patterns are most the time picked by Professionals in the industry and if you look up any behind the scenes of most films you will see them using a cardioid pickup pattern microphone in indoor locations and siser even says on their website the 416 is an outdoor microphone so the 416 would be more of the outdoor microphone because it does has better rejection off the sides in the pencil microphones or the cardioid pickup microphone cardioid pickup pattern microphones are better used indoors and I can do a whole another video on that but I can do a whole another video explaining that that and I just wanted to show this as an example to that this is a300 $1,300 microphone and I won't be comparing it right now in this video but if you guys are curious to see the MK e600 or the 416 compared against the siser mk50 let me know and I'll do a video about that so my conclusion in the end is the senheiser I think is still my favorite microphone but with the mke600 this microphone is probably the best value microphone you can get with it accessories the low pass filter built in the battery option as well the 3.5 mm to XLR adapter that comes with it the mount to put it straight on the camera the microphone just kind of does it all and it does it all pretty well so most of you guys out there I would just say if you're trying to decide between these two and money really is a factor of you trying to decide if is it worth $650 for the siser if you got to ask that question I would say just get the 600 the MK 600 because this is a killer value and it is amazing microphone for the price and if you're curious to see that microphone stacked up against the at897 I did another video which I will link above too bad these microphones can't reject dogs that be nice Le are like a dog rejection switch that's it thank you guys for watching I will see you in the next one hey guys if you're still here I just want to say I really do appreciate you watching this video all the way through videos like this take a lot of time and effort to put together and it's hard to find that time when you run a full-time production company on top of trying grow a YouTube channel so every view every like every subscribe really does make a difference and if you haven't liked the video I would really appreciate it if you really liked it if you didn't then you know dislike it cuz nobody can see it anyway I don't think it matters but just wanted to say appreciate you guys thanks again

Channel: Absorb Productions

Views: 16,301

Keywords: video, video production, gear review, film industry, cinematography, design, graphic design, digital design, ui design, ux design, design thinking, photography, cameras, camera gear, film gear, gear reviews, creative, creative agency, marketing, advertising, entrepreneurship, small business, business, indiana, midwest, tech, new tech, media, technology

Id: hlMXW95UI-k

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023