I had to dig out my "serious person" hat for this.. soo much dust on it I almost forgot I had it...
Anyway..

Regarding budget mics... In my book 1000£ is not what I would call cheap. If I had 1000£ to spend on mics (and I had none to start with) I would consider 2 or even 3 mics, each designed for different situations, instead of one "multi-purpuse" (a large capsule condenser, a stereo pair pencil kit and a dynamic or two). This would give me more options and a better chance to get it right. And even if one of them turned out not to be exactly what I thought I could add another similar later on without spending too much cash.

If we do a bit of search we'll discover that many "budget" mics sound amazingly close to the big shots.
An example? SE Electronics SE1a (and the bigger brother SE3a). These are definitely cheap mics (below 200£ each) yet their sound is easily comparable to similar mics costing up to 1000£. Don't get me wrong here.. I didn't say they are as good as, but the differences will be so small you'll only notice if everything else in your studio is top class (but then you would have Newmanns Earthworks Brauner and AKG).

Another example is the AT-2020. This could be regarded a multi-purpuse mic although it really shines on vocals, particularly male. It costs around 100$ (street price) and yet it can hold its place next to mics costing 4 or 5 times more (works great on acoustic instruments too).

 

AKG Perception 120 USB

Yeah man. I still can't quite believe AKG has dropped a mic this good in the consumer market at the price being asked.

The proximity is a tad heavy handed (which is I expect why they put a low end pad on) and just a teensy tad sizzly around 12K, For vocal work that means no mic huggers or spitters. The mic has a built-in pop shield. The sweet spot is around 12” out, and there it's a an astounding vocal mic, giving good clear smooth capture. I don't think it would be too clever in a kick skin hole, because of the proximity thing, but apart from that, this is one superb workhorse swiss-army mic.

There are a couple of gotchas, both arising from the inbuilt 128x 24-bit sampling. The USB connection pretty much forces you to use the computer's sound chain, so for example on Windows, you have to switch out of ASIO and into Direct or WDM driver. This works just fine, but in turn pretty much limits you to hosting a single mic, as there's no simple way to simply mix more than one of them inside the box (not that I know of anyway).

The other thing is the ability of this mic to pickup ambient room sound when idle is extraordinary – the 24 sampling will pull a gnat farting in the next room out of the noise floor. So you need either a good room or noise reduction utility such as a gate compressor or one of the Waves X or Z-Noise plugs. Then again, people use these on Neumanns too, so whatever.

There is a slightly cheaper non-USB version of the AKG Perception 120, for those with the pre-amps and the phantom power. This should make a superb room mic or side-pair in traditional 4-mic drum micing.

All in all, for a project studio that needs occasional one mic vocal/acoustic capability, this a very easy, good sounding and reliable mic.

 

So no microphone can simulate human ears to 100%, equal/flat spectrum?

The things i intend to do with it is recording:
* Solo voice
* Hitting a glass with finger nails, and it can be many glasses that are filled with different amounts of water.
* Spill water into a drinking glass and slop/slope it back and forth, and doing it fast and repeat it many times.
* Play the pledge cans by beating on them with fingernails.
* Clap the hands with violence + clap the stomach.
* Drumming on the table. It can be on floors, the ceil and door.

I don't want a microphone with boosted/decreased low/mid/hi.

Yes.

 

while I agree that personal taste plays a role I also must say that having a list of characteristics of mics as well as how they behave is useful. Sometimes personal preference and the preference of the artist to be recorded can diverge. In such a case it is better having an idea and proposal than encouraging them to google up something and demanding(!) you to use "... one of those niev-preas or how they are called" with a U87 or some obscure tube mic.

Of course, better than having a list is knowing how they actually sound... and even better of course if you can go all pokemon on those mics and just collect them all.

opty

 

i would say CharterOak microphones,

i own A SA 538 which is unbelievably useful on vocals, drums, acoustics takes in many ways and lifetime warranty is offer by this awesome company which is making some audio hardware also.
They are about to release a new big monster, the Charter Oak H1000-A ----->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkE2H_Ztang

or -------> www.charteroakacoustics.com

 

You only need to look at the fletcher munson curves to realise that nothing is flat! or just like a human ear. To suggest that is retarded!

Wiki on Fletcher Munson Curves

Seriously the colouration provided by a mic is little to none, compare this with distortion levels, frequency response and waterfall plots of a typical speaker and room and you will realise mics are pretty much the same when all said and done compared to moving your head 1 inch to the left in a listening room!

I admit there is a difference between $99 and $300 condenser mics but after that it's all in your minds that it's better as the differences are so small our minds actually invent the differences. Do a little research and reading and you will realise.

I'm all for a nice selection of mics to choice from and then you can A/B but you need to double-blind test everything to be sure you can even tell the difference, i bet 99% of everyone out there would struggle to even tell a dynamic from a condenser!!!!

much love

 

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