Dynamic mics - why so difficult to reproduce?

[OneRoomStudio]

Can you buy (say) an RE20 body off the shelf?

Because even if the moving coil assembly is right, it won’t sound close to correct in a different body

I think that’s what they may have meant

You may not be able to find an RE20 (yet), but you can definitely find Chinese clones of SM57s, e609s, SM7s, Beta52a's, etc.

 

[OneRoomStudio]

Maybe I need to ask a more specific question.

Sennheiser (and Chinese cloners) are clearly able to make microphones with similar housing to the MD409. What is preventing them from creating a capsule similar to the MD409? In various tests, while the e906 is closer, all the modern takes on it have a presence peak and sound/measure differently. They used to be pretty consistent, even when they launched the "Blackfire" range.

The same question could be asked about Beyerdynamic's M380, or Shure's SM5B.

 

[engineerkyle]

A blast from the past, just to tickle imagination.

A 58...
https://www.globalmediapro.com/dp/A032C4/797-Audio-CD58-Dynamic-Microphone/

Can you link to where that photo of their version of the 441 is? That link doesn’t go there.

 

[ricardo]

And that's the problem. Directivity issues with louspeaker can easily be solved by imposing a dedicated listening poit, microphones can't be sold with a warning "not to use with large sound sources or in reverberant environment"

A speaker in a room will give "good sound" in an "area". Better speaker, bigger & better area. Turning that speaker into a microphone ala Baxandall will pick up 'good sound' IN THAT AREA. The effects of reverberation will be heard on both the speaker sound and the 'microphone' sound ... as will the off axis faults.

Quite often, 1m on treble unit axis bla bla isn't the best position to listen to a speaker and such a speaker will not be a good microphone at 1m on treble unit axis either.

 

[ricardo]

samic said "in my opinion it is 10x complicated to manufacture than a K67 static capacitor capsule!"

If you believe this, you don't understand how condenser capsules work. There's nothing static about condenser capsules. And it is extremely difficult to get even the simplest capsules right. Which is why we are starting to see just recently WIDELY AVAILABLE accurate replicas of k67.

I'm not denigrating how difficult it is to do condensor capsules. IM not so HO, there are a literal handful of people today who can do good condensor capsule design from scratch and they don't do it often cos they know how difficult it is.

But I'm with samic in saying designing and making dynamic mikes is EVEN MORE DIFFICULT