Hey everybody,
Currently writing my uni dissertation about effects of choice of microphone on vocals in a final pop mix (some very interesting stuff, for those who care - TLM 103 beat a U87 Ai in a blind test for this particular song).
Was looking to gather some more data to explore the result, and of course something often stated around here is that mics like the U87, with an output transformer, will have some kind of 'mojo' thanks to harmonic distortion that isn't present in transformerless mics. Anybody know a reliable way of measuring this? Just needs to be relative between the mics, as in I need to be able to definitely say the U87 is more harmonically rich than the 103 (if that's even true).
Or failing that, anybody know of any reliable sources that look into this? Measured THD published from Neumann as far as I'm aware is talking about distortion when the microphone is being overloaded, so it doesn't seem helpful to me when talking about recording vocals -- unless there's something I'm not understanding there. Also tested the C414 XL II and Rode NT1-A so any data on those would also be a great help.
Thanks!
Currently writing my uni dissertation about effects of choice of microphone on vocals in a final pop mix (some very interesting stuff, for those who care - TLM 103 beat a U87 Ai in a blind test for this particular song).
Was looking to gather some more data to explore the result, and of course something often stated around here is that mics like the U87, with an output transformer, will have some kind of 'mojo' thanks to harmonic distortion that isn't present in transformerless mics. Anybody know a reliable way of measuring this? Just needs to be relative between the mics, as in I need to be able to definitely say the U87 is more harmonically rich than the 103 (if that's even true).
Or failing that, anybody know of any reliable sources that look into this? Measured THD published from Neumann as far as I'm aware is talking about distortion when the microphone is being overloaded, so it doesn't seem helpful to me when talking about recording vocals -- unless there's something I'm not understanding there. Also tested the C414 XL II and Rode NT1-A so any data on those would also be a great help.
Thanks!