TLM 67 so beautifull, but nothing inside

[abbey road d enfer]

Let's not be prejudiced by the use of SM components, the absence of transformers and the miniaturization of the electronics.
There is everything here to make a good mic. They even kept the large wedge grill, which is an important part of the design.
The limitation is the skill of the designers and the manufacturer's will to serve a market.
Same could be said of many chinese mics; their only problem is the lack of concept, the dominance of "build for price" and the "it's good enough" syndrome.
AKG received a lot of flak when they issued their latest version of the C414, with all the SMD's and the obvious industrialization of construction, but in the end, this generation is probably the best in years, with amazing consistency and reliability.

 

[Rossi]

I fully agree. SMD is no worse than through-the-hole except when it comes to repairs. But sound wise it's 1. the capsule and acoustic design, 2. the electronic design, and 3. the components. The capsules are still well made, perhaps even better than in earlier times (I've visited both Neumann and AKG), the designers are still competent, and the components are still well chosen. If you take a closer look at the TLM67 insides you'll see that Neumann use an high quality through-the-hole film cap for capsule to gate (in earlier ones there was a polysterene cap). Probably because they couldn't get the same quality in SMD format. Whatever the reason, it shows that they did care.

Now, the TLM67 sounds a bit too colored for my taste, but a lot of people seem to love it. It certainly has a world class capsule, a genuine K67. The electronics also feature the good old U67/U87 HF de-emphasis concept, so the frequency response is pretty much linear. No treble hype.

As Abbey says, the new C414s are pretty darn good, too. I reviewed the new models against my old C414 EB P48. The new ones sound a bit different, but certainly no worse. Of course, they don't have the magic of the original CK-12 capsule, but if you compare to the nylon-type capsule generations, the new C414 are every bit as good.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I fully agree. SMD is no worse than through-the-hole except when it comes to repairs. But sound wise it's 1. the capsule and acoustic design, 2. the electronic design, and 3. the components. The capsules are still well made, perhaps even better than in earlier times (I've visited both Neumann and AKG), the designers are still competent, and the components are still well chosen. If you take a closer look at the TLM67 insides you'll see that Neumann use an high quality through-the-hole film cap for capsule to gate (in earlier ones there was a polysterene cap). Probably because they couldn't get the same quality in SMD format.

Hi Andreas!
I believe the reason for using a through-hole component is that SMD technology leaves too much residue on the PCB so they had to separate the capsule connection from it. As to Styroflex, it is an endangered species. Styroflex film is not produced anymore, but there is still a large stock of it, which explains why there is still some production while stock lasts.
It has been abandoned at the profit of polyester, which has a much better temperature rating.

 

[Rossi]

Well, other new Neumann designs are SMD throughout, the capsule to FET connection, too. There are excellent polypropylene caps in SMD format, and apparently residues can be cleaned well enough to allow for such super high impedance applications. In fact, they usually use some black (epoxy?) plastic to seal the high impedance area completely. So theoretically newer SMD Mic PCBs are less prone to develop leakage currents than through-the-hole designs.

I'm not as much in love with polystyrene as many others seem to be. To my ears, polypropylene sounds closest to a direct coupled capsule while polysterene sounds slightly nasal to me. Polyester caps (at least the usual ones such as Wima MKS) sound terrible in this application, maybe a little better than a multilayer ceramic cap but worse than a good NP0 ceramic cap.

BTW: I also found polysterene terrible for a guitar tone pots. I haven't done extensive comparisons yet, but a simple polyester cap (same value) sounded much better.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I miss my polystyrene but it is not production friendly. I've even had bad experiences with film SMD caps that were supposed to survive the process (they didn't). Modern NPO/COG "should" adequately fill that gap.

JR