U87 circuit, and HF roll-off curve

[blue_luke]

Why exactly is it good to match the mic to the source BEFORE applying ANY EQ?

Because the closer you are right out the box, the less problems and TIME you will need at the mixing stage.
Remember as PRO we get paid for the work and it should go fast, precise and perfect all the time.
If someone comes with the perfect recipe for a microphone that would work perfectly, in all situations, all the time, then a lot of web site would go down!
But then things would all sound the same and this is where the 'art' of sound recording becomes loss.
Yes there is a science behind recording, but there are also a lot of artistic interpretation and decision taken while recording.
By the way, i have been at it since the late '60s, and I build a lot of equipment myself, microphones being my latest frontier where I want to boldly go where I never had been before, to paraphrase another very well known Montrealer!
So I disagree a bit with Whoops on some point, and agree on some other, same with Kingkorg and many others, but at the end of the day, we all learn, discuss and moctly THINK, which seems to be odd more and more now.
Luc

 

[kingkorg]

Because the closer you are right out the box, the less problems and TIME you will need at the mixing stage.
Remember as PRO we get paid for the work and it should go fast, precise and perfect all the time.
If someone comes with the perfect recipe for a microphone that would work perfectly, in all situations, all the time, then a lot of web site would go down!
But then things would all sound the same and this is where the 'art' of sound recording becomes loss.
Yes there is a science behind recording, but there are also a lot of artistic interpretation and decision taken while recording.
By the way, i have been at it since the late '60s, and I build a lot of equipment myself, microphones being my latest frontier where I want to boldly go where I never had been before, to paraphrase another very well known Montrealer!
So I disagree a bit with Whoops on some point, and agree on some other, same with Kingkorg and many others, but at the end of the day, we all learn, discuss and moctly THINK, which seems to be odd more and more now.
Luc

On that note, it's been a year since i've recorded a propper live band session, don't do it all that often these days anymore. I picked all the mics purely on instinct. And they were all my mics, at my own space. I could have made it as complicated as i wanted. I didn't. Once i'm in creative mode i forget about all mumbo jumbo stuff i ramble on about here all year 'round...

 

[tomas.borgstrom]

Huff, this gets way too complex. U67 you like has very broad EQ built in it. There is no scientific explanation why it would sound better built in a mic, or applied afterwards. So no sharp cuts or boosts here. I hate these as well!

Then, if i took your favorite u67, and introduced couple more microns of spacing between backplates it would create huge notch cut at a specific frequency. I promise it would sound bad. What's weird, it would sound less sibilant, but still bad. I wouldn't use any eq, but i would get the same result neither of us like. So is it really about EQ?

Every capsule has it's equivalent electrical circuit schematic. It is literally an EQ circuit. They operate exactly the same way, and the calculations and formulas are used to make all these capsules.

This is definitely one of those left vs right brain discussions, I like to think it's a matter of preference.

To be clear, i'm not claiming one or the other, just putting out things that come to mind.

I'm not so fond of eq's in the microphones either. I always lift the high pass filters in U67 and M49. I do keep the low pass filters in both though. Bright microphones can fool you. It sounds clear and airy but there's a great risk that you end up something thin and unengaging.

Perhaps it's mostly a mindset, a workflow. But eq's do cause phase issues etc. So do multimiking. A badly recorded source can sound a lot better with eq but never on the same level as when the right microphone is in the right place. I dare to say that no post processing can achieve that.

In the end a great microphone, with or without built in eq, is a result of high quality design and manufacturing. The body is often an underestimated part of the equation.

 

[blue_luke]

On that note, it's been a year since i've recorded a propper live band session, don't do it all that often these days anymore. I picked all the mics purely on instinct. And they were all my mics, at my own space. I could have made it as complicated as i wanted. I didn't. Once i'm in creative mode i forget about all mumbo jumbo stuff i ramble on about here all year 'round...

My wife is member of two choirs. One, 'Les Chanteurs de Lorainne' makes a Christmas concert and a late spring concert in June of every year.
The other, 'Ensemble Artemis' is an exclusive feminine choir of between 14 to 20 voices under the very competent direction of a formidable pianist and choir director quite renown here...
And also I record many other ensembles in the Montreal region.
I am busy just the right amount I want Being 70 yo now, i am glad to put my knowledge and my experience at their service, I do it mostly for the music and for the art.... There are a few $ exchanged but my competitors are not too mad at me since I don't take new customers and send them to a few other sound engineers I thrust will do a very good job.
And believe me, these ensemble do not always play in the best of places unfortunately!
Care for a few exemples?
Here in a small church where we can hear outside traffic. I used my SoundDevices MixPre 10ll with two omnidirectional mic from LOM, The USIpro
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=ensemble Artemis

And here, this room is so bad because of bad acoustic nodes and the noise of the ventilation system, so I recorded the thing like a Rock'n-roll concert.... I think I used something like 20 microphones and "fixed it in damix"!
I hate these conditions, but hey, you always have to give your best!
You can see many of the mic I used, this was recorded on my RME rack, consisting of a RME UFX and 2 RME Quadmic preamplifier (total 22 ch) all at 96K/24bit.
So the quality of the equipment is there, the conditions are bad and I had to make do with whatever was thrown at me.
Tha orchestra is from St-Dié-des-Vosges (France) and the choir from the north skirt of Montréal.
Funny enough, 2 days later, we gave another concert in a very well sounding church from late 1700's, the oldest church of Laval, and al I needed was a pair of Beyer MC-740 and a Neumann TLM103 as a spot mic on the piano!
Proving how important the acoustic of the venue is of upmost importance!



(SKIP the first 14 minutes or so.... bla bla bla always de rigueur....
What I am proud here is, considering the conditions, is how I got very good details of everything...
This recording obviously will not win an Emmy, but this is good work I think.
And for this, you need good but very different microphones, good technique and good equipment.

If you think this post is irrelevant to the subject please do take it off. I just thought this is a good illustration on how to use mic techniques and make do with bad conditions.

Then at 1:01:31 The choir joins in and the 4 nic used are (2X) Apex 430 modified with Mic-Parts CK12 capsules, cinemag transformers and according to my notes set in a wide cardio. They were on each end of the choir riser.
The two mic more in the middle are Apex 135 modified with the Steve Royer's mod article in Tape-Op with cinemag trafo. These sounds pretty good, but I think putting a 'flat-47' in them will become an enterily new ball game!

 

[Paul W]

I agree with Whoops. EQ's mess up the signal especially if you have to make narrow boost or cuts. All of my recordings with the best end result sounded great when tracking. I find the low mids especially critical. If you don't have clarity and energy there from the beginning it's very hard to create it afterwards. Thats why U67 is my favourite microphone.

When I started mixing I used a lot of quite narrow dips and boosts. The tracks perhaps sounded good in solo but I'm not proud of the end result and I wasn't even back then. I'm still not a mix-master but I'm much better and I have learned a lot from a highly professional friend of mine. He's very conservative with EQ and push tracks in the right direction with sophisticated chains of compression, distorsion, exciters, short delays, etc and of course eqs but with broad curves and selected for a specific sound rather than clinical correction. Every plugin (he mixes in the box) usually doing very small changes but the sum is stunning.

I think I'm probably somewhat more conservative about EQ than you think. I'm not talking about narrow notches or peaks, or steep boosts or cuts, or anything that would introduce objectionable (or perceptible) filter ringing.

I'm also not talking about fixing weird diffraction problems or mechanical ringing due to bad headbasket and/or body construction, or weird off-axis sound, or the wrong pattern for the application, or anything complicated.

I'm ONLY talking about fixing simple "problems" (things you happen not to prefer about a particular mic in a particular case) with overall frequency response, using modest, gentle filters that don't introduce any objectionable (or perceptible) ringing.

It seems weird to me that people will eliminate an otherwise excellent mic from consideration and dismiss it as "sounding cheap" or whatever simply because it's a few dB too bright (or too dark, or too scooped) for their taste, or its upper midrange boost isn't in quite the right place. That's what EQ is actually GOOD at fixing.

This somehow reminds me of my mom failing to learn to drive a stick shift car. She just left it in 2nd gear, and if it juddered when she started out, that was the car's fault. If it whined when she sped up, that was the car's fault, too. Damned lousy car!

 

[Paul W]

I'm not so fond of eq's in the microphones either. I always lift the high pass filters in U67 and M49. I do keep the low pass filters in both though. Bright microphones can fool you. It sounds clear and airy but there's a great risk that you end up something thin and unengaging.

There you go. In a lot of cases, all you need is that low pass filter, and it doesn't matter much whether you pick the brightness by picking microphones with different low-pass filters (or a lack of it) in the circuitry, or use a bright mic and pick between low-pass filters (or a lack of them) in your DAW.

You shouldn't need a whole different mic if you like the mic you've got in every respect (pattern, on- vs. off-axis differences, etc.) *except* that it's a little too bright.

AFAICT that is by far the most common complaint about microphones---and IMO the least valid one.

It seems to me that many people who dismiss bright mics out of hand assume that the "bad" FR is an indicator of poor quality across the board.

I've watched or listened to a bunch of mic shootouts and they've mostly struck me as completely useless, because the only differences I could clearly tell were mostly obvious (even glaring) basic FR differences, and that's the only easily-changed thing about a mic.

How the heck are you supposed to judge mics if they haven't been EQ'd to have roughly the same general FR curve, so that you can tell if there's anything *else* about them that matters, and is not trivially fixable?

The fact that so many people dismiss bright mics as cheap-sounding garbage suggests to me that maybe they don't necessarily know a good mic from a mediocre one, because they never even bother to control for the important easily-controlled variables, and are making judgements based on the most superficial characteristics, which they mistake for the immutable "character" of the mic.

I think it's entirely possible that many experts are really good at hearing right through the differences in basic EQ, and listening for OTHER differences that matter. Maybe they don't need to EQ the mics first, because they can do that in their heads.

I am pretty sure most people can't do that, and thus can't tell one decent mic from another except by the most superficial EQ differences. I think most people would be better off matching the overall FR curves, and THEN listening for other differences between mics.

And when they do, those judgments are going to get interestingly complicated, because (for example) whether picking up more ambient (vs. direct) sound is a good thing or bad thing depends a whole lot on whether the ambient sound is good.

 

[tomas.borgstrom]

There you go. In a lot of cases, all you need is that low pass filter, and it doesn't matter much whether you pick the brightness by picking microphones with different low-pass filters (or a lack of it) in the circuitry, or use a bright mic and pick between low-pass filters (or a lack of them) in your DAW.

You shouldn't need a whole different mic if you like the mic you've got in every respect (pattern, on- vs. off-axis differences, etc.) *except* that it's a little too bright.

AFAICT that is by far the most common complaint about microphones---and IMO the least valid one.

It seems to me that many people who dismiss bright mics out of hand assume that the "bad" FR is an indicator of poor quality across the board.

I've watched or listened to a bunch of mic shootouts and they've mostly struck me as completely useless, because the only differences I could clearly tell were mostly obvious (even glaring) basic FR differences, and that's the only easily-changed thing about a mic.

How the heck are you supposed to judge mics if they haven't been EQ'd to have roughly the same general FR curve, so that you can tell if there's anything *else* about them that matters, and is not trivially fixable?

The fact that so many people dismiss bright mics as cheap-sounding garbage suggests to me that maybe they don't necessarily know a good mic from a mediocre one, because they never even bother to control for the important easily-controlled variables, and are making judgements based on the most superficial characteristics, which they mistake for the immutable "character" of the mic.

I think it's entirely possible that many experts are really good at hearing right through the differences in basic EQ, and listening for OTHER differences that matter. Maybe they don't need to EQ the mics first, because they can do that in their heads.

I am pretty sure most people can't do that, and thus can't tell one decent mic from another except by the most superficial EQ differences. I think most people would be better off matching the overall FR curves, and THEN listening for other differences between mics.

And when they do, those judgments are going to get interestingly complicated, because (for example) whether picking up more ambient (vs. direct) sound is a good thing or bad thing depends a whole lot on whether the ambient sound is good.

I still don't agree

A recorded source is far too complex to assume that you can balance it with an EQ to achieve a desired result. I'm very careful with using U47 on vocals (and other sources as well). On some voices there's too much information in the upper mids and I know I can't get rid of it in the post processing without a negative effect on the fidelity. It ends up with some phrases sounding astonishing and others sibilant before and lifeless after postprocessing.

You have to know your microphones very well to anticipate how you can correct them with EQ.

I own and use bright microphones as well. They are important tools but I would never assume that just rolling off the highs will give me a nice big vocal sound with weight in the low end and a balanced precence in the mids.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

EQ's mess up the signal especially if you have to make narrow boost or cuts.

Probably because you have the wrong EQ.

At one time I had recorded some classical piano music. He listened to it and said something like: "It sounds great. If you apply eq it will sound clearer but don't do it. You will loose the energy of the piano. Leave it as it is."

It's a matter of acquired taste. Traditionally, piano is recorded with a lot of distant sound, it is the traditional "classical" signature.
Tastes have evolved. A century ago, the typical piano was a romantic piano (Pleyel, Erard), today the reference is the Steinway B, but a current B sounds much clearer than one from the early 20th century, under the demand of concert players.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I've always maintained that using a 1st-order EQ to fix a 2nd-order problem is bound to result in poor compromise.
The typical shelf EQ used to remove microphone harshness is like using a plane to fix a scratch; it takes off a lot of material instead of concentrating on the scratch.
Indeed it manages to reduce the height of the bump, but after it, it drastically attenuates the HF content.

Having a built-in 2nd-order EQ in a mic is rejected by manufacturers for two reasons:

• It adds significant cost; if passive, it takes an inductor that is both bulky and costly, if active, it requires more complex circuitry than most
• It takes individual tuning because the EQ must be adjusted to the capsule

Since most of the signal chains typically used in recording include EQ, it is only natural to use it to compensate the mic's deficiencies. IMO.

Since a long time, loudspeaker designers have fully embraced the concept of relying on active EQ to compensate the deficiencies of transducers.
I don't understand the reluctance of microphone users to apply the same techniques.
I blame "classical" SE's for this retrograde attitude.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I always lift the high pass filters in U67 and M49. I do keep the low pass filters in both though.

AFAIK, neither the U67 nor the M49 have low-pass filters. Nor the M49 have a high-pass filter.

But eq's do cause phase issues

Myth! Even a 1/3 octave EQ with 12dB boost - which is pretty extreme for EQ'ing a mic's resonance - produces less than 40° phase-shift. The phasor stays in the first quadrant, which means that it cannot result in destructive interference.

 

[tomas.borgstrom]

AFAIK, neither the U67 nor the M49 have low-pass filters. Nor the M49 have a high-pass filter.

Correct me if I'm using incorrect terminology. What do you call:
- The high frequency attenuation circuit in U67?
- The result of C6 in M49?
- The part of the M49 circuit with R3, C2 and C3?

Myth!

I don't have the knowledge to tell wether this is a myth or not. I have to trust what I read. If you have a link to a paper or something similar it would be very interesting to learn more about it.

Traditionally, piano is recorded with a lot of distant sound

What do you mean with "traditionally"? The variation is large. Many of my piano LP's from the 50s, 60s and 70s are quite dry and that's the sound I actually prefer. I don't enjoy the sound of a piano in a big room. A lot of new piano recordings have a lot of ambience or perhaps even artificial reverb. One example is Lang Lang "piano book" from 2019.
One of my favourite dry recordings is Käbi Laretei "Nightfall" from 1977.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Correct me if I'm using incorrect terminology. What do you call:
- The high frequency attenuation circuit in U67?
- The result of C6 in M49?

The way you phrased it suggested that these were switchable.

- The part of the M49 circuit with R3, C2 and C3?

Nothing; it acts below 3Hz, so it's some kind of additional HPF.

I don't have the knowledge to tell wether this is a myth or not. I have to trust what I read. If you have a link to a paper or something similar it would be very interesting to learn more about it.

Any filter textbook.

What do you mean with "traditionally"? The variation is large. Many of my piano LP's from the 50s, 60s and 70s are quite dry and that's the sound I actually prefer.

We may not have the same musical interests. Most of the classical records I have suffer, IMO, from being mic'ed too distantly.

One of my favourite dry recordings is Käbi Laretei "Nightfall" from 1977.

I don't know if it's the piano or the recording, but I think it's too dark.
That's what I meant by "romantic piano".

 

[tomas.borgstrom]

I don't know if it's the piano or the recording, but I think it's too dark.
That's what I meant by "romantic piano".

I know many don't share my taste. I like when the piano has a "woody" sound. Bright pianos especially with a lot of ambience can sound very percussive and metallic.

 

[tomas.borgstrom]

I will try to highlight my opinion and experience with an example. This song was recorded, produced and mixed by my friend. It has just been released (only 25 views so far...I hope that will change).

Wilma Holmes - Called You Up

The singers voice and the vocal sound is stunning. The chain is U67 into an Isa 430 (only the preamp section). This is the only eq applied:

.

So, nothing else than a rumble filter and a tiny bit of the old Pultec "low end trick" (which is not necessary in my view, I've heard it without). Besides that, some compression and a few percent of parallell distorsion, and of course delay and reverb.

My point is that this is a perfect marriage between singer and microphone. No need for any "correction" with eq. In my opinion you can't reach the same result when you have to make boosts and cuts to get the right balance. I'm pretty sure some of you will still disagree

A final comment: I'm not an enemy of EQ. I use it a lot. I'm neither a purist. I use all sorts of funny plugins (perhaps not when I mix a classical recording though)

 

[abbey road d enfer]

The singers voice and the vocal sound is stunning.

Unfortunately ruined by the cheap TS808 substitute and the string instrument that may be (or not?) a guitar.

My point is that this is a perfect marriage between singer and microphone. No need for any "correction" with eq.

That's right, and it's a bonus when it happens.

In my opinion you can't reach the same result when you have to make boosts and cuts to get the right balance. I'm pretty sure some of you will still disagree

I do...to a point. Most classical engineers won't EQ, purely for sticking to dogma.
In pop, the mix does not pretend to mimic reality, the perspective is twisted and the sound stage artificial. A little EQ is just another spice in the stew.

 

[Paul W]

I will try to highlight my opinion and experience with an example. This song was recorded, produced and mixed by my friend. It has just been released (only 25 views so far...I hope that will change).

Wilma Holmes - Called You Up

The singers voice and the vocal sound is stunning. The chain is U67 into an Isa 430 (only the preamp section). This is the only eq applied:

View attachment 122001. View attachment 122002

So, nothing else than a rumble filter and a tiny bit of the old Pultec "low end trick" (which is not necessary in my view, I've heard it without). Besides that, some compression and a few percent of parallell distorsion, and of course delay and reverb.

But as you say, the U67 has a high-frequency deemphasis circuit, which you leave enabled.

My point is that this is a perfect marriage between singer and microphone. No need for any "correction" with eq. In my opinion you can't reach the same result when you have to make boosts and cuts to get the right balance. I'm pretty sure some of you will still disagree

You DID get EXACTLY this result by using a HF cut, achieved with an RC filter. It just happens to be the default thing that that mic does, in hardware.

Now imagine you had exactly the same mic, but with the HF cut circuitry disabled.

You could achieve exactly the same result with a simple low-pass filter in your DAW. You would not be able to hear the difference, because there's no difference.

Would you refuse to do so?

That is what I'm talking about---taking a mic that is very good (well-engineered and well built) except that it's too bright, and doing what Neumann engineers did---adding a little HF deemphasis---with the same result.

There are many mics that have a good K67 type capsule, and good but flat or nearly flat circuitry, which many snooty people will not use, simply because they're NOT willing to emulate Neumann by cutting the treble by a few dB, if they have to do it themselves.

I'm happy to use those uncool mics and save thousands of dollars by nudging the HF down myself.

And depending on the source, I might nudge it differently. As Ruud and Abbey have pointed out, a mild second-order filter could tame the K67 capsule's treble bump, while preserving high-frequency extension, rather than lowering the bump AND the very high frequencies beyond it.

Depending on the source, having the mic be flatter AND have more HF extension could obviously be a very good thing.

 

[Recording Engineer]

There are many mics that have a good K67 type capsule, and good but flat or nearly flat circuitry, which many snooty people will not use, simply because they're NOT willing to emulate Neumann by cutting the high treble by a few dB, if they have to do it themselves.

My overall feeling is that you’re probably viewing this in much more simplistic terms than others might. A microphone is an entire system in and of itself. I believe we all probably understand and agree with your sentiment, but in reality, when examining the extremely-fine details and refining the end-sound, you’re going to get different results. How much those details matter, depends on the individual, application, and project. Honestly, it’s sorta the same with microphone-emulation or even hardware vs plugins or analog console vs ITB mixing.

 

[Paul W]

My overall feeling is that you’re probably viewing this in much more simplistic terms than others might. A microphone is an entire system in and of itself. I believe we all probably understand and agree with your sentiment, but in reality, when examining the extremely-fine details and refining the end-sound, you’re going to get different results. How much those details matter, depends on the individual, application, and project. Honestly, it’s sorta the same with microphone-emulation or even hardware vs plugins or analog console bs ITB mixing.

I'm mostly saying things that kingkorg and Khron and Ruud and others have said. Do you think they too are "much more simplistic"? Either way, let me know something I've said that reveals my simplistic thinking. ("That isn't how the pros do it" is not an interesting response.)

By the way, I am not talking about making fundamentally different kinds of mics sound identical with EQ. I do understand some reasons why that does not work, because of the differences in on- and off-axis sound, headbasket diffraction that depends on angles, etc.

I understand that a microphone is a system; that's exactly what I'm talking about. A U67's circuitry is designed to complement the K67 capsule, by rolling off the treble.

If you take a mic that's similar to a U67, with a well-made K67 type capsule, but has a flat circuit, you can make it sound more like a U67 by putting the de-emphasis into the circuit or your DAW. You do that precisely because you DO understand that the microphone is a system, and how the pieces work together, and if you want that sound, you'd better have that HF deemphasis somewhere in that system, somewhere after that capsule.

How in all of that am I not understanding that the microphone is a system?

Some people seem to think that a great microphone is a Platonically ideal *perfect* system that you should not mess with. Maybe they think that the HF deemphasis in a U67 is perfect for the capsule and headbasket and so on of that particular microphone, and any change to it whatsoever will make it WORSE, departing from the holy scripture of Neumann's schematics and other design documents.

I obviously do not believe that. I think that the design is a compromise and is fabulous for some things (like Tomas's example voice recording) but less great for other things. As such, it makes sense (again, precisely because you DO understand that it's a system, and HOW it is a system), to change the HF deemphasis to suit certain sources, like those with significant HF content beyond those in a typical human voice.

A lot of people seem to treat microphones with a certain reverence and awe, as though they are not competent to modify the perfect system of the microphone. That admittedly is not me. Is that a problem? AFAICT it puts me in the same camp as kingkorg, Abbey, Ruud, rogs, et al.

 

[Paul W]

I still don't agree

A recorded source is far too complex to assume that you can balance it with an EQ to achieve a desired result. I'm very careful with using U47 on vocals (and other sources as well). On some voices there's too much information in the upper mids and I know I can't get rid of it in the post processing without a negative effect on the fidelity. It ends up with some phrases sounding astonishing and others sibilant before and lifeless after postprocessing.

You have to know your microphones very well to anticipate how you can correct them with EQ.

I own and use bright microphones as well. They are important tools but I would never assume that just rolling off the highs will give me a nice big vocal sound with weight in the low end and a balanced precence in the mids.

I guess I need to clarify what I'm saying here. I am absolutely NOT saying that if a mic is bright, the only thing wrong with it is that it is bright. I'm NOT saying that a mic that is lousy in general, and bright, can be fixed by making it less bright. I am also NOT saying---and this is important---that a good bright mic can be used well for any given application, just by changing its brightness.

What I am saying is that *sometimes* the only thing wrong with a particular good mic in a particular application is that it's too bright or dark or scooped or whatever for that particular application, with that source, in that room.

Being able to adjust the FR curve isn't important because that's the only thing about a mic that matters. Quite the opposite---it's important because other things about the mic matter a whole lot, and are much harder to change. If the difference between the mike's on-axis sound and off-axis sound works badly given the way your room reverberates, EQ can't fix it.

Suppose you have a mic with good off-axis sound (whatever that means for your source in your room) EXCEPT that both the on- and off-axis sound are too bright by a similar amount. Just darkening both (something you can easily do) will fix it. That is something EQ can do very, very well.

If you rule that mic out simply because it's too bright for that source, in that room, you will never know how good it could sound because of its excellent off-axis sound, for that source, in that room.

IMO you shouldn't be picking the mic with the best on-axis FR for the source and the room, because that is the only thing you can change and fix if it's wrong.

You should therefore adjust the FR so that the on-axis sound is as good as you can make it, and THEN listen to see if the off-axis sound is great too.

If not, THEN look for another mic. Not because this one's on-axis FR is bad---that's not so important---but because its OFF-axis sound makes it worse.

 

[Recording Engineer]

I'm mostly saying things that kingkorg and Khron and Ruud and others have said. Do you think they too are "much more simplistic"? Either way, let me know something I've said that reveals my simplistic thinking. ("That isn't how the pros do it" is not an interesting response.)

No, I’m saying your entire premise may be too simplistic to begin with and others may not be looking at the problem with such simplicity.

Try a U67, U87, and your proposed good k67-type capsule with a flat circuit and any choice of correction outside of the mic. Are they different? Enough for you to care? Maybe it’s enough for others to care? Heck, just try a U87i and U87Ai. Are they the same or different?