Hi Everyone !

My first post here. I was checking my mikes before a recording session and thought "why not make a quick comparison test" ? So i took the nearest musician (unfortunately it was me !) and did a shootout with the following mics :

• AT4050
• Lewitt LCT441
• AT4021
• Line Audio CM4

All going through a RME Fireface 802 and without any processing.
I'm on clarinet at about 80-100 cm from the mics.

I'm playing two short excerpts of Brahms (opening theme of the Eb sonata) and Poulenc (opening theme of the bassoon/clarinet sonata). The first is sweet and lyrical, the second is loud and joyful.

Please forgive my poor clarinet sound (need to practice more and buy new reeds), it would have been better to have a more skilled musician playing but that's the way it is :-(

I'm interested to see if you hear big differences and if you like one more than the others. I hope you'll find it interesting too.

So here it is :

OK, lots of folks have seen the post, listened to the samples and did not write any comment.
I realize it's probably because the performance is terrible and the very dry acoustic doesn't help. Therefore, listening to them is quite painful and it makes it difficult to compare. I Apologize for that.

So, i'll soon post other samples with a professional musician playing. Hope this will make the test a bit more interesting for everybody...

And I'm of course opened to any suggestion/request.

Hi, thank you.

The performance is good.

I prefered the sound in this order: D first and then A. Didn't like B and C.

Can you pm the keys please?.

Best,
Daniel.

As promised, same mics but better musician (flute).
It's close miking, which is not suitable for this music but not so bad for comparing mics.
To avoid any bias from the previous samples, we now have mic 1, 2, 3 and 4 (same mics but in a different order) :

In the first set, I like B,A,D,C. I can hear more depth and space in B with a pleasing overall tonality. A was a little bright but not bad. D was dynamic but somewhat muffled. C was entirely to thin sounding compared to the others.
I listened on AKG K240 STUDIO headphones.

In the flute set, it was 1,2,3,4 for many of the same reasons I posted for the first set. 1 being the most spacious sounding with more depth. 4 was thinner.
PM please if you don’t plan to reveal publicly.

Thanks for your feedback !
Interesting to see you are almost perfectly consistent, because 1=B, 2=A, 3=C, 4=D

To me, B was the worst on clarinet and the better on flute ! Maybe it's because I was playing the clarinet and felt that B was revealing my bad clarinetistic shape more than the others.

Also funny to see that Daniel (and me) liked D, while you liked B.
Where you say "muffled", i would have said "warm".
And B sounds harsh on clarinet to me but with a nice tonality on flute.

So, as often, it seems to be a matter of taste.
What I'm trying to figure out is if those 4 mics are in the same league, none of them being obviously better or worse. And also I find it very interesting and useful to see how different people, all with well trained ears, have different apreciations.

I'll reveal later on the thread but pm you the result before.

I find B sounds weird on Clarinet, like (bad) EQ'ed.

Best,
Daniel.

Yeah, I’m just not hearing that “harsh” at all. The reason I favor B is simply because I hear more detail, depth, and resonance of each note. For instance, beginning around the 20 second mark when the clarinet plays the lowest notes. I hear each note all the way through (the beginning, middle, and end), not just the fundamental. The other mics emphasize the fundamental either with brightness (A) or dynamics (D). But I don’t hear the space around the notes if that makes any sense.
I’ve listened on two separate headphones now (AKG K240 Studio and Ultrasone HFI-580). I’m away from my monitors at the moment.

Yes we hear the same things but have different taste maybe. Obviously, B has more highs than the others. Therefore more harmonics, more breath, more presence, more details.
The clarinet is an Instrument that really has two sides: sweet and dark lows, brilliant and sometime agressive highs. So, it all depends on wether you're looking for the dark or the bright side or the instrument. But for me, the true spirit of clarinet is softness, so I tend to prefer somewhat darker mics (that don't emphasize the highs) for clarinet (though it depends on the room and the clarinetist).
To me, but i can't tell why and I might be entirely wrong, D feels "thicker" and warmer while still lively and detailed.
I must also tell that the flutist immediately and without any hesitation voted for mic 1 (B). But she didn't listen to the clarinet samples.

Thank you for doing these! I'm very curious to know what the results are, too. I work quite a bit as a session woodwind player, and of course this year most work has been remote... so dealing with the challenges of recording flute and clarinet at home has come up frequently lately. That flautist sounds very good, but you sound good on clarinet, too, don't beat yourself up! I promise you're the only one feeling pain listening to it. That's normal!

On the clarinet, I agree that "D" was the best-sounding mic.

On the flute, I like mic 3 the most, then mic 1.

I look forward to finding out what these are!

For whatever it's worth, I use a u87 for pretty much everything – saxophone, clarinet, and flute – and it gets the job done very well. It's my favorite mic for tenor saxophone in particular, which is my main instrument. I'm strongly considering getting another mic specifically for flute and clarinet, though: probably either a Gefell M930, AEA R84, or a good SDC along the lines of a KM84. Soyuz 013, Miktek C5, and 3U Audio 127 C-Flat are all on the list for that.

Thanks progger for your sympathetic comment !
I use my mics to record small chamber ensembles, mostly contemporary and baroque, so I need to have more than a few mics. That's why i'm interested in cheaper mics than u87, given that if needed i can rent expensive dpa or neumann mics.
And by the way, i have noticed that in some situations (depending on the room and the musicians), mid priced mics are as good or even better than expensive ones. Not to say that expensive mics are not worth the price, it's just that when you need to have many mics and don't have a LOT of money, it's really worth considering mics in the 300-500 dollars (or euros) range, because some of them can really make the job done, including professionnal recordings.
However, i'd like to have a good ribbon to use on strings when the bow sounds too scratchy and sibillant. Have you ever tried at4081 (cheaper than AEA R84 but maybe good enough for me) ?

Anyway, i'll pm you the result !

First set I like

D
B
C
A