Never get caught up with the tyranny of the best. This is good advice in all walks of life. There is no such thing as the best of anything. This is especially true for microphones. I have an assortment of mics topped in price by the Neumann TLM 102. By price, it is the best mic I have ever owned. But here lies the first clue for why nothing is actually the best:

By what measure?

We could probably come up with the best mic if selling price was the only criteria. But absolutely no one who knows even a little about microphones would suggest such a silly measurement. For there to be a best, you would need an objective standard for measurement. Who gets to decide what the standard is?

If not by price, what is the measurement? The obvious first move would be to use sound quality as the highest criterion. But how do we judge sound quality? That is inherently subjective. Whose ear gets to judge audio quality? Perhaps there are some objective measurements we could take.

It is possible to measure frequencies and say that the mic with the flatest frequency wins. But even that is arbitrary. Most people don't want mics with flat frequencies. So why should that be the criterion? You see, any type of measurement you choose as your criterion for the best is itself a subjective judgement on what you think is the most important spec.

Objective specs

There are many objective specifications that some people find very important. But here's the thing: The best specs don't produce the best mic. One place where some companies try to differentiate is self-noise. We can accurately measure how much self-noise a microphone produces with the assumption that the lower the self-noise, the better the sound. As it happens, that is not even close to true.

A self-noise of 7 DBA is extremely good for a mic at any price. You can get that in microphones that are in the $300 range. Much more expensive and sought-after mics have a higher self-noise. I believe the 102 is about 12 DBA. Does that make it objectively worse than mics with a lower self-noise? Absolutely not!

There are a couple of questions to consider: How much self-noise is audible to human hearing? And How much does a little audible self-noise even matter to the overall enjoyability of the sound? Neither question lends itself to precise answers as everyone's hearing is a little different. And everyone has a different tolerance for noise not contributing to the sound.

Most professional mics have self-noise that simply doesn't contribute to the final mix and enjoyability of the music or voice over. There might be some specialized areas where it matters. But those are very rare. Furthermore, there are excellent and inexpensive tools for greatly reducing noise on a track. So almost every mic falls bellow the threshold of noise that matters.

On the other end of the spectrum is loudness. How loud of a sound can a mic handle before distorting? This is a more meaningful measurement in my opinion. Start screaming into the wrong mic and you are going to get a distorted and unusable track. One of my favorite mics: the Rode Videomic NTG has beautiful sound but a lower than average SPL. If you are not well controlled, your track will be ruined. Go for a mic that can handle loudness rather than worrying about a mic with a little self-noise.

What about bass and the other junk?

There is no such thing as a professional production where no post EQ was done. Every track recorded with a mic is tweaked just a little to provide the sound the engineer desires. By all means, get a mic that is close to the way you like your sound. But all that does is reduce the amount of EQ you will do, it almost never eliminates. It.

If you get a very mid-forward mic and you want a broadcast sound that brings out the base in your voice, you have the wrong mic no matter how good it is. You need a mic that complements both the voice you have and the voice you want. Get something close enough so that you don't have to fight the mic to get what you want. That said, it is possible to get lucky and find a mic that is so perfect for the way you want your voice to sound that you don't need any EQ. Good for you. But that is the exception and not the rule.

A matter of preference

Blue Baby Bottle vs. Neumann TLM 102. Which is better? Neither. It is a matter of preference. Even then, there are good reasons to have both. There is no single mic that does it all and eliminates the need for all other mics. There is no one best mic.

The 102 has a beautiful, details sound and makes vocals really crisp throughout the range. I absolutely love that sound. It really captures the gravel and wrinkles of a voice like nothing else in my cabinet.

The Blue has some of the best sounding mid presence of any mic I have ever had. It can help your voice stand out in the mix and it also has the sound you are often going for after post production, except without the post production. It is a hotter mic and doesn't need as much gain to drive. When you can lower the gain, you also lower the noise. You could keep all that gain and back off from the mic for a more even tone. It is not quite as detailed as the 102. But it is not behind by much. What you might lose in detail, you make up in other areas. I love the results I get from it.

That said, which is better? Neither. Past a certain price, it is not about better. It is only about preference. Which do you like the sound of the best for the recording you are about to do? Which do you want to work with today? Which looks best on camera?

Is your environment particularly noisy today? Go with the Blue. But it really doesn't matter. Are you feeling a bit sultry? Go with the 102. But it really doesn't matter. Are you mixing a guest with a much different vocal profile than you? It could be that neither will work for that situation. It is not about which is the best. It is about which is the best for you at that moment.

Conclusion: Your voice

I can't tell you how many mics I've bought on the basis of how they sounded on someone else's voice. Time and again, I get it connected only to be disappointed in how it sounds on my voice. We can fix up the room for the perfect acoustic properties and buy the interface that ties it all together. The one thing you can't buy or fix is the sound of your voice. Your voice is your voice. That is the real instrument. The mic is just a tool that helps you convey it to others.

If you are lucky enough to have a little extra cash you can float and a major equipment store near at hand, buy mics frequently and return them until you find the ones that are right for your voice. The best mics might be the worst mics for you. There is nothing wrong with you or the mics. It is just a matter of finding the right fit.

We will talk more about your recording environment in another post, also preference. The thing you should know right now is that there is no such thing as the best mic. And no single mic can do all the work for you. Get close enough and we will work through how to get you the rest of the way.

David Johnson