Jon, a couple of points regarding Schoeps:
- Schoeps' published frequency response curves for capsules and compact microphones are corrected for a 1-meter measuring distance.
- The frequency response and polar pattern of the Schoeps MK 41 capsule were consciously adjusted in the early 1970s in consultation with some of the company's leading customers (e.g. French radio). Different versions were tried, comparison recordings were made and discussed, and the result was a move toward a supercardioid pattern and away from hypercardioid, along with greater extension of the low-frequency response and a somewhat fuller sound overall.
This was spurred by:
- an increasing demand for the MK 41 to be more useful for full-range music recording;
- the advent of stereo television broadcasting in Western Europe (at this time, all broadcasting was public and the technology decisions were centralized in each country); and
- HUGE improvements in theater sound systems, which (especially after the success of "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters") increased the attention paid to sound quality in film and video generally. Many people who recorded dialog and effects no longer wanted to cut the low frequencies as much as they had previously.
- Schoeps offers an alternate version of the MK 41 called the MK 41 S, with a greater low-frequency rolloff. It's used for close speech pickup and for spot/solo miking where proximity effect makes up the difference. I think that this indicates which way the market demand is mainly pointing--and it's not in the direction of increased low-frequency response.
And some more general points:
- The more closely a microphone capsule approaches figure-8 (= pure pressure gradient response), the more sensitive it becomes to solid-borne sound, handling noise, wind and breath noise, etc.--so by about 40 Hz, an increasing proportion of any such capsule's output is due to that undesirable stuff, rather than acoustic input--and any increase in the capsule's low-frequency sensitivity, more often than not, will mainly cause the microphone to deliver more garbage. (Of course, sometimes that's subjectively desirable--decorrelated rumble can fool a lot of people into hearing "space.")
- Microphones with flat low-frequency response (plane-wave, not 1-meter) pick up a great deal of information about the room (venue) in which they're being used--and more often than not, the news isn't so good. As an irresponsible generalization (but one that I really believe), the VAST majority of indoor recordings are made in spaces that are smaller than optimal and that have undesirable low-frequency resonances. I might ideally like all my capsules to have flat frequency response down to 25 or 30 Hz, but then most of the time, I would need to tailor that response in post-production.
- I find Neumann's KM 150 supercardioid an interesting case in point. Its frequency response is ca. -10 dB at 50 Hz (Neumann also corrects to 1 meter), so it could legitimately be considered a capsule for close speech recording. I own a pair of these, and have used them occasionally to record full-range music. What surprises me is the extent to which the bass is still really "all there." It has a very different balance than what I would have gotten with the Schoeps MK 41, of course--but within a few seconds of listening to the recording, I find my ears accepting and adjusting to that balance.
That certainly wouldn't occur if the mikes were 10 dB down in the treble! So I conclude that when bass response is taken away smoothly, the effect seems to be tolerable (despite the reduction of visceral impact). -- Of course if you were recording amplified music where the PA system and the room combined to boost the bass unnaturally, that 10 dB rolloff might be just the ticket. Or maybe 5 dB of rolloff would sound just right. As Gutbucket says above, when a capsule has the same polar pattern all across the audio range, you can equalize a recording that was made with that type of capsule, and the results will be predictable and well-behaved. Both Schoeps and Neumann have accomplished that.
However, In many years of recording orchestras and percussion ensembles and solo pianos and other things that have plenty of low-frequency content, I don't recall ever boosting the bass of a recording that I'd made with a pair of MK 41s. I'm not EQ-averse, and have boosted the bass of numerous MK 8 recordings, for example. Maybe it's just that I use the MK 41 when I know that its particular frequency response AND polar response will give me suitable results, and I use something else when I want a different result. I've probably made 1,000+ stereo music recordings with the MK 41 over the years, and I'd better have learned something about them during that time!
--best regards