I found the DPA406x to be consistently annoying. ...
JZ samples? To me they had a bit of that DPA "crunch" that bothered me. Not as much, but I didn't enjoy listening.
I have no idea what is going on. All I know is some mics sound "smooth as silk" and other mics sound "crunchy". I would say AKG 463 is somewhere is the middle. Awesome detail, but a bit crunchy. Now, Geffel M200, that is smooth.
Thanks, that's really interesting to me. I think we all agree some mics sound smooth, others crunchy, some bright, others dark, some peaky, some more open, etc. We also agree about which categories any particular mic leaned towards. We may differ in our general preferences for various sonic traits, but what's really interesting is that we differ on which of these two mics is consistently annoying to us personally.
I'm starting to think that the inevitable differences in everyone's hearing response, especially in the midrange & treble where our hearing responses are most varied, have a significant influence on our aversion to a particular mic's response. Respecting your ear and my own, I wonder if a sonic weirdness that bothers your ear response may not be reaching the same threshold in my mine and vice versa.