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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: Nick's Picks on May 18, 2024, 08:04:14 AM
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anyone ever try these?
https://electronics.sony.com/audio/professional-audio/all-professional-audio/p/ecm100u
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No, but at a price of $1000, one might as well get a real mic. ;)
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fwiw that is a "real" microphone and *not* one of their single-point stereo deals like the ecm-719. They say right there that it's got "excellent sound quality," so what else do you need to know? ;D
Nick, it looks like they've only got two left, so blow a couple grand and let us know. :P
On a more serious note, I found a couple videos with the 100U in studio settings, which while not field taping, at least lets you hear that they are not bad mics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oznSyDz8a9k
This one goes back and forth between a few mics, and in both mono/stereo, plus its chaptered with the mic names so you can seek around. Importantly, the other mics used *are* mics folks have taped with so you can try and compare them by finding LMA recordings of the other mics and know that you'll at least end up with something comparable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WyqpE6PK88
Also includes the 100N omni and another set of Sony mics.
Also, if you *do* decide you want to try them out, Sweetwater has them as a special order for a couple hundred less per mic than direct from Sony. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ECM100U--sony-ecm-100u-small-diaphragm-condenser-microphone
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lol.
my taping days are about "zero" at this point. I was just curious. Sony makes quality shit, I wondered about these.
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Sony makes a huge range of equipment from professional to consumer, and all of it is as well made as its price class allows. I've heard some astonishingly good recordings made with Sony C 37 microphones--large-diaphragm tube condensers from the 1950s (not the later model C 37 P). But the first condenser microphones I ever owned were Sony ECM-22P, which were screechy like fingernails on a blackboard.
Back in those days, more treble was considered proof of "high fidelity", especially in Japan, apparently. Since about the mid-1970s I've never been impressed any more when someone says that their favorite headphones or loudspeaker or microphone "brings out inner details that I didn't hear with other [headphones, loudspeakers, microphones]" since all that that really requires is more treble and/or upper midrange, and/or more distortion, and those mikes had all of the above. I still cringe when remembering the sound.
But Sony is capable of much better when designing products for serious professionals. And electrets in general have come a long way since the 1970s. For this model they seem to be emphasizing the fact that its response extends beyond the audible range. That indicates that they're trying to appeal most likely to two groups of people: [1] Those who record sound effects that contain such frequencies, then lower the sampling rate in playback to bring those pitches down into the audible range, and [2] those who believe, contrary to nearly all research for 100+ years, that human hearing is influenced by frequencies above 20 kHz or so (for the lucky few who still hear even that high). I think it's more relevant to observe, in products that limit the frequency range to 20 kHz or whatever, exactly _how_ the bandwidth is limited, because such filtering can be audibly transparent or it can be quite audibly disturbing. And when circuitry doesn't filter the high frequencies at all, clearly it can't fuck up what it isn't doing, although that approach can occasionally have adverse "downstream" effects.