O Jes AT 934 is an Omni but take a look at ther weird Polar Pattern. And the DPA`s have a Impedance wich is 1/10 of the AT`s. We have checked it it against the Reference DPA 4006, it was a bit Hyped to Hifi and not Music. I have used 40XX for a Swiss Cinema Movie and it was fantastic results straight out of the box. Choir of 2-80 Poeple in Churches and in smaller Rooms with Jazz an Big Monochords. 40XX is Killer state of the Art but take the grills away and use some Equalizing +3 db 14 KHz.
http://www.johleundwerche.ch/johlendwerche/Index.htmlQuote:
it's a little easier to make a good omni at a certain price point than to make an "equally good" (whatever that may mean specifically) directional microphone.
One basic thing to understand about omnidirectional microphones is that most of them aren't omnidirectional at all frequencies--their pickup pattern becomes narrower at high frequencies. This is because their physical size (even the usual "small" studio quality microphones of 20 - 22 mm diameter) obstructs the short wavelengths of high frequency sound. Smaller omni microphones are available, but they tend to be noisier than the best of the "usual" small microphones. So while some people prefer them, in some cases quite passionately, they aren't right for every engineer or application and are still something of a special taste.
Now if the pickup pattern becomes narrower at high frequencies, that means that sound picked up in front of the microphone will have more high-frequency energy than sound picked up from all other angles. And that can be a good thing in itself--say if you are recording from a considerable distance in a reverberant room and you want to pick up distinctly more detail from the sounds on stage than from the echoes in the hall. It does mean, however, that even though a microphone is called "omni," you still have to aim it properly! But many classic mono recordings and broadcasts were made back in the 1940s and '50s with just one well-placed pressure microphone picking up an entire orchestra, or even an entire opera performance.
Since you have to back the microphone well away from the stage in order to get a good overall balance that way (i.e. not emphasize whoever's in front and at the center too much), the microphones designed for this type of pickup generally had more or less flat "overall" response. But given the fact that the on-axis response at high frequencies must be greater than the response for all other angles, this meant that their on-axis response showed a considerable rise at high frequencies--often 8 dB or so around 9 or 10 kHz. This is called a "diffuse-field equalized" pressure microphone, and some examples of it today would be the Neumann KM 183 or KM 130, the Schoeps CMC 33, CMC 53 or CMC 63, or any of the microphones in which a small pressure transducer is embedded in a somewhat larger sphere (the prototype being the "classic" Neumann M 50).
At the opposite end of the spectrum would be an omni microphone designed for flat on-axis response--a "free-field equalized" microphone. It's useful in the extreme opposite situation: close miking. Given the narrowing of the pattern at high frequencies, this can only be achieved with a corresponding rolloff of off-axis response at high frequencies. I will be recording a concert with a pair of this type of microphone in a few hours; I haven't got much choice about where the microphones must go in the hall, since it is at a foreign consulate where certain security rules are paramount, and the microphones will be receiving much more direct sound than I normally prefer. So I plan on using a pair of Schoeps CMC 52, a type which I don't often use (though musicians generally like the sound a lot). They are as flat on axis as any measurement microphones that I know of. The closest equivalent type from Neumann would be the model KM 131.