I'm not sure what you mean by "the Schoeps 'mud' sound" and it matters, since you could mean dullness of sound and/or it could mean an excess of reverberant sound pickup in your recordings, or you could mean something else that I have no idea about. When you aim a good microphone at mud, it should pick up mud, and I'm not there when you record so I just plain don't know what you aim your microphones at.
However, I can tell you that even if you have perfect hearing (which I'll bet you don't), the difference in audible high frequency response between the normal CMC 6 and the xt version is quite small. It's not exactly zero, but it would take very careful listening comparisons, excellent playback equipment, and somewhat unusual program material to make this difference evident directly.
The thing is, there really is very little sound energy above 20 kHz in most music, the way most people hear it. All the famous examples of how violins or percussion instruments have energy up to 40 kHz are taken from mere centimeters away from the sound source, and are chosen because they're unusual. By the time sound reaches the audience (and particularly if you're talking about amplified music, which I suspect you are at least in part), there's rarely but a faint residue of anything above 16 kHz, let alone 20 or 30 kHz. With amplified music forget it; the speakers in PA systems don't go nearly that high.
Schoeps doesn't make the xt version because they have some belief to sell about recording "up there." They make the xt because they are more willing than any other first-tier manufacturer to make special versions of their products even in relatively small quantities on request, and because--knowing that--some customers (in Japan, I think) asked them to produce microphones with response that high. So, having made up the first batch, they decided to make this amplifier type available to anyone else who might be interested. That way they can maybe recoup their investment in its design.
What I might suggest that you do is try to use a good equalizer (perhaps in software) to see whether a treble boost helps you get over whatever it is that you don't like about the sound of your recordings. It might or it might not, but that way you'd know if it's a matter of frequency response or something else.
--best regards
P.S.: (added later) If you do decide to play around with an equalizer, the frequency region that affects the sense of clarity the most is two to three octaves lower than the region in which the xt amplifier offers extra sensitivity.
My guess is that you may be recording from too far back--because your ears are telling you when the distance is right for the most pleasant listening, but that's not necessarily (or even usually) the optimal distance for placing a pair of microphones. The main problem is that many--perhaps most--musical performances occur in spaces that aren't very well suited for recording; the character of the reflected sound is just wrong. So if you place your microphones so as to get the amount of reflected sound you would like, you end up recording mud, or clatter, or something else that doesn't enhance the musical experience. Sometimes the poor or questionable quality of the reverberant sound in a space forces you to make a drier recording than you would like--just so that the recording doesn't have too much of a kind of reflected sound that makes things sound worse. Does that make sense? There are other issues to consider, but I think this may be the main one.
Topic: Schoeps cmc6xt thoughts? (Read 3547 times)