Watched last night.
Put together, I would guess Wuttke would argue against the practice of maintaining a stable of highly variable LDCs with sharp peaks and valleys in their frequency response (requiring an iterative process of matching to a particular vocalist), in favor of a single controlled response microphone such as the V4U followed by an electronic equalizer.
Yes, I think he does mention in this or another video something to the effect that it's better to have a totally neutral microphone and EQ later, and that a good microphone should be able to be used on any instrument / voice.
He does mention that specifically later on. He doesn't dwell on it very long, just a few sentences, but does mention it directly.
That V4U Jon linked also goes against his notion that studios like LDCs because they look impressive / pretty.
To the contrary, I think it plays directly into that notion- a more well behaved SDC microphone capsule, hidden inside a classic era housing with a nostalgic visual appeal. A compromise between his domain of engineering expertise and concerns with the very different concerns of sales and marketing. I imagine he is no fan of the housing on acoustic engineering terms, and probably considers it "meaningless poetic sales appeal" without any technical justification whatsoever. His presentation briefly showed the image of a standard Schoeps SDC hidden inside the housing of a much larger, classic pill-shaped housing, with response graphs showing how the old housing compromises the response. The unstated assumption is that Schoeps made efforts to design this studio vocal microphone in such a way that it's nostalgic decorative housing does not significantly detract from its modern technical performance.
Producing and marketing that microphone is entirely justifiable from a company perspective. However I do find this turn somewhat unfortunate in a way (and imagine he may as well) in that even if the housing is entirely benign with regards to the microphone's performance, to me Schoeps represents a refreshingly rare approach of focusing on excellent technical performance - the stuff that actually matters in making a good recording – and specifically not bowing to 'poetic' compromises for stuff that doesn't matter technically. The counter argument is that a positive emotional impact of "what an excellent microphone is supposed to look like" upon talent who couldn’t care less about the technical aspects is also important, even if it is based on their unjustified misperceptions.
It is something of a retreat from putting technical perfection above most everything else. But a justified one, as long as it doesn't lead to a slippery slope of dangerously blurring the two very distinct realms.
It’s psychoacoustics, just of a different sort!
Topic: Understanding Microphones - Jörg Wuttke (former Schoeps technical director) (Read 6590 times)