Topic: Microphone Durability Expectations, Reasonable Care, etc.

[Simultaneity]

Hey Taperssection,

I am professionally a FOH engineer, but I have always loved taping every show I mix to have a record of it. For years I went down the rabbit hole of making my SBDs as good as possible but I'm sure I don't have to tell y'all that even an immaculate SBD alone does not capture the magic of the show. After dabbling with some cardioid coincident pairs I have recently fallen in love with using a spaced pair of omnis at FOH mixed with my SBDs. This seems to be about the closest thing I can get to having been in the room standing at FOH. Great!

Now the problem. I bought a pair of used Earthworks QTC30s on Reverb and halfway through their first tour one of the stopped passing signal and by the end of the tour the other had stopped passing signal. These were all indoor shows and the mics were never dropped or mishandled in any way. I emailed Earthworks and they graciously replaced the pair for free, mentioning that though I had purchased them used that they had had some supply chain problems during the pandemic and had had some sub par components and so were willing to replace them despite being purchased used to help restore my faith in the brand. Well. One of the 8 month old QTC30s just stopped passing signal about a week ago. I've emailed Earthworks again but this time haven't gotten a response (yet) and even if they do respond, I find it hard to ask them to replace the pair of mics again. That said, the new pair was treated with significant care because I was grateful to have a brand spankin new pair of mics. They go from their case within a case (a cigar caddy within a foamed pelican case) to the stand and back. I am the only one who handles them. They were never dropped, never got wet, always used with windscreens outside, etc. That said, I am a live sound engineer, they get used outside in the summer and I tour through a lot of humid places. However we also use many other condenser mics from Shure, Audio Technica, Sennheiser, etc on stage, some of which are approaching 20 years old and which absolutely do NOT get treated with the same level of care that I show the Earthworks. We do our best, but they get hot plugged with phantom power twice a day every single day, they'll get covered in a tarp but still left out in rainy environments (never actually getting wet, but absolutely a bad case scenario for moisture), sometimes they'll take a spill on a stand. I don't mean to seem that we're callous with them, but to a reasonable degree they are tools with an expected lifespan and all of  THAT said I haven't had any other significant failures in all of my years of touring yet I've been through 3 QTC30s in 15 months. None of the other mics are the same value bracket as the QTCs, but I do have an UGLY pair of KM184s, which to be fair have gone back for repair once as they seemed to have different low freq responses, but post repair show identical responses on an FFT measurement and were at least capable of a reasonably priced repair which the Earthworks are not since they are glued shut.

I'm wondering how Taperssection, perhaps especially those in the south east, treats their mics and what level of durability they expect. Am I expecting too much durability from a higher performance mic like the QTCs? I do have some higher end Neumann etc mics but they never leave the studio. I read the QTC30 manual and EW suggests that they be used at "room temperature" and in an environment that is "free of dust." The Earthworks sound so SO SO good but they are never going to be able to be used at room temperature in a dust free environment so I am looking into alternatives. I would be sad to use something "lesser" so I am primarily looking at Schoeps as I subscribe to the "buy once, cry once" philosophy but the price of a pair of Schoeps and my experience with the QTCs has me thinking twice if I may end up with a dead mic worth twice as much as a QTC in another 8 months. Perhaps I should look into a more "disposable" option?

An edit just to make it abundantly clear that I'm not here to dog Earthworks, they have agreed to replace the QTC30s again free of charge. I have disappointing reliability from the mics but never from Earthworks as a company standing by their product or making it right when a product fails.

Thanks to anyone who has made it this far, and even more to anyone willing to share their thoughts.

[aaronji]

I have had my DPA4015s, bought second hand, for about 8 years. All sorts of temperatures/humidities and no problems. I have had the 2006s for close to 15 years and the same. I know a Schoeps taper that has owned his MK4s for more than 30 years with no issues. In short, I guess I am saying that well cared for microphones should be more durable than what you are experiencing.

[jbell]

I would agree with aaron!

These aren't Schoeps, but I recently bought a set of DPA 2006c from this seller.  They are in mint condition and if you do an offer of $1300 for a set he will accept it.  He still has 3 mics left. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/277176307214

[aaronji]

^ I think you'll enjoy them! Slightly less bassy and a little more directional than your typical omni. Beware of the high-sensitivity (40 mV/Pa), though, as thy can overload some inputs at high SPL...

[SMsound]

I would be very unhappy to experience what you are experiencing.

That said, DPA 4060's are indestructable (DPA advises to clean them by dunking in water). Sennheiser SDC cardioid mics also have a reputation for being indestructable.

SDC's in general should be hard to break. Did they tell you what failed inside? Nothing should fail.

One other option: Any chance you're hooking it up to power equipment that is surging or doing something weird to fry them?

[Gutbucket]

[snip..]After dabbling with some cardioid coincident pairs I have recently fallen in love with using a spaced pair of omnis at FOH mixed with my SBDs. This seems to be about the closest thing I can get to having been in the room standing at FOH. Great![..snip]

That's the way to go IMO.  Hard to beat a pair of spaced omnis for a nice open spacious portrayal of ambience, audience and room.  A spaced pair of omnis at FOH works great in support of a well-balanced SBD since each provides what the other is lacking, without too much duplication of PA pickup in the omni pair, which provides more flexibility in balancing the mix of the two. 

Condenser mics vary in their ability to withstand moisture and environmental abuse.  Tapers use many different types, but those recording outdoors lean toward the ones that tend to be reliable enough.  A key part of moisture reliability revolves around the particulars of how the condensor element works.  Many standard externally polarized are robust enough and work well.  Top quality taper mics in that category are Schoeps, Neumann, AKG, MBHO, etc.  Two alternate types tend to be particularly robust and are commonly used by environmental recordists in challenging conditions: Pre-polarized back-eletrets, and radio-frequency biased condensors.  Sennheiser MKH condensors are the only RFbiased type I'm aware of and are particularly well-respected for use in challenging conditions. They work in jungles.  As for back-electrets there are many examples, some cheap, some expensive, some not so good, some outstanding.  Earthworks is in that category but I'm not sure how environmentally robust they are. I've not used them myself.  DPA is also in that category and are very resistant to moisture.

All DPA mics are back-eletret but they use two different element sizes. Supposedly early on DPA tested  environmental reliability of their 4006 omnis (outstanding but costly) by leaving a few in fisherman's tackle boxes onboard a boat for a few years, after which they worked to spec.  More reasonable in cost and perfectly suitable for your application are their omnis which are based on their smaller miniature element capsules (there are a few different models), similar to the size of the elements in your Earthworks mics.  They use the same elements as the very small DPA lavalier mics designed to withstand sweat and makeup abuse when used on actors and such.  Many tapers use the miniature lavilears for music recording.  I've accidentally submerged a pair of those omnis in water and they kept working just fine.  I don't worry about them failing in rain, only about the sound of the rain on them. I don't mean to turn this into a DPA team thread, but I do think a couple of their models may work well for you..

The DPAs best suited to your application are likely the 2006 mentioned by jbell, or the 4090.  2006 uses two of the miniature elements in a standard pencil mic format (use of twin elements reduces the self-noise of the miniature capsules somewhat, but self-noise won't be an issue for your use, and double the sensitivity (40 mV/Pa, as Aaron mentions).  4090 uses a single miniature element hosed in a tapered body very similar in appearance to Earthworks.  Its sometimes used as a measurement mic, partly due to it being "fully omni" up to the highest frequencies due to the smaller tapered end housing.  It's basically a 4060 lavalier mic (20 mV/Pa) in a traditional XLR mic form.  It's considerably less costly than the 2006 and much, much less costly than the top of the line 4006. It should make for a drop in replacement for the Earthworks both in terms of physical format and in terms of the pickup pattern bing "fully omni all the way up", and was the first thing that came to mind upon reading your post.

[Gutbucket]

The DPA 4060 SMsound mentioned while I was typing the post above (or 4061 which can handle higher SPL) will work great, but is probably not the physical format you want.  4090 is the regular XLR mic version of 4060.

[Simultaneity]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I was really starting to spin out about this so you all have definitely made me feel a little better.

Earthworks said that I probably damaged the ICA inside the mic so that potentially rules out my moisture theory. "The key issue is that if phantom power is on, and either voltage-carrying pin connects a split-second before the other, you can potentially damage the ICA circuitry inside a condenser microphone." We use CPC/W1/Veam multipin connectors with all of our mics on stage and they get hot plugged every day, but maybe it's different with a straight XLR than the multipin, though I can't actually believe it makes a difference and if it does I'd be willing to bet the multipin connection (which the EW were never subjected to) would be worse.

The QTCs primarily were used with a Sound Devices MixPre 6-II that is bus powered from my laptop, which to be fair I only use for this purpose and none of my other mics get used with the MixPre, so I hadn't considered that that could be causing a problem. Though I've lurked on this form for a long time and see a couple of people using MixPres seemingly without issue.

[snip..]After dabbling with some cardioid coincident pairs I have recently fallen in love with using a spaced pair of omnis at FOH mixed with my SBDs. This seems to be about the closest thing I can get to having been in the room standing at FOH. Great![..snip]

That's the way to go IMO.  Hard to beat a pair of spaced omnis for a nice open spacious portrayal of ambience, audience and room.  A spaced pair of omnis at FOH works great in support of a well-balanced SBD since each provides what the other is lacking, without too much duplication of PA pickup in the omni pair, which provides more flexibility in balancing the mix of the two. 

THANK YOU for laying this out so concisely. I never really conceptualized why I wasn't liking the coincident carioids as much as the omnis but this is EXACTLY why. I see a lot of the advice on this forum leans toward carioid as opposed to omni, with the exception of outdoors, which does make sense in isolation or with a less reliable SBD, but since I am specifically blending the mics with the SBD to add the ambience, audience, etc omnis seem to fit my purpose better.

And thank you too for the break down of the different capsule designs. I was vaguely aware that there WAS a difference but understand better now! I think I may narrow my search to pre-polarized back-eletrets.

No need to apologize for turning the thread team DPA! I hadn't even considered DPA. I've consistently seen people rave about them never used them beyond 4099s for ensemble horns & winds, where of course they excel. I didn't realize they had such a robust collection of omni microphones as well.

I can't seem to find a capsule spec on the 4006, but do you happen to know if it has a metal diaphragm? They do look great, but definitely eye wateringly expensive even compared to Schoeps. Though I can't help but feel the appeal of that level of durability. What a cool anecdote. I started going down a different rabbit hole of class 1 measurement mics since in an ideal world I would also be able to calibrate these mics for SPL and use them for the dual purpose of measurement as well as recording. The 4006 look vaguely like the Gefell 221 capsules which are metal and also seemingly are designed to be outlive the user, but Gefell seems to be meaningfully less present in the US than DPA. The only bummer about the 4006 is that they don't seem to use a 1/2" diameter capsule common on class 1 measurement mics that fit a standard SPL calibrator.

You are right that the 4090 may actually be the easiest drop in replacement for the earthworks. The price is much easier to stomach and better yet it looks like a 1/4" calibrator might fit too.


Seriously can't thank y'all enough for the great responses. This has been a great experience.

[morst]

I don't own any high quality omni mics, but am generally the most satisfied with my recordings made with a direct SBD feed, along with a directional pair at or near FoH, plus a pair of "wide cardioid" mics, split (6-12 feet apart typically), on or very near the downstage lip, and aimed approximately at the snare drum.
I find that the stage pair adds a lot of "impact" that is lacking in the close-mic board feed, and which is also not present in the room pair.
Since you have a MixPre6, you already have available channels for this, and since you control the stage, you could easily add a pair of stage mics, as long as your snake system is not already full.


My cards and sub-cards are Neumann KM100 series, with the AK40 and AK43 capsules respectively.


I've posted a good number of such recordings on archive. Here's an example where I replaced my iPhone movie sound with the 6-channel mix.
https://archive.org/details/MotherHips2023-12-16-Smoke-1080
(in fact, the room pair for this setup is not at FoH (back of the main floor, house right side) but rather upstairs, about 20-25' forward of the board, and similarly off to one side. I usually gain up one channel of the room pair to get a balance before the mix step.)


as for reliability, I've sent the KM140 set in for tuning once in 25 years, the KM143s are as I bought them off ebay in 2016... (from a church where they appear to have been well kept)

[kuba e]

DPA4090 uses 4060 miniature capsule.  By being mounted in a classic microphone body, it loses the advantage of a miniature body that can be easily placed anywhere but retains the disadvantage of a miniature capsule - a higher self-noise. The self-noise of the dpa4060 is low enough to record PA music. But if you also plan to record where there is an emphasis on low noise other SD are worth considering. If you have the main emphasis on resistance to environmental conditions, I can also confirm that the dpa4060 capsule will last a lot.

[jefflester]

Perhaps I should look into a more "disposable" option?

Of course the mics should last longer, but if considering this direction, the Line Audio Omni seems like a good candidate. I haven't used that one specifically, but am very happy with my CM4 that I record my own bands with.

https://www.nohypeaudio.com/lineaudioproducts.htm

[Gutbucket]

THANK YOU for laying this out so concisely. I never really conceptualized why I wasn't liking the coincident carioids as much as the omnis but this is EXACTLY why. I see a lot of the advice on this forum leans toward cardioid as opposed to omni, with the exception of outdoors, which does make sense in isolation or with a less reliable SBD, but since I am specifically blending the mics with the SBD to add the ambience, audience, etc omnis seem to fit my purpose better.

Because getting really good direct clarity (particularly VOX) using only a single pair of mics from a recording location back in the room is a challenge, most tapers choose to use directional mics to better manage that balance.  It is comparatively easy to record room and audience ambience from out in the room. Tapers often can't rely on SBD access, and even when available its quality can be a crapshoot.  Without SBD access we need to capture sufficient clear direct-arriving stage + PA sound (all the SBD-like stuff) to be able achieve a good balance along with the audience-reaction/room-ambience stuff.  So using more directional mics helps with that.

Omnis are well loved by many tapers outdoors and up close, but when used on their own tend to get overwhelmed with room reverberance and audience sound from recording positions farther back in a room.  However if the pair is only providing those elements in support of good clean, clear SBD recording such as you are doing, using omnis is not so much of a problem, even indoors.  More on that below..

Spacing between the pair of mics (rather than using a coincident arrangement like X/Y or Mid/Side) makes a big difference in the perception of ambient room/audience pickup.  The SBD feed is mostly phase-free and more like a coincident pair, while a spaced pair produces time-of-arrival cues (particularly a spaced omnis) provides an "open spacious" sound.  The big open ambience stretching out toward the outer areas of the playback image is advantageous. A bit more spacing than one would normally use for a stereo pair can be good in that way, as a slight tendency toward "hole in the middle" from a somewhat overly wide spacing can sometimes actually work to advantage in that it sort of makes room for the coincident-stereo like SBD stuff to solidly sit in the middle of the playback image surrounded by the ambient stuff.  That spaced configuration advantage works for a cardioid pair as well as an omni pair.

Some will do like morst, running and mixing several different mic pairs with or without SBD, with the aim of combining the best elements of each in the subsequent mix.  That can work great.  One way of hedging the bet to insure it does is to have each pair contributing something different enough that the combination is positive rather than interfering, much like he describes.

I run an array of a bunch of mics that includes directional mics along with a pair of omnis spaced 5 or 6 feet apart.  When used on-stage or outdoors I use a lot of the omni content in the mix.  Indoors I tend to use less of the omnis, dialing in the mix to taste, but I almost always use a bit of them, even from farther back in the room without SBD access.

As you are probably well aware, an alternate common method of capturing audience/room-ambience for combination with a good SBD recording is spacing directional mics across the stage facing out at the audience. Not as quick and easy for you as just running a spaced pair of mics back at the board, but works pretty much everywhere regardless of how reverberant the room or distant the SBD location. There are a few advantages of that. Because the mics are on the stage, there is no need to manage time-of-arrival sync with mics back at the SBD location grows more distant.  And, the audience reaction is focused on the excited folks up front that are really into the music, rather than caching the more distracted folks talking back by the SBD.

[Gutbucket]

DPA4090 uses 4060 miniature capsule.  By being mounted in a classic microphone body, it loses the advantage of a miniature body that can be easily placed anywhere but retains the disadvantage of a miniature capsule - a higher self-noise. The self-noise of the dpa4060 is low enough to record PA music. But if you also plan to record where there is an emphasis on low noise other SD are worth considering. If you have the main emphasis on resistance to environmental conditions, I can also confirm that the dpa4060 capsule will last a lot.

The self noise will not be a problem for this application.  Even the higher noise-floor of DPA 4061 is quiet enough for this kind of use unless he's doing something like classical string quartets in pin-drop quiet scenarios.

[Gutbucket]

Those LineAudios seem a good inexpensive option.  I still think DPA 4090 is ideal for this though.

As for Gefells, they are highly respected on the taper scene.  I love my MG's but I no longer risk running them outside in the weather.  No qualms running the DPAs outdoors.

[morst]

As you are probably well aware, an alternate common method of capturing audience/room-ambience for combination with a good SBD recording is spacing directional mics across the stage facing out at the audience. Not as quick and easy for you as just running a spaced pair of mics back at the board, but works pretty much everywhere regardless of how reverberant the room or distant the SBD location. There are a few advantages of that. Because the mics are on the stage, there is no need to manage time-of-arrival sync with mics back at the SBD location grows more distant.  And, the audience reaction is focused on the excited folks up front that are really into the music, rather than caching the more distracted folks talking back by the SBD.

LESS need, perhaps, and less delay, but I advise fine synchronization of all pairs best possible, before mixing.