BTW, I don't know if I'm included in that list of two owners touting the m1290s, but I do. I really haven't heard enough of the 391s to comment on them. But I currently own the m1290 cards and the AKG480s. The mics sound very similar, but the m1290s don't have quite the heft in the low end as the 480s. Not bad by any means and for instance they did a good job reproducing the loud in your face stockholm syndrome show I taped with them. The low end of the m1290s is very balanced and tight, but you can notice in a side by side comparison of the 480s the difference of going down to 40hz vs going down to 20hz. The mids and highs are very similar to the 480s: same sweet liquid highs, same musical if perhaps subdued mids (and perhaps subdued isn't the word for it--the don't have any grating bite in the mids, but at the same time, they are not in your face either, though it may just be that they are pretty flat in comparison to the hyped small diameter neumanns that I ran for so long).