Audio Test Kitchen - Compare 300 Mics!

[cclarry]

FREE - check it out here

https://app.audiotestkitchen.com/5d9cc2ef0a511d6a6fc38ec0

 

[Bapu]

Interesting.

[rsinger]

Nice, thanks for posting.

[Monomox]

pretty cool

[Pragi]

Nice tool to play around and to get an idea of the mics,

Only 2 Sennheiser and AKG mics ?

Thank you for posting this.

 

[Piotr]

It is great site.

I would love something similar for plugins comparison   Let's imagine Pultec's different variations comparison etc...

Anyway what those guys have done required insane amount of time and effort...

I hope they will be doing great their business just by ads. It landed into my bookmarks instantly.

 

[Carlos]

Great share King! I compared the mikes I have within this "app". Vs a Blue Kiwi... and guess what... Kiwi was the winner (which I don't have, lol).
But I found that since they show  you the Freq. Response tables, the Rode NT1-A is very close to the Kiwi, and at least as an experiment we can EQ a little bit
to emulate the Kiwi (I really think they are very close). 

Also I found out that depending on the line and articulations and what not, I preferred one mike vs another. "Hard" to pick one for a whole performance.

When you hear a stacked song (meaning you hear the whole song with the same mike) you REALLY hear an abysmal difference.

But that's not a fair comparison, since we know we shouldn't use the same mike on every source.

Also I preferred a $100 mike over a 300 and even 400 one...

Cheers.

[mettelus]

Nice video. His comment about "being able to work with any of these" (because he can EQ them any way he wants to) is entirely accurate. As long as the SNR is good, there is no reason to get fixated on the stock EQ curve of any mic (or pickup for that matter), unless post-processing capabilities are limited (in the DAW world, this is never true). Polar patterns, signal strength, and the like are things that post-processing cannot always make up for, but the EQ curve isn't anything to get worked up over.

[Piotr]

7 hours ago, mettelus said:

Nice video. His comment about "being able to work with any of these" (because he can EQ them any way he wants to) is entirely accurate. As long as the SNR is good, there is no reason to get fixated on the stock EQ curve of any mic (or pickup for that matter), unless post-processing capabilities are limited (in the DAW world, this is never true). Polar patterns, signal strength, and the like are things that post-processing cannot always make up for, but the EQ curve isn't anything to get worked up over.

Yep, but the question is if really just flat  1-dimentional EQ curve is everything about mic...

Is it really possible precisely simulate any mic performance  just by adjusting flat EQ curve?

Even mic simulations like Slate are doing much more.  I mean for real mic EQ curve is not the same for instance for different signal level or transducer inertia. 

Good mix engineer using his skills can always make decent sounding vocal from almost any mic, of course.

But result depends on source. Even with the same source results can be different with different circumstances. So is really true assumption great mix engineer can do his job equally good with any mic for any source?

This site is giving great opportunity to check  how  different mics compare for those examples. But the thing is for different sources results could differ. So having different for instance vocal to cover it would be hard to predict if our choice made just based on those examples is really good.

I think enthusiasm with conclusions after comparing mics after basing  on limited amount of examples can be a little overestimated.

However keeping head calm it is amazing and very useful site. And with more and more sound examples will become even more useful

But amount of work needed to do this whole thing especially including their plans is just titanic. It is full time job for whole legion of people... I really admire those guys and crossing fingers for this project...

And what is not always true for many great ideas here we have  great GUI and workflow 

 

[mettelus]

4 hours ago, Piotr said:

Is it really possible precisely simulate any mic performance  just by adjusting flat EQ curve?

Nope. There is definitely a lot more in the fray than just the EQ curve... sensitivity, polar pattern, saturation characteristics, etc. The EQ portion specifically is not as crucial as advertising suggests (even that page seemed to focus on that parameter). I was more surprised by the level of detail in the taps into retailers' sites.

Based on the video, I am more inclined to think that they "characterized" mics, then ran the same signal through each "simulation," but I didn't readily see the specifics of what they did. It almost comes across as if they applied the EQ curve to a given signal, then normalized it, so the only difference you are seeing is the EQ curve. I am more curious as to the conditions of their testing TBH, since using a laser to detect sonic parameters requires a different setup than I could tell from that video. I actually presented the distortion on the face of an acoustic guitar years ago (holography - diffused/split 3B laser, optics table, whole nine yards), and those promotional pics look like a laser level from Home Depot, which isn't even close. I just saw a line level across a speaker and was wondering, "And the laser is doing 'what' exactly?" But even without that, the conditions of the test are in question.

If (BIG if) this is merely applying the EQ curve of a mic to a stock signal (which you can then EQ back out), the usefulness of the site is a lot more limited than it appears.

[Piotr]

Little more insides here: