Microphones RTA Microphones

[Brenden Friedel]

So, I'm looking at getting an RTA mic. Have the interface already but I don't know which one to go with. RIght now it is the Behringer ECM8000, Dayton EMM-6, and the DBX RTA Microphone. What do I chose? (It will be used with smaart)

 

[Laurence Nefzger]

So, I'm looking at getting an RTA mic. Have the interface already but I don't know which one to go with. RIght now it is the Behringer ECM8000, Dayton EMM-6, and the DBX RTA Microphone. What do I chose? (It will be used with smaart)

The Dayton EMM-6 is the only model you have mentioned that has individual calibration curve for each and every mic they produce. You can enter this calibration data into SMAART for greater measurement accuracy.
At around $50 you can afford to buy several in order to have back up or to use in multi mic measurement scenarios. I purchased my first after one of my very expensive Earthworks TC40 crashed to floor and was damaged beyond repair during a measurememt session. I now only take the Dayton mics on location. It is more than refined enough for acoustic measurements!

 

[themuzicman]

The biggest thing to know about inexpensive Reference Microphones is that the more money you pay, the better HF Stability you're going to get AND the more alike they are going to be mic-to-mic. In the price range you're looking at, the EMM-6 is really the best option because of the curve correction. I bet if you took all 3 apart you'd find the same Panasonic electret capsule and mostly the same case designs, but Dayton has gone to the effort to measure each microphone and that's worth the cost.

For timing and quick tuning, they'll get the job done, I'd prefer something that I know needs less correction if I was to expand the kit down the line but if you go in now on like 3 of them and treat them like starter mics to learn and get your feet wet then when you're ready to upgrade and expand your kit it'll be money well spent on valuable tools.

I own Audix TM1+, and when I rent it's generally DPA 4006's or 4090's -- for my personal kit I wanted something that holds up just a little better than the Behringer stuff, and for rentals it's important that I know that mic-to-mic things are probably going to be alright because I probably won't have the calibration files and the most calibration I'll get is an SPL Calibrator.

As for damaging a TC40...I've dropped plenty of M30's in my life and never destroyed them -- that must have been some fall!

 

[Bubby4j]

If you want something that's still low cost, but better calibrated, Cross Spectrum Labs offers the EMM-6 with a far better calibration. I'm not affiliated with them, but I have bought one.

http://www.cross-spectrum.com/measurement/calibrated_dayton.html

 

[Brenden Friedel]

The biggest thing to know about inexpensive Reference Microphones is that the more money you pay, the better HF Stability you're going to get AND the more alike they are going to be mic-to-mic. In the price range you're looking at, the EMM-6 is really the best option because of the curve correction. I bet if you took all 3 apart you'd find the same Panasonic electret capsule and mostly the same case designs, but Dayton has gone to the effort to measure each microphone and that's worth the cost.

For timing and quick tuning, they'll get the job done, I'd prefer something that I know needs less correction if I was to expand the kit down the line but if you go in now on like 3 of them and treat them like starter mics to learn and get your feet wet then when you're ready to upgrade and expand your kit it'll be money well spent on valuable tools.

I own Audix TM1+, and when I rent it's generally DPA 4006's or 4090's -- for my personal kit I wanted something that holds up just a little better than the Behringer stuff, and for rentals it's important that I know that mic-to-mic things are probably going to be alright because I probably won't have the calibration files and the most calibration I'll get is an SPL Calibrator.

As for damaging a TC40...I've dropped plenty of M30's in my life and never destroyed them -- that must have been some fall!

If I had the budget I’d totally rock an earthworks M30. But I don’t have a $600 budget for one mic

 

[MNicolai]

The nice thing about the M30's is that they are razor flat without a calibration curve.

If you get a calibration curve file with whatever mic you buy and get that set up with SMAART, you should be able to get in the ballpark enough without breaking the bank. As others have said, HF stability is a little lower on the cheaper mic's. That said -- anywhere in SMAART, but especially in the HF, you can only get so far before you need to turn off your eyes and use your ears.

If you rely on your eyes too much and what SMAART is telling you, it's really easy to make pretty pictures and then play some music and find out the system sounds like trash. Resist the urge to make pretty pictures.

 

[themuzicman]

If I had the budget I’d totally rock an earthworks M30. But I don’t have a $600 budget for one mic

I don't prefer M30's which is why I don't own any, and are not the top of my preferred rental list.

The nice thing about the M30's is that they are razor flat without a calibration curve.

The bad thing about M30's is that Earthworks has changed the internal workings of them several times and you don't know what you have until you plug it into a calibrator and go to town. That's why at that price point, DPA 4090's or DPA 4006's are my go-to. DPA 4006's and the even earlier B&K mics of the same make are built with the same internals and are massively consistent between ones made 20 years ago and ones made last week, the same cannot be said of the M30. They are excellent if you buy a bunch and know they are in the same date of manufacture ballpark, but for that reason I keep them off of my rental lists -- I never know when the rental shop has bought brand new ones to replace lost/broken stock they originally acquired in the late 90's.

If you get a calibration curve file with whatever mic you buy and get that set up with SMAART, you should be able to get in the ballpark enough without breaking the bank. As others have said, HF stability is a little lower on the cheaper mic's. That said -- anywhere in SMAART, but especially in the HF, you can only get so far before you need to turn off your eyes and use your ears.

If you rely on your eyes too much and what SMAART is telling you, it's really easy to make pretty pictures and then play some music and find out the system sounds like trash. Resist the urge to make pretty pictures.

If you're feeling fancy, you can also buy a dozen cheap mics, find the most consistent 4, return the rest, and build calibration curves yourself. It takes a bit of work, but it's good practice. As for saying that you need to especially trust your ears with HF response - I agree with you here on simple venues, at a point you need to look up and critically listen, but if I'm tuning a 3rd delay line and its interaction with the rest of the PA I am much more likely to trust what the computer has to say than what I am hearing. I use my ears for verification, but the fine mechanics of that are done via computer for me -- and by that point, you can be pretty guaranteed there are no pretty pictures...

Throw 10 intelligent people in a room, and they will have 10 different ways to tune a sound system and mostly end up in the same ballpark assuming they understand the mechanics of what they are doing, but we each have our own ways of working

 

[Brenden Friedel]

The nice thing about the M30's is that they are razor flat without a calibration curve.

If you get a calibration curve file with whatever mic you buy and get that set up with SMAART, you should be able to get in the ballpark enough without breaking the bank. As others have said, HF stability is a little lower on the cheaper mic's. That said -- anywhere in SMAART, but especially in the HF, you can only get so far before you need to turn off your eyes and use your ears.

If you rely on your eyes too much and what SMAART is telling you, it's really easy to make pretty pictures and then play some music and find out the system sounds like trash. Resist the urge to make pretty pictures.

Mostly looking for an RTA microphone for quick feedback elimination and ringing out the system. Not as a mixing tool

 

[TimMc]

Mostly looking for an RTA microphone for quick feedback elimination and ringing out the system. Not as a mixing tool

For that you don't need a calibrated mic....

 

[MNicolai]

Yeah, you don't really need a calibrated high-end measurement mic for an RTA. If that's all you're using it for then just pick up whatever because you're only looking for a rough order of magnitude response to pick out those problematic frequencies. Hell, more digital mixers these days have built in RTA's that'll show you what's ringing on a channel by channel basis.

Where you really want a little better mic is when you're doing transfer functions, and transfer functions are where Smaart really shines in getting your system tuned. You typically want to only use the RTA function when you're in sound check or in the middle of a show. There are ways in which you can meaningfully use RTA's to tune a system, but you really have to know the limitations of what you're measuring.

 

[Laurence Nefzger]

Mostly looking for an RTA microphone for quick feedback elimination and ringing out the system. Not as a mixing tool

You might be surprised how well the internal mic on a laptop, phone or IPad will work for simple system analysis or feedback search. I found those mics to be remarkably flat through the critical bands (100-10,000Hz) in that application. An IPad with a good RTA app is a very effective tool for feedback or quick and dirty system analysis.

 

[Brenden Friedel]

Yeah, you don't really need a calibrated high-end measurement mic for an RTA. If that's all you're using it for then just pick up whatever because you're only looking for a rough order of magnitude response to pick out those problematic frequencies. Hell, more digital mixers these days have built in RTA's that'll show you what's ringing on a channel by channel basis.

Where you really want a little better mic is when you're doing transfer functions, and transfer functions are where Smaart really shines in getting your system tuned. You typically want to only use the RTA function when you're in sound check or in the middle of a show. There are ways in which you can meaningfully use RTA's to tune a system, but you really have to know the limitations of what you're measuring.

That was another thing I forgot to mention. We have a ton of cheep off brand headset microphones that I’m never able to find that perfect frequency to get it to sound good. I used an m30 a while back that I got from Disney and I was able to get them sounding amazing. But I didn’t use my ears

 

[TimMc]

That was another thing I forgot to mention. We have a ton of cheep off brand headset microphones that I’m never able to find that perfect frequency to get it to sound good. I used an m30 a while back that I got from Disney and I was able to get them sounding amazing. But I didn’t use my ears

Those were "Mouse Ears", Brenden!

The Behringer measurement mic is adequate for what you're doing. When I took my most recent SMAART class we compared student's microphones to the instructor's calibrated ACO Pacific mic and found that almost every inexpensive mic, Behringer, Audix, dbx, etc performed well enough from 40Hz to 10kHz-ish that the much more expensive mics were overkill for simple alignments, RTA-type uses, and general usage.

I am NOT a fan of using microphones internal to phones and tables for anything except RTA functions.