| J.J. Blair wrote on Thu, 11 October 2007 11:59 |
| Quote: |
It should be noted that the TLM49 is devoid of low end by design. It starts a gradual and steady attenuation below 0dB from 1kHz downward. Hardly the type of thing you'd want to substitute for a FET47 in the kick drum application.
|
Klaus Heyne: In light of Martin's response: How about it, J.J.?
|
Well, perhaps that is the natural response of the K47, but neither my M49, U47 or any Fet47 I've ever used has been as devoid of low end as the TLM49 I used was. (BTW, it was the one provided to me by Neumann!)
Martin, I know you were involved in the design, but even the Neumann literature states that this is designed specifically as a vocal mic, hence the reponse.
But more to the point, the reason I brought up the frequency response, was because in my experience, the low end of the Fet47 is far superior to the TLM49. I honestly could not imagine using a TLM49 in front of the kick. Why use a mic with no bass on a "bass drum"? I have never thrown up a Fet47 and wondered where the low end was. Can we see the response graph of a Fet47 and a TLM47 to compare please? I can't believe that my ears are lying to me.
And as far as 40hz deficit on the Fet47 goes, I'm much more concerned with 100-200hz with bass drum than 40hz. 40hz doesn't punch me in the chest. If the U47 or Fet47 were down 4db at 100hz, I really doubt people would have been using them in bass-heavy applications all these years.
Also, I have to ask the question: When Neumann builds a new mic, do they even bother A/B'ing it against their old ones? I mean, if you are using a model number and a body design that invokes the company's great history, as well as marketing it as a return to it, wouldn't you want to listen to this mic against its ancestor side by side? Didn't somebody say, "hey, this capsule may have roll-off, but this mic has much less bottom end than the old one"? Didn't that occur to anybody?
I mean, I hate to sound disrespectful, but I have to wonder if the people building these mics are actually using them. Imagine a luthier who never played his guitars!
But this goes back to my central problem with Neumann these days:
What recording engineers are being consulted when these new mics are made?
I know a lot of the big name engineers, and I know they have had input into various microphones over the last fifteen years, but Neumann is not one of the brands they've ever mentioned.
In Neumann's heyday, they were trying to answer the needs of the engineers at German broadcasting. I have a hard time believing that when the TLM193 was developed, Neumann was answering to anybody other than its own marketing and accounting departments. Why is it that whenever I visit a big session in a studio, I never see a TLM103, 193, or 127? I only know
one big engineer who uses the M149, and he only uses it on piano, and nothing else.
You know, we engineers who actually make a living with these tools ... those of us making records, we're still buying the old stuff and not embracing the new stuff. We say to Neumann, "This new stuff you are making- it's not what we want!
Look at companies like Brauner, Gefell and Bock. They are using discrete components and transformers. We like those sounds."
But, no. We end users are the ones who are wrong, apparently? Those of us saying, "I can't get the sounds that make me as happy as the old mics did," must be crazy?
So, by all means, please tell the Sennheiser folks that they are doing a bang up job selling thousands of mics to neophyte engineers at Guitar Center. Guys who love their new Neumanns for their hobby recordings. I'm glad they are more important than the professional engineers who used Neumanns for 50+ years, those engineers who say, "I don't like these new mics as much as the old ones."
Continue visiting our discussions to tell us that the TLM49 is somehow an improvement over its predecessors!
Author
Topic: 47FET substitute?? (Read 34315 times)