Voice Over Mic Shootout – Rode NT1 vs. Shure KSM 44
In the audio world, there are a lot of places where you can lose money. You can underbid contracts, run out of time thereby inducing costly make-up procedures or just have instruments/computer equipment/random electronics break on you when you least expect it. However, the best place that you have control over your money is when you originally invest it in the gear you use everyday. There are a few areas here that have been written about endlessly. One of those is cables. Another, is microphones.
When I first started to aim at going “pro”, I read up on microphones and decided that my little SM58 probably would not cut it for everything and so I went shopping for a bargain condenser mic that could be used for many different applications.
It wasn’t long before I was shocked at how large of a price range there is in the condensor microphone business. At the low-end, you can get buy for somewhere around $75, or cheaper used and at the high, end, well, $3,000 and up!
As I was just getting started I wanted to find something clean that had a nice deep sound to it that worked well on a variety of material, including spoken voice. I opted for the RODE NT1 condenser. It is very basic, but performs well! I was happy with my purchase. However, when a recent VO gig came up, I decided to investigate again, to see what a higher costing mic might afford me.
Fortunately for me, the local public radio station, KMST, and the friendly folks there including John Francis and Chuck Knapp, had purchased a pair of KSM 44′s for field recording and agreed to loan me one, along with a small tree stand, for the purposes of this shootout.
What I then did was mount the mics right next to each other, and spoke some rather uninspired dialog inbetween them. I recorded them both into the basic preamps of my MOTU 828MkII audio interface, and recorded them at 24-bit/44.1Khz. All of this was recorded in my isobooth. The picture you in this post illustrates the setup used.
Now, there are a few disclaimers I need to make during this test. This was not performed with world-class, ultra-precision hardware and tuned within .05 dB gain or anything ridiculous such as this. For this test, I was more interested in the bottom line: when doing voice overs, that are often compressed down to 128 kbps MP3 (or worse!), will there be a noticeable difference in the quality of the VO when using the KSM 44. There are many, many more tests that COULD have been done for instruments, field work, sound design, etc. But they were not. The critic reviews have shown that the KSM 44 is a fantastic microphone offering not only huge value, but superior performance. Street price on a KSM 44 is currently around $800 with the Rode NT1 being about $200.
Additionally, my buddy Dave Cebrowski of DCWave, a studio outside Salt Lake City, assures me that the difference between the mics will be even MORE evident with more tracks layered upon each other due to various elements that are being somewhat “masked” by the fact that there is only a single sound source.
This quick, obviously improvised recording was fed directly into the outboard audio interface and was not digitally altered in anyway except to boost the gain a bit up to the appropriate level. No attempt to reduce background noise, sibilance, add compression, EQ or any other “normal” processing was performed. I was interested in how the “raw” sound came through.
Now, without further ado, I present the findings! There are three files here, so you can better judge for yourself. Not again this is the same vocal “performance” recorded simultaneously by both mics for the most fair comparison.
Both mics - KSM 44 panned hard left, Rode NT1 panned hard right (headphones required!)
Hope you found this interesting! For my money, I decided not to purchase the KSM44 for VO at this time but am still interested in using it as my studio needs expand.
Have you had a different experience with either of these mics? If you have comments, feel free to write!