I recently received, courtesy of Bennett and the good people of Telefunken, a package of 3 M80 dynamic handheld microphones. I'll do a quick review of my findings compared to my staple vox mic, the venerable SM58.
I received these the day before a mid-sized community festival that I was covering for another forum member. I'll omit his name for privacy, but he had also had some experience with the M80's. His comments were that it was a pretty nice vocal mic, stable in the wedges, but didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason as to which voices it did or didn't work well on.
I took them literally fresh out of the package at the festival site, and threw one up on stage for the center vocal, with SM58's flanking it for backing vocals. The music at this event was sort of background noise, so I was able to take some liberties as to the mic choice. I was using one of my smaller proprietary systems which I am very familiar with the sound quality of.
I began by ringing out the wedges. The mic was plenty stable and seemed to be a little more forgiving than a 58 in regards to placement for maximum feedback rejection. I ended up cutting about the same amount out of the EQ as I did with the 58's, albeit at different frequencies. Otherwise I would say it was about the same as a 58 in regards to GBF. It sounded pretty natural with my voice in the wedges.
The first band to use it as a vocal mic, I immediately had to jump on the EQ for. It was a male reggae singer and I ended up having to cut quite a bit in the 400hz range out of the mic. His voice sounded kind of "boxy" through it. The second act was a singer-songwriter with a very soft raspy voice. I was able to give him plenty in the monitors, and the M80 seemed to have a nice clear sounding high end on his voice.
I also gave the M80 a whirl one night on kick drum at a gospel festival just to abuse it a bit and test it's versatility. It seemed to work reasonably well, not a lot of low end response, but with some EQ it was workable. It sounded pretty flat on kick, not a lot of hyped 3-4K like many kick mics can have, which worked well for the kick sound I was trying to achieve.
The actual construction of the mic is a place I received a few comments. It has a shiny chrome grill which one of my techs commented as being a bit over the top, he thought it actually made it look kind of cheap. I think a matte finish grill would be a nice option. Another tech noticed the rubber-like finish the mic has on it and wondered how well that would hold up with time. I noticed that you have to push fairly hard to get a neutrik XLR connector to click and lock in. If you have a Roger Daltrey on your hands, double check that connection before some audience member leaves in an ambulance, lol.
I went ahead and sent the mics on to Cole Lofink who offered to give them a whirl. I thought they were good mics, but didn't fit my company's needs appropriately. I think if I were a BE who worked with one voice consistently I could grow to like this mic, but I felt like for the price, it was not versatile enough to buy a large stock of for festival work.
My gut instinct tells me the reason I don't like this mic is because it doesn't seem to posses any characteristics that make it specifically good for one application. I think we tend to favor a mic because it brings out a particular characteristic of a source that really defines what it should sound like. A Sennheiser might bring out a pronounced smooth midrange that gets vocals through a rock mix, a Neumann might capture the nuances of a folk singer. I just didn't hear anything that made the M80 unique to my ears.
On a sidenote though, I believe I saw one in use for a guest vocal on Jimmy Fallon the other night.
Pros-
Good defined high end
Stable in wedges
seems fairly rugged
good build quality / machining / finish
Cons-
Inconsistent between different vocalists
Priced higher than most comparable mics
I received these the day before a mid-sized community festival that I was covering for another forum member. I'll omit his name for privacy, but he had also had some experience with the M80's. His comments were that it was a pretty nice vocal mic, stable in the wedges, but didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason as to which voices it did or didn't work well on.
I took them literally fresh out of the package at the festival site, and threw one up on stage for the center vocal, with SM58's flanking it for backing vocals. The music at this event was sort of background noise, so I was able to take some liberties as to the mic choice. I was using one of my smaller proprietary systems which I am very familiar with the sound quality of.
I began by ringing out the wedges. The mic was plenty stable and seemed to be a little more forgiving than a 58 in regards to placement for maximum feedback rejection. I ended up cutting about the same amount out of the EQ as I did with the 58's, albeit at different frequencies. Otherwise I would say it was about the same as a 58 in regards to GBF. It sounded pretty natural with my voice in the wedges.
The first band to use it as a vocal mic, I immediately had to jump on the EQ for. It was a male reggae singer and I ended up having to cut quite a bit in the 400hz range out of the mic. His voice sounded kind of "boxy" through it. The second act was a singer-songwriter with a very soft raspy voice. I was able to give him plenty in the monitors, and the M80 seemed to have a nice clear sounding high end on his voice.
I also gave the M80 a whirl one night on kick drum at a gospel festival just to abuse it a bit and test it's versatility. It seemed to work reasonably well, not a lot of low end response, but with some EQ it was workable. It sounded pretty flat on kick, not a lot of hyped 3-4K like many kick mics can have, which worked well for the kick sound I was trying to achieve.
The actual construction of the mic is a place I received a few comments. It has a shiny chrome grill which one of my techs commented as being a bit over the top, he thought it actually made it look kind of cheap. I think a matte finish grill would be a nice option. Another tech noticed the rubber-like finish the mic has on it and wondered how well that would hold up with time. I noticed that you have to push fairly hard to get a neutrik XLR connector to click and lock in. If you have a Roger Daltrey on your hands, double check that connection before some audience member leaves in an ambulance, lol.
I went ahead and sent the mics on to Cole Lofink who offered to give them a whirl. I thought they were good mics, but didn't fit my company's needs appropriately. I think if I were a BE who worked with one voice consistently I could grow to like this mic, but I felt like for the price, it was not versatile enough to buy a large stock of for festival work.
My gut instinct tells me the reason I don't like this mic is because it doesn't seem to posses any characteristics that make it specifically good for one application. I think we tend to favor a mic because it brings out a particular characteristic of a source that really defines what it should sound like. A Sennheiser might bring out a pronounced smooth midrange that gets vocals through a rock mix, a Neumann might capture the nuances of a folk singer. I just didn't hear anything that made the M80 unique to my ears.
On a sidenote though, I believe I saw one in use for a guest vocal on Jimmy Fallon the other night.
Pros-
Good defined high end
Stable in wedges
seems fairly rugged
good build quality / machining / finish
Cons-
Inconsistent between different vocalists
Priced higher than most comparable mics
