Recording with the Greatest Mics Ever Made? - Universal Audio Sphere Microphone Review 

what is important to YOU when looking for a new mic? Please comment below!

Who is the artist delivering this incredible vocal performance? I'm a bit surprised that she's not identified for credit. Thanks for featuring her, she's superb.

I’ve had the Townsend labs sphere since 2018 and I don’t say this lightly….it’s an absolute game changer in my studio. The mic on its own is incredible, but to be able to change mic emulations while mixing to fit the singer or instruments in the mix is an amazing tool to have at your fingertips. They are pricey yes but worth every penny if you’re looking to take your productions to the next level. Highly recommend and the extra ocean way and Bill Putnam mic plugins are worth adding!

Awesome video. A great song, performed by an outstanding artist and recorded with a great microphone. Can't wait to listen to the multitracks.

I wanted this microphone for years now. Ill get one one day. Its definately top of my list for my next microphone

Very useful to hear mostly the actual sounds plus clear commentary. Thanks.

Another great demo by a great singer/player and Warren. What sets this emulation package apart is the fine-tuning you can do with controls like proximity, room sound, and having the option for stereo recording is nice, too. Thanks.

Far out! What a performance!! Thanks for the share Warren! Love your stuff man!

Incredible performance. Listened 4x in a row.

I'm fairly new to recording and engineering. I chose (2) Townsend L22 Spheres because of their versatility and have been absolutely thrilled with their performance.

I recorded some vocals on this mic at the studio of an engineer friend of mine. Bought one soon thereafter. Don't record many vocals, but I love it.

I'm a huge fan of emulation mic and this one is pretty amazing. Good video as always and pretty good cover. Thanks and happy new year :)

Good sounding mic there. With several permutations to it. Great review, thanks very much.

Hi Warren! Was surprised to not hear a conclusion of your thoughts at the end. What do you think of this modeling mic? I know you’ve worked with a lot of the real /vintage versions of what this is modeling. Will you make another video to conclude your thoughts? Would be much appreciated. Thanks for this in depth comparison video!! 😊

Great mics and great video! I own a pair of Townsends since they came out and I love them. Very versatile mics, very good mic models. Still would love to have an AKG D19c profile 🙂 Warren, maybe you can convince Chris and Erik to do a D19 🤩

WOW Amazing ! I've seen a few mic's already but it really has already it's own awesome character . As an apollo twin-x user for my mobile recording solution it would be a dream combo for nomad artists like me :)

I had the Townsend version and it really is an amazing mic for so many reasons. You can use an emulation for monitoring only to make the singer feel comfortable without recording any color. Speaking of which, the mic clean is a beautiful balanced mic, he isn't kidding. I liked to double the vocals using two very different emulations like a LDC and an SM57 for amazing depth. So versitie.

Thank you for the share everyone!

I just picked up the Slate ML-1 and absolutely love it. It made a huge difference on my vocal recordings. These mic emulators might be the best way to go for a budget studio. The technology is only getting better and better. I'll be picking this one up too eventually. Great video as usual Warren. Cheers.

Great song, performance. Looking forward to tying this mic out. I have the Ml1 by Slate. The preamp is junk but the mic and the mic simulations are very good. I imagine this mic will take it to another whole level.

Just grabbed a Townsend L22 as it looks like they are on sale in many places to make room for the DLX. Basically the same mic with only a shorter cable and the knob is -20 and -10 selectable. I even got a deal where the UA Volt 2 with the actual plugin deal came almost for free in the bundle.

what a voice....lovely stuff

Another fantastic video. Thx!!!

Great video Warren & team. I own 3 of the original Townsend labs branded L22's, and they are without doubt the best mic emulation systems on the planet. So glad they are getting a reissue with UA ownership behind them. I expect they will get much more recognition with the weight and scale of UA's marketing dept behind them. Kudos though to Chris, Erik & later Julian, the origonal team behind it.

What an awesome microphone!

More great content warren and crew :-) Never tried this modelling mic but i do have the Antelope Duo which is a very similar product and love it :-)

Great Video again 👍🏻

A little mistake there on the Beyer ribbon at about 9'30" in. You said it sounded "a little scooped". Of course it did. You left the filter activated at the 2 position. Unfortunately you left that filter on for several of the mics after that. Made for some pretty anemic sounds. Sorry. Do those again? I've owned and used the earlier Townsend version of this mic on multiple different instruments, amps and voices for about 10 months now and i find it an amazing and very useful tool. I a/b compared the models with my Neumann 87 and my vintage AKG 414eb with the brass yoke as well as some other mics from my collection. The simulations are deep and rewarding. Both the 87 and 414eb were nearly identical including off-axis response and proximity. I own and use the Ocean Way mic models from UA and love them and I love the characterful models in the Putnam collection too. Some of my gear-lust dreams have been finally realised. Great and useful demo!

Just got mine absolutely adorable ❤

With such a beautiful voice, all microphones will sound fantastic.

Many of the changes are very subtle because her vocal performance is very controlled and not pushing the microphones to their limits, which would bring out those differences a lot, but the switch from the Coles to the Sony was like turning on a light in a dark room. Both models are gorgeous, but represent her beautiful performance so differently. The cool thing about this microphone is that in the plugin you could blend a C800g with the Coles ribbon and get the best of both worlds. This mic really lets you get creative in ways that perhaps you wouldn't bother with otherwise, but could potentially be a great strength to the overall production.

Transformative technology. The world is changing 😊

This is a great sound comparison video …. Many of these types of videos don’t do the different settings justice

reat demo and seems very very accurate. The C800 and U87 emus are spot on and that 421! They managed to show you just how horrible that mic is on vocals haha. Good stuff, Warren and wonderful performance!

This was a lot of fun. :)

Ive been dabbling in recording for 30 years. Got a pretty good idea on how to record different things the proper way. But the best recordings ive ever made were with an sm57 preamped from a line 6 guitar pod with a little reverb. Acoustic and vocal at same time. Side note I bought the Slate about a year ago and have not even plugged it in yet.

Love mine since I got it as an early adopter. Stunning build.

Just a note on the competition form, the last option with subscribing to UA on RU-vid, there is just a text box, not a link to subscribing.

Amazing voice and brilliant song choice.

I just got a Golden Age FC3 ✨️ going to see what happens 😅 cheers ✌️ Great video

Nice vocal performance

Wow what a great singer! 😮

The best version of emulation that I personally have ever used was the Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56. I could actually tell the difference between the preamps. So much so that I did switch within sessions, depending on what was being recorded. I cannot use the LS56 anymore because it is a firewire interface. I wish they would make another. I wanted to get the Slate Digital VMS a try but I was getting out of music when that started to gain steam. This may be my next purchase. I will scour more reviews and listen with my headphones. UA may have another hit on their hands.

I got myself a Sphere Lx. Then nulled the track with no emulation with emulated one. Truly, I may be wrong, as I am not too technical, but them mics are nothing more than a facy packaged eq curve. Yet I love the mic. Most flat and Faithfull I've ever had

I've watched and listend to this video again and it's a great sounding and looking product, the mic, the visuals and sound. One thing I noticed, is that for instance on the 47 the sphere showed a hyper cardiod pattern while the pattern knob was showing cardioid. Why not program to automaticly change the knob to the default pattern of the mic?

I have this mic since last June. I match it with a stereo preamp, the Neve 5211 (hardware), and the combo is great. You can modeling after tracking and this is the real big deal. Now I almost don't touch the eq anymore.

All the emulations sound like the mic with no emulation but different post processing. What I mean is, they don't sound like different microphones, it sounds like the same microphone processed differently. I have most of the microphones emulated here and although the emulations seem to have similar curves to the emulated microphones, they are also missing a lot. For instance, the emulated Royer 121 is dark and has a figure 8 pattern as does a real one, but it doesn't have the detailed low mids and the punch the 121 has on a vocal. The 251 emulation is bright, but the real 251 soaks up the harsh hi-mids like no ones business and as a weighty low end. The biggest thing I've noticed about the two popular emulation microphone systems is that the sibilance sounds pretty consistent throughout emulations. This may be due to characteristics of the capsule they cannot yet figure out how to undo. The sibilance on the Slate mic really bothers me. The Sphere is a little better. With the progression of AI, plugins in the near future will "rebuild" the vocal rather than modify it. They will rebuild the vocal the same or as it was recorded with a different mic and hardware, different room, different performance or even a different singer. They'll be able to change the words too.

Nice Video & nice voice!! Do you thing that is better option this mic than the Neumann TL103 + shure SM81 LC? I can’t decide which is better for my home studio for vocals and AC Guitars. Can you tell me your opinion? Thanks a lot!

What a singer 😍

Never thought I would hear a Wilco cover on this channel (by way of Woody Guthrie's lyrics), so this was such a cool surprise. Modeling mics are going to continue being very formidable, especially for home studios. It also makes for an easier way to compare the sonic characteristics of various mics. The base mic without the emulation sounds fantastic as well!

Hi Warren, fantastic video as always. I am thinking of buying the DLX mic, I love to hear your personal opinion on my story so I can make the best decision. I am an professional opera singer and do my recordings at home. I have a apollo x4 and most of the UAD pre amp emulations and other good plug ins for vocals and mixing. I bought the Charteroak SA538 I think 20 years ago, it is that old, however, I didn't use it on a daily basis. The challenges I run into using this mic is that my voice sounds diminished, like it is locked up in a box and the power of the voice and also the clarity is not there - it sound completely different from what my real voice is. That means if I want to bring power in and clarity I have to do tons of processing to get the sound a little better, it is kinda frustrating for a 1700 euro mic. I made a vocal booth using professional materials hoping the sound would improve by getting rid of my living room over-acoustic frequencies. No difference on the power of the voice. There the vocal booth is closed with the professional blankets I get even more muddy sound. I recorded close by 3 inches, and 6 inches, 12 inches to see if it is because the mic cannot handle the operatic sound - the farther I stand away the thinner the sound becomes....I have no idea if it is the type mic I bought, or, that 20 years made it warn out although it always diminished my vocals. The DLX, do you think in your opinion and experience with the mic that it would be the solution for me and finally get my voice recorded as it is, or, do you think that the mic without any processing and even without the UAD different mic options, that it would capture my voice a lot better than what I described about the charteroak studio microphone! Mostly opera singers are recorded with 2 mics to get that wider kinda stereo field sound as you hear on classical albums, or Pavarotti's recordings. The DLX plug in does have a stereo option to record with and I wonder if that would mimic the way opera singers are recorded. What do you think? You can hear the vocals sound FREE and not boxed in and weak - I think you know what I mean...I think they probably not do a whole lot of wild processing on opera voices beside maybe some compression and reverb if it is not recorded in a hall - Hope you can shine some light into my recording world 🙂and looking forward for a positive reply hopefully that the DLX will make a big difference for my recordings...Thanks in advance...

Unless you've already done it, a comparison between this and VMS might be great. Cheers!

Can you do a part two, using the 180 plugin to do stereo, and also, you know you can mix two mics in the plugin right?

What a voice!!! ...those ribbons are kinda wild on her voice, super vibey. However, the Neumann emulations sound super pricey.

She’s awesome 💙

Very Nice Thank you 👌😁

if ever there were a time id really love to win a comp ... now would be that time! Jah bring me luck

SUPERB song choice. Tweedy

a combo amazing

LOVE VIDS LIKE THIS!

this is worth buying for a starter :)

Awesome video, thanks! Two questions, if i have an external mono preamp can i connect the front Mic cable to the external preamp and the rear one to the sound card or do I have to have an external 2 channel preamp and connect both cables there? I saw that dlx also has the mic shield simulation(es. Aston halo), is it also present in the lx? Thanks!

Hello Warren! I have a question, can we mix master song in Cubase and get quality like ProTools?

Can you do a similar review on the LX version which I believe has 2 mono capsules?

If I was starting out, this would be the first major mic that I would buy. First of all it's a really nice mic that you will never outgrow, with it's own sound that someone will probably emulate twenty years from now. : ) If you are going to spend KRAZZZY bucks on a holy grail microphone, Sphere will let you narrow down what you really want as compared to what you think you want. But most importantly for me, swapping emulations during mixdown underscores what I already knew. You can make a great recording with any decent/appropriate mic because people listen to music not microphones. A few DB of EQ used on most vocal tracks, makes more difference than the difference between a U47 and a C12. That said, I still want a damn C-12 because I can't help myself.

Absolutely love that cover (and recording & mic)! I am totally sold :)

I think the Darker tones mix better with the guitar, I really love the sound of the Sony C-800 but for the way the guitar sounds in this tone it doesn't work. Really nice. How does it compare to the Slate mic.

I would like to hear UAD Sphere put it against Slate Digital mic in comparison , see what we could get from that. These two companies does the emulation mics doesn't it?

Been listening to some shootouts made by other people and was surprised by how far off the Sphere is from some of the mics it is supposedly modeling. Another video compares the DLX to LX and shows how much internal mesh basket resonance/ambiance the DLX has. That's not something their plugin can remove. I guess that's why it costs 1/10th of many of the mics it purports to model.

The best video

This Voice!!!

The mic itself with no emulation sounds great, maybe better than any other modeling on it.

Who is this amazing artist??

It looks and sounds pretty amazing, but aren't they simply adjusting the EQ curves for each model and wrapping it all up in a pretty package?

Warren I've noticed that some of my favorite recordings were made in the '50's and '60's (especially jazz) using only one mike. Could you do a video showing how this was done and what mikes were being used? I'm thinking especially of Teo Macero's recordings of Miles Davis and Lambert, Hendrick & Ross. Thanks!

Great voice! Forget the mics. Thanks Warren for letting us hear this great singer @McKailSeely1

❤❤ I just received the Sphere bc I bought the Apollo x6. Can anyone see/tell, is that a Martin?

And which one would you prefer the Slate MS1 or the UAD Sphere condenser Mic ?

I am Just wondering how you handle the recording process. Because the track is in stereo some things do not work. For vocals especially. If i have a lot of vocal tracks I have to put the plug in on every seperate track and group processing does not work. How do you go about this? I love the sound of the mic itself though but the processing confuses me 🙈

So you have a pair of RCA 77 and don't know they have pattern selector, even if the patterns are highlighted in the plugin showing what is available in the original? Yikes, anyway, the compressor or EQ settings you have in the mixed example at the beginning are extremely sibilant, what's up with that?

What the function of this microphone "LD-414 Brass"? For Kick Drum? For the voice? or...etc? Thank You ~ Cheers Rudi from Indonesia👌🇮🇩🙏

Which is better the lv or dxl? I’m torn

Noice!!

Would this mic do a dynamic close range recording just like an SM57? After all, it's still a very sensitive mic. Right? So how would you use it as a dynamic for low leakage applications?

First and foremost; Great channel Warren. But to answer your question: A mic has to be relatively cheap (no argument with my wife 😉), sturdy but not weighing a ton, no hyped highs (why I liked the "mistake" mics on the song the most!! 😁), comes with a shockmount, switches firmly clicking into position (if any are present on the mic). And lastly, only if posible! A model like some classic round tube shaped mic or a funky retro looking and coloured one. So my personal "compromises" mic's are the Rode NT 1 and the Blue Baby Bottle SL.

New tools are great, but nice pleasant vocals or a mild acoustic guitar just doesn’t push the mic. Try some rock vocals and see if the results are worthy.

I'd like to see a component comparison with their new mic (the LX). Other than the form factor, the disabling of stereo, and fewer included models, what's the difference? The L22 and DLX are the same mic (except for a change on the pad; the L22 can do 10 or 20; the DLX only 20). It seems to me that UA has **intentionally crippled** stereo (180 coincident) recording in the LX even though it has dual capsules as well, in order to push people to buy the DLX. Kinda hate that kind of marketing gimmick, tbh. Basically rebranding and offering a crippled mic at a lower price point. Feh. They had the L22 at $1200 a few weeks ago. Not going to pay $1500 for the same mic. And not going to buy a crippled mic.

speaking of mics that can do it all, can you record a band using only sm57s?

So get this sphere dlx ur a one year old U87ai for about the same price?

What's a bit strange about the reviews of microphone emulation software (as with Acustica Audio's Lava) is that they never compare the sound obtained with the real thing. If you change the sound of the Sphere to that of a Neumann U47, you should compare it to the sound of a real Neumann U47 to check to what extent it lives up to its promises. What I see now are mainly reviews that show that microphone emulation (with or without a special designed microphone) can improve the sound (which is of course very positive in itself, but enhancing the sound can also be done with other processing), but unfortunately few people investigate if the sound of a virtual destination microphone corresponds with its real counterpart. So when you record with Sphere emulating a AKG451, you shoul be simulatanious recording with a real AKG451 besides it, and then compare both tracks.

I have three L22s. I don’t care who criticize them lol. These with Apollo and Ocean and Putnam and Townsend give me less guess works, so I’m happy and don’t care about anything else.

I'm more interested in the pop shield there, anyone know what it is? As for the mic, I type this with youtube playing back in the background and I can't hear much difference. More choices, more distraction, more fluff, more bollocks. Give me a couple of decent mics that I know, plug in and go, job done!

nice voice!

Hi Warren, I noticed that in the multitrack te voice is panned to the left but it isn't on your mix, I'm just starting to mix so I don't know what to do 😵‍💫

Today i've learned: If you take the completely wrong Mics, the Performance is still awesome! Nice, i'm surprised that is not that expensive.

Maybe I missed it, but it the software available as native, too?

No link to vocalist website or anything? Who is she?

Are there uncompressed files to download? Kman

Forgot I was watching a video about a microphone

Don't know much about microphones... Yet my Behringer 8500 with vocoder and twidling the knobs wasn't great. Now my SE V7 (Billy Gibbons edition) is more forgiving (picking up more ambient).