Sennheiser e945 vs sE V7 MK 

Thanks for watching and all the best to you.

My pleasure. please let us know your thoughts in due course.

@@AntonBrowne I'll be sure to report back

@@AntonBrowne Alright, at band rehearsal last night we all agreed the e945 was the winner. We have 3 vocalists, 3 guitars, bass, keys, and drums and we play loud hard rock with a big, dense mix, and the brightness of that 945 cut through the best. The v7 was a close 2nd -- surprisingly warm and robust, but not as present and "in your face" as the 945, and the m80, while sporting phenomenal clarity in pure tones, was just waaaaay too splatty with plosives and breath sounds. The rejection of each mic is excellent though -- I stand 6 feet from a huge drum kit and the bleed was reeeally minimal. It was a fun shootout! I envy your work getting to check out all these great instruments.

This is valuable info. Since you've mixed the 87A for so many years, how would you feel if the singer showed up with a capsule for a sE V7 or Neumann KS105 (KK105U) or Earthworks SR3117? Would the singer benefit from the nuances they obviously like about that mic out of the box or because it has to sit well in the entire live mix are they better off if they just use the mic you know and have mixed time and time again? Assume the singer is NOT a cupper and actually has good mic technique (pulls off as they get louder and uses proximity only for specific effects when desired)?

@@2010Crazycanuck as a professional, I just adapt to whatever they are using if they are bringing their own microphone. I have one singer that I do make an exception for and say “I’m going to use this mike on you tonight, if you don’t mind.” Fortunately, they trust me. “Good mic technique” is a complicated thing. You mention pulling off as they get louder. It’s a real “it depends” thing and this is something that can absolutely drive a sound person crazy. As you change mic-lip distance and position, the tone changes, the volume changes, the presence changes. If it’s more rock or pop style music this will result in the voice disappearing in the mix. In the layer cake of sounds (foundational drums and bass, then guitars, keys/synths, and then vocals), we create a “carve out” for the vocal. The vocal does not sit on top of the instruments, it sits in with the instruments and we carefully create a hole in the instrument mix for the voice to fit. When a singer “works the microphone” this shifts the vocal enough that it changes the entire mix. To get around this, we have to put the vocal on top of the mix, which creates another set of issues. I’ve got compressors on the vocal microphones - usually two, one on the microphone channel itself which also affects the monitor mix, and another on a vocal mix bus for the FOH mix that the singer doesn’t hear. That vocal bus is then used as a source for side-chain compressors on the instrument bus to create the carve out. This is why consistency is so important. I would rather that the singer use better vocal technique to create the impression of Triple Forte than actually belting to the 27th row with the microphone at arms length. THAT is what singers did back in the 1960s, not the 2020s. I tell singers to let ME take care of the volume. If it’s an outdoor concert, that microphone technique of pulling back AT ALL will result in the vocal literally disappearing from the mix entirely-which is the exact opposite of what their intention was. This specific test using the e945 illustrates it perfectly. Notice how dramatically different the e945 sounds when he held the microphone farther away. This is the variability that the audience hears, but the singer doesn’t.

@@image66media This is brlliant, thanks! As a professional traveling singer (and amateur mixer) I really want to know what the sound person needs from me so we can work together to produce the best result for the audience. What if the singer wants to get significantly louder? Perhaps emotionally that's where they need to go. What then? You prefer they stay on the mic while you set the compression during soundcheck and they sing into it? What about the monitor mix? It would kill me personally if my voice in my in-ears or monitors was not getting louder when I did or worse got softer, then subconsciously I'm going to want to push and I'm gonna have to fight my instincts (I've had quite a few experiences with this, unfortunately). Luckily I almost never do anything outdoors, that is a whole different beast.

@@2010Crazycanuck, as a general rule, when you double the distance, you halve the effective loudness. While this isn’t always going to be true with every microphone, such as most Audix microphones which have a SEVERE drop off, or the EV microphones which are nearly impossible to use if the vocalist doesn’t have impeccable positioning, it really doesn’t take much to make a big difference in volume. From 2 inches to 4 inches usually drops the volume in half. 4 to 8 inches does it again. Personally, I do want the vocalist (I’m saying vocalist, as it can be a singer, rapper, comedian, or lecturer) to stay on mike and just work the distance just a little bit. The thing to remember is that if you are using monitors, that means there is a FOH system, and the room is big enough that your voice alone isn’t going to fill it. About the best balance is to sing to the second row. The bigger the venue, the more distant that is. Don’t overpower the second row, don’t undersing to the second row. As long as you are singing to the second row, your dynamics will be balanced to the needs of the FOH, and it will look and sound correctly to everyone in the venue and nobody gets left out. Regarding compression on vocal microphones for live sound. I almost always put a compressor on every vocal microphone inserted before the monitor sends. It’s anywhere from 1.5:1 to 3:1. I use a soft knee on it and have a low enough threshold on it that it’s constantly doing something. This is not for effect, but what it does is level out the microphone technique. It does the same leveling to the microphone as to what our own ears do to our voice within our head. (Our hearing naturally compresses the sound of our own voice). So the monitors will actually more closely match what is going on internally. Without this gentle compression, we tend to hear our voice spike in the monitors and we end up over compensating. The vocal microphone will then get a second round of compression, which is NOT put into the monitors. This is for what the audience hears. I’m trying to maintain a very specific volume level range within the venue, and in most cases, that range is extremely narrow. It doesn’t matter if you are whispering or screaming, your voice isn’t going to change more than maybe 6 dB at most. Any more than that and people won’t hear anything or they’ll jump out of their skin. Neither one are acceptable. We’re usually running three stages of compression, one on the microphone to fix simple distance variations, the second on to fit in the mix, and the third to adapt the mix to the venue. Over simplified explanations here, but that’s usually what I do. And I do it because I hate riding the faders-I’d rather let the technology do the hard work for me.

@@image66media Once again thanks for this information. I'm really enjoying and learning from this conversation. I've experienced the falloff you're referring to when mixing my own recordings on a large diaphragm condenser, so I'm pretty sure I know what you are getting at here. My version of "pulling off" is generally just to turn my head to the side slightly or up slightly which I haven't had anyone complain about (perhaps they're just being polite). I welcome those levels of compression you're applying too. When I want to sing quieter I still feel like I'm being heard. It really makes a huge difference when singing something intimate. Or when I'm making a difficult jump and I don't hit it just right, it won't jump out of the mix. From mixing I definitely know adding 3dB is a lot! Wow, the second row. Ok, I haven't heard that before. Growing up, I sang without a mic and I sang to fill the room. I don't do that when I sing with a mic but I definitely visualize projecting past the second row. I will keep that in mind for the future. I think I get what you mean here though. If it's really loud, it's really loud for the second row or conversely really soft. That image greatly reduces the dynamic range and I can see why it would make your job behind the board much easier. I'm really curious, if you could sit every singer you've ever worked with down and tell them one thing without worrying about ruffling their feathers or damaging their ego, what would it be and why?