WAIT.... This can do WHAT? || Austrian Audio OC818 

that accordion piece is very beautiful

Just 5 seconds into the the accordion stereo demo and I already forgot about the comparison. I just lost myself in the beautiful music itself...

In the demo I think my favorite setup was the Neumann KM184 ORTF, but my gosh the pseudo stereo setup w/ the OC818 sounded way incredible too!

My God. I've never heard the accordion sound so beautiful!

What amazing choices for this demo and comparison. So beautiful. Thank You

Wow, that mic is impressive. As always, I appreciate your content, knowledge and input....I always check your channel before I buy any gear; you're my gear guru.

Very cool music as well! Hope to see more recordings with musicians in the studio!

Excellent review! This appears to compete well in your shootout and for the value, yeh I agree...looks like a good investment. Love the way you can manipulate recordings after the fact as well...always nice to have a back door when needed. Thank you

Can’t wait to see your RME set up!

That's a beautiful sounding mic, thank you for posting.

Just goes to show that well-played, beautiful music is beautiful music, regardless . :-)

this mic sounds really good, seriously this is an good invest for a wide range of recording situations, it could save you maybe a lot other gear.

Amazing!!! Cool work!!

As an old follower of your channel for the snake oil stuff, I can say that adding sound captures is a new and a great idea!!! Cheers!

This is one of my favorite microphones. It works so well on so many different things and is super versatile. I don't have the Bluetooth dongle, myself, but one interesting use for it is if you have the mic placed in a less accessible spot and only want to record one channel out of it. So, for example, if you have it high up in a room over a drum kit or you have it on a stage or something and don't want to/can't go over to it to make an adjustment, or if you want to monitor the difference in polar patterns from a different room so you don't get headphone bleed, you can use the Bluetooth control to adjust by ear remotely. Cool feature, but I don't personally end up in those situations much. Maybe if I were to use it on electric guitar cab, though. Could be useful.

Honestly, a mix between all three setups on that accordion would be overwhelming and incredible

What a cool feature. I was drawn to the pleasant sound of the Lewitt microphones (which I have never owned) on this source for whatever reason.

It might be fun to play with this in surround and make it feel like the musician is dancing around the room as they play. Sounds fantastic.

I think a good comparison would be to the ( Now Universal Audio) Sphere. All of these capabilities described are present in the Sphere ( 2 capsules, modeling polar pattern) but they also have an increasing number of microphones modeled. It is also at almost exactly the same price point

Nice review of the capabilities of this mic! I like to use a similar arrangement with the schoeps polarflex system. My party trick is to use a negative gate (increases level when it is low) with an omni pattern in parralel to enhance te room when the direct sound is silent. Sometimes i use it in stereo so with 4 channels to have a lot of flexibility in post. Dynamic polar patterns. No one seems to use them. I think they are great!!

Beautifull Music. And awesome Mic. Thx for the Vid

When you think that review couldn't be better - now playing Ой у лузі червона калина 💙💛

Thanks a lot for staying with Ukraine 🙏🏻 Beautiful lovingly performing ❤️ I have been singing this song since I was 2 years old child, so I watched this review very pleasantly and with big gratefulness. Слава Україні! 🇺🇦 Great mic, I have been looking in OC818 direction for a long time, after the victory I will buy a pair 🎙️🎙️

1:47 also really cool to know, that software works with any current and/or future mic with dual capsule recording. So if you have a Lewitt 640ts, you can use this software too.

Sandstorm sounds awesome with the accordion

Very impressive mic, even without Sandstorm!!

Great review, AA sounds great. Sounded as if on the AA818 to tube 47pair comparison the image seemed to invert.

It’s my understanding that the Bluetooth dongle can be used to remotely change polar patterns, say on the microphone being mounted up high for orchestral music. That said, I haven’t made any use of mine which came as a bonus when purchasing two OC818’s in a bundle. On its own, it is a wonderful sounding microphone in the same family as the AKG 414, but better imho.

This mic sounds lovely ❤

The Lewitt blows my mind. So much clarity.

I got one, and I love it so much that I have to have another one to make it a stereo pair.

That last option on the mic is the “Preset Mode”. By default, the microphone is shipped from the factory with it set to broad-cardioid without the High Pass Filter and Pad Switch enabled. You can use it to enable a different pattern compared to the 4 out of the box polar pattern ( figure-8, supercardioid, cardioid and omnidirectional). As mentioned in the video, it can only be adjusted by using the Bluetooth dongle. Once changed, it stays in memory when using that switch setting. I agree that if you have the ability to record to two outputs at once, the plugin is more flexible. If you only record using the main output of the microphone (for example, you only have access to one preamp), the Bluetooth dongle gives you the ability to specify any supported custom polar pattern and switch settings. Once set, you don't need to use the dongle until you want to change it again. Is the dongle worth the asking price, that depends on the use case, but the ability to have a custom polar pattern stored in the microphone certainly expands to options for this microphone.

This is a very useful microphone and it’s even more versatile now… along with the new lewitt, it’s almost the wish list with nothing classic in it… weird notion lol… probably will still have the retro desire undoubtedly lol

Lovely playing. Completely forgot to compare the sound! (The first time)

Oh man. The dot-free environment lets me really concentrate on what you're saying. I feel like I can finally hear you. You seem pretty smart and talented.

Great mic!

Awesome-looking mic, cool customization options, I'm just not sure I love the sound of it on voice. But the accordian demo was very nice, and Fieke's piece was excellent!

It's interesting watching my (RME Software-) Vectorscope and Correlation Meter while listening to the different setups 🙂

Top notch Video.

Dude both the Austrian and lewitts sound awesome. I was always more on the vintage side though not in this case though - but it’s not possible to compare the MS setups to your room mics

The ability to digitally control a mic’s polar and proximity (along with doing so in detail with selectable frequency bands) is amazing. This is just one example of how recording technology is advancing into interesting -and often impressive -areas these days. The possibilities on the horizon (and eventual realities) of what might/will be developed, are now far closer and visible to us than they used to be…the horizon of possibilities that we once considered to be distant, and looking years into the future, is a lot closer now; often only a year ahead, and sometimes, not even that far away, being just a matter of months…or, even weeks. With the exception of the way people most commonly listen to music -through cell phone speakers and cheap earbuds, (which has actually moved backwards, IMO) most other audio technology is moving forward, into very cool and interesting areas, and things that were once only pipe dreams are now realities. It’s a very cool time to be working in audio and music production. IMO 🙏

Very interesting concept technically. DSP chip inside? Something’s got to do the processing, it probably has some microcontroller in it to do the bluetooth control.

This is a revolutionary microphone.

Interestingly, you can use the Austrian Audio Polar Designer plugin with other similar stereo microphones like the Lewitt LCT 640 TS and the Townsend Labs Sphere L22 microphone. Austrian Audio released the plugin for free and it's also open source. From what I've seen, the Austrian Audio plugin is better and more flexible than the Lewitt plugin, but that's just my opinion.

Super cool mic

BT dongle makes sense in live situations in wich you dont have the possibility to go to the mic and change the polar pattern (overheads, decca tree) but you have limited inputs. great mic btw ;)

wow that accordion sounds great. And the melody is really good. What song is that ?

Closed my eyes for the comparison and then rewatched - the OC818 won.

i think oeksound should make some kind of digital mic with sooth built in somehow, maybe controllable via an app like this

Bought 3 0d 505 love them for my Rock Trio but they are great in the Studio also

The Lewitt LCT 640 TS is similar, and you can change the polar pattern after recording, as well. I use it as a stereo drum overhead, works great, and you get a perfect, in phase stereo image of the drums. I'm sure the OC818 would be great for drum overheads, as well.

I purchased a pair of these for recording piano as alternative for my earthworks mics. I place them in M/S configuration and run them stereo into a quad channel using their plugins to create a truly amazingly natural wide sound. I find I need no or little reverb, and no EQ. Also they are absolutely fantastic as drum overheads, and they will most likely stay there for me.

So with two capsules and a software to allow changing mic character after recording, this mic is basically Universal Audio Townsend Sphere mic?! And probably both plug-ins will work on both microphones, try and see

All the mics show one thing the Soure and the Room sound realy good !

Very interesting austrian brand and a really good mic solution. I guess the will compete with Lewitt which is another super austrian microfon brand. These two will fill the gap of AKG. Great job and great comparison!

Love it totally awesome

i have one. With the Bluetooth dongle. For me the coolest thing is play with the mic from the desk and save the settings. So powerful.

Austrian gear rocks!

Austrian Audio have also created that ceramic diaphragm, ex AKG employees who want to have more freedom to create. They are doing a pretty fine job so far. Antelope modelling mics also have the dual output, but via cable only. You have the options of changing the polar patterns and the mic model after recording, times are a changin'...again!

Still the u47 blended in? for a bit of depth and the room? ? Definitely it will work

But to use the polar designer you need to plug it in Bluetooth right? And then can you design the normal output?

I don't know if you have some special polar dot mode happening or if you switched-up your streaming processing but straight off, I noticed the OC 818 sounds way better than your Lewitt which I already thought was your best sounding streaming mic by far. Polar pattern shenanigans notwithstanding (maybe just that it was in Omni =) ), that is one great sounding vocal mic.

Thanks !! beautifull interpretation. Please what is the name of this music ?

What pre, comp, interface did you use here for voiceover in this video with this mic? It sound very clean and clear! Please share with me :)

Fieke van den Hurk - the whole of Ukraine hugs you! 🤗🤗🤗🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦 perfectly played! ❤️❤️❤️ The microphone sounds great, especially on vocals! I will definitely buy it after our victory!

Can we find somewhere the recording of the song? Could you release it somewhere?

Look at the quality of the switches. I have had one of these for a couple of years and when I bought it, didn't know much about it and was initially put off by the poor quality of the plastic switches. I usually use it in fig 8 as part of a stereo pair with a U87 and results have turned out to be just fine. So, I am just checking - What is your take on the quality of the materials?

I like the Lewitt and Neumann setups better.. but they are both a "bit" more expensive and you'd need 2... And the OC818 is not a bad mic... And I like the flexibility! But there is something about the Neumann high-end that I really really like, always have. I was lucky enough to have worked in a studio that had a cupboard full of Neumanns... And I also like the high frequency response of the Lewitt setup a bit better.. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the OC818 is really good value for money and really versatile..

What is the name of the song I want like a 12-hour loop of this stuff

I had thought about (before knowing this mic existed) what it would take to make a mic with these features and thought “surely adding this customizable hardware would affect the noise floor and some of the other aspects that makes a good studio mic.” Nope. 148 SPL and 9dB ENL. This mic is pretty close to perfect by technical standards.

I listend to Austrian OC 818 and Lewitt 640 TS - the Lewitt has more character as mono mic - as far as I can trust my ears on youtube audio. I downloaded the wonderfull akkordeon from patreon: I guess this lack of "character" is so much better for stereo, it blows my mind how nice the stereo from only one OC818 is - with the the polar-pattern - for roughly 1.000 Euros : )

The OC818 sounded impressive in mid side. More shine than the Lewitt. Really as rich as the 47, just a somewhat different tone.

You gotta do the god particle when it’s out for public use !!!

You didn’t say if you like the mic?

Most mics with switchable polar pattern have two membranes. Thats how it works.

dongle ?

is it me or does this mic sound distorted, or at least set up wrong maybe, not trying to troll btw

Where is my MAAT FiDef, a plugin that can read your brain (and your soul)

the lewitt 640 ts is its brother

I'm happy to see they call it _Pseudo Stereo_ in the app when using a single OC 818. It would *have* to be _pseudo_ stereo because there's no way to achieve true stereo of any kind with the capsule configuration in a single OC818.

👀

I'd probably get this over an expensive Neumann...because of the Bluetooth capabilities.

At almost $1300, this mic is a bit pricey. No problem if you own a pro studio, but it's a bit much for home studio-ites!

There are, of course, several other mics from other manufacturers with the same dual-output schtick. Lewitt and Sennheiser come to mind. Cool trick but not original.

Thank you for choosing Ukrainian folk song - as demo. Love from Ukraine 🇺🇦🇺🇦 Слава Українi! P.s. Great video as always BTW :)

The funny thing about audio is that, if this a just a mic without the bluetooth or all the "gimmick", I'll just buy it to collect, but because of these extra feature it feels less perpetual? Idk how to explain, but when it comes to mic I just prefer pure hardware, even though the pure hardware from this is already great. Because of the extra features, I won't buy it. It's weird. Really really great mic though. This is coming from a tech guy.

If you're using the mic raw (un-sweetened), it sounds pretty bad.

Did you say it, if not I’ll say it for you…. This is…. SNAKE OIL

I think I like Neumann KM184 best.

love your videos, but damn do I hate everything I see before watching them (titles and thumbnails)

But i think the stereo aspect is rough, but with competition, that will improve.

why tho?

Woooooow man its Ukrainian song!!!! Awasome!!!

Just add a bit more $ and buy Townsend Sphere. It has the same features but also it can emulate dozens of microphones too.

These videos are undoubtedly great, and I appreciate them, but I can’t help but feel like the titles are always the most snake oily thing.

Hab ich doch locker über im Hartz4 Satz.Was kostet die Welt?2000 Euro?

l22

Ganz ehrlich?Kein Unterschied beim Akkordeon beim Handy.

plz stop it with the clickbait headlines

This is a normal dual capsule condenser mic like an U87 or a c414. You really don't know how it works? Really!? That is irritating. Maybe you should find out.... The first stepless pattern mic was the m49 from the early 50ties. Nothing new here. It's a gimmick that is more or less without any practical use.