The Myth Of The Accurate Microphone

Can we really make a distinction between “colored” and “accurate” microphones? Who decides what mic falls into what category, and on what basis?

Proponents usually define as “accurate” a mic that does not add to, or take away from the musical event it records: what goes in comes back out, exactly and precisely.

I think the premise that such a microphone currently exists is false. "Accurate" means that no audible or measurable difference could be detected between all the brands and models that make that claim, because, by definition, any “accurate” mic chosen would sound exactly like the next, given the same polar pattern. This, then, would eliminate the need to choose between mics - they all would sound exactly alike.

The reality in the recording field looks different. Some like the sound of one mic they believe is 'accurate'. Others like the sound of a different mic, with the same claim of accuracy. But if there is a 'sound' (i.e. color), none of them, by definition, could be accurate.

It’s frustrating to read discussions of the term 'accurate' in forum posts or microphone advertisements, because quasi-scientific arguments are used to prove something that, in my opinion, is not currently provable, given the rather primitive parameters available to quantify data related to sound.

My hunch is that people often refer to microphones as accurate that are emotionally unengaging, regardless of the sound source they are trying to capture. As if the absence of emotional engagement is a batch of honor: erroneously asigning a (positive) quality to a mic that is incapable of auditory arousal deprives us of the sensual pleasure of listening to music- it all stays left-brain focused.

Or, to put it even more bluntly: no microphone approaches the sophistication of our hearing. We might as well have pleasure while admitting the medium's eminent technological shortcomings.

End (or start) of discussion.

Update: post #50 by Brad Allen Williams is brilliant, and I have copied it here, for those who do not have the time or patience to read all the others. on this topic on my forum https://repforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,37170.0.html

"Good sound" is not (for me) an objective that gets completed, but rather a lifelong pursuit of a feeling. I hope that each record I make is better (read: more emotionally-resonant) than the last, for the rest of my career. I doubt I will ever feel like that mission has been wholly and indisputably accomplished. In that sense, there is no "ballpark."

And much like there's no objective metric to determine the "best guitar player," I feel there's no objective metric (or set of metrics) that can meaningfully determine the "best (read: 'most accurate') microphone."

Because things which can be measured are almost always relatively unimportant in the context of work designed foremost to move someone emotionally.

For example: There are many people who can jump higher, run faster, have higher IQs, and have more symmetrical facial features than I. My wife may even know some of those people, but she loves me. Why? Emotion is profoundly illogical. Those objective metrics have a laughably-poor correlation to why my wife might've fallen in love with me. Broadly speaking, to contrive to explain an emotional response in terms of available objective metrics is folly. For one thing, it opens us up to the cognitive biases of anchoring/focalism, the availability heuristic, ambiguity effect and the base-rate fallacy, among others.

Simply put: most of what moves us emotionally cannot be measured, and that puts us at risk of over-emphasizing things which can, when making judgments.

And so it is with microphones. If I listen to a recording of a great vocalist on a great U47 and instantly feel an emotional connection to the performance--more than the same performance into a microphone that measures quieter, flatter, more extended-- then which do I choose?

Do I choose the person with the higher IQ who runs faster? Or do I choose the partner with whom I've fallen in love?

Not everything that matters can be justified through empirical means. This is especially so in matters of emotion--and my goal with creating or capturing music is always to elicit within the listener an emotional response.

Brad Allen Williams