After talking to John Willett (Sound-Link Pro Audio) and Elisabeth Kuenhast (Microtech Gefell) at BVE a few weeks ago, after just spotting this mic and saying ‘what’s this?’ I’ve hired one out this week for a couple of days recording a play.
It’s a really interesting design, it effectively works like a line array – essentially meaning it will pick up sound with only a 3dB loss from a doubling of distance, rather than 6dB from an omnidirectional mic. The pickup pattern’s also interesting- it works like a cardioid in the horizontal plane, but lobar in the vertical.
I decided to give it the cruellest test possible in my flat by recording my voice from the other end of the bathroom, our bathroom’s quite long- it’s about 4m away.
It wasn’t all good though, the internal noise was considerably higher than the Sennheiser MKH and AKG ULS mics I’m used to, 15dB(A) (DIN EN 60 651 scale)- however not surprising, considering there’s 8 capsules in there. Another thing which is frankly scary is the price to buy it- however, this will probably do the job of 5-6 mics for me this week.
Another thing is it requires mains power for the matrix/powering box, so wouldn’t be suitable most situations I find myself in