AudioMedia - November 2008 - (Page 30)

ANDREW GRAEME opens his ears (and his eyes) to see how Mercenary’s new cardioid mic fares in the face of so much market competition. ood microphones are, in my opinion, far more important than all the other components of the recording signal path put together. So finding a really good microphone must be equally as important. If all you care about is the quality of the sound, the Mercenary Audio MFG KM- may just be for you. The MA-MFG KM- comes in a nice little wooden box (as do so many!), but is a rather unprepossessing little thing. The box tells us that it is handmade in the USA, but the body of the mic itself looks exactly like every other silver-coloured SDC out there. The capsule head G range to kHz, after which it gently drifts down to be - dB at kHz. I looked and listened for any significant distortion and found none. A sine wave at kHz looked exactly as a sine wave should. Given other wave forms, the KMperformed perfectly, and the only anomalies came from the limits of the abilities of the test speakers I was using. Admittedly, this is normal for any quality microphone, but the same cannot be said for many models out there that purport to be every bit as good as established names – and is therefore worth mentioning. MERCENARY AUDIO MFG KM 69 Cardioid Microphone is removable, but as far as I am aware, other types of capsule are not available. The rear entry ports are in the main body and not on the removable part of the mic, so it does not appear that this mic is designed to have a choice of capsules with varying pick-up patterns. The website claims that it was as a replacement for a KM . The directional characteristics do not vary much in the SDC fraternity, and the KM- is no exception. Off axis response matched other models I have used and tested almost exactly. It is a simple cardioid microphone and behaves as such. You can, of course, test a microphone and get all kinds of magic figures that tell you absolutely nothing about the sound coming out of it. It is often the case that, on paper, two mics look as though they are very similar, same frequency curves, same distortion levels, same directionality, and yet they can sound completely different. So bearing that in mind, I used the KM- on every project that came though our doors for a couple of weeks, just to get a handle on what this microphone really sounds like. The KM- dealt with very loud sounds with ease, and showed no difficulties being around guitar cabs and THE REVIEWER ANDREW GRAEME is Studio Manager at the Byre Recording Studio, in the UK (www.the-byre.com). Let’s start with frequency response, not because I think it is especially important, but because I have to start somewhere. This is a very linear mic. Well, it is from about Hz to kHz, and that is the range that decides how good the imaging is going to be. Below Hz, it wavers slightly, and seems to have a slight bass boost around Hz and a slight drop around Hz, which gave the sound a slightly satisfying ‘hi-fi’ feel. After that, things are pretty well linear within a dB (i.e., plus-minus one dB) Testing > 30 AUDIO MEDIA NOVEMBER 2008 http://www.the-byre.com http://www.sonnoxplugins.com http://www.sonnoxplugins.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - November 2008

AudioMedia - November 2008 Contents Recording News Post News Broadcast News Geofocus: Italy What's Up UK AES Review For the Record Studio Snapshot: Aquarium Abbey Road Plug-ins Brilliance Pack Neumann TLM67 Mercenary Audio KM-69 IZ Technology ADA Final Cut Special: Bond TC Powercore 6000 EP Productions Nagra VI Product Sampler: Location Tools Video Guide AMSR News Shure KSM9 Big Beach Boutique 4

AudioMedia - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.