Recording - February 2012 - 24

B Y PA U L V N U K J R .

Lewitt LCT 640

Condenser Microphone
The mic is finished in a combination of matte and gloss black finishes, and its rectangular body is a touch reminiscent of another solid-state mic of Austrian origin, the ubiquitous C414. The features The 640’s capsule is a center-terminated K67-style, dual-backplate design that features a pair of 1" gold-sputtered, Mylar diaphragms. Internally the 640 makes use of a modern surface-mount PCB board and offers a nice collection of features not typically found in solid-state mics. These features are accessed by a selection of three front-mounted silent switching buttons and a backlit display. The first of these evokes the modern AKG C414 series—a choice of five selectable polar patterns: Omni, Cardioid, Hypercardioid, Bidirectional (figure-8) and Wide Cardioid. That’s two more than the average solidstate multi-pattern microphone typically offers. In addition to multiple patterns, the 640’s switching system also expands the usual features of a highpass filter and a pad by offering not a single on/off choice, but three settings for each. The pad can be set to –6 dB, –12 dB or –18 dB, and the highpass is selectable to 40 Hz, 150 Hz and 300 Hz. Once set, all of these settings can be locked by an additional button press to avoid accidentally changing a setting during use or positioning. And there is even more. If you press and hold the right button for two seconds, it activates a clipping history which lets you know if a signal has recently overloaded the mic; if it has, you can press and hold the right button and that will automatically attenuate/pad the microphone down below the clipped peak.

A new name in microphones makes a splash

Lewitt Audio is brand new microphone company that seemed to spring up out of nowhere at last year’s NAMM show and hit the ground running with a complete product line of dynamic, condenser, and even wireless microphones for both studio and stage. Lewitt microphones are both designed and headquartered in Austria and then manufactured in China. The Authentica Flagship For this review I was sent the flagship of the Lewitt studio line, the Authentica LCT 640, which comes as part of a kit in a black aluminum carrying case with the microphone, shock mount and a foam windscreen inside. The first thing you notice about the 640 is that, unlike products of many of the newer start-up companies using overseas factories, this is not another Asian “catalog” piece that shares a body or look with anything else on the market. Even the shock mount is a nicely overbuilt design that holds the microphone firmly in place with a rubber compression lock. It also features an open-front half-moon design that allows you to get the mic right up on a source and alleviates the need for a standard hard mount.
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RECORDING FEBRUARY 2012

The analysis Reading the specs on the Lewitt website, a few things stand out. First, this is a very quiet microphone, with self-noise of 10 to 13 dBA depending on pattern. Second, when fully padded at –18 dB, this thing can handle 163 dB of signal level. To put this in perspective, a full-on jet engine and a gunshot are both listed at 140 dB and at 180 dB death of hearing tissue occurs. So I doubt most of us have anything in our studio that will push this mic over its edge... I don’t care how loud your guitarist is. Looking at the frequency plots on Lewitt’s website, we see this is an exceptionally midrange-neutral mic with a gentle low-end bump in all of the patterns except omni and wide cardioid, which stay flat down to 20 Hz. Each pattern has a slight 5 dB rise around 18 kHz in the high end. Although varying a bit from pattern to pattern, the 640’s upper midrange is accentuated from 200–500 Hz on up; it is better described as nuanced rather than drastic compared to many modern import mics. The omni pattern is the only one of the bunch to offer any sort of a common upper-mid scoop. The sound The two words that keep leaping into my mind whenever I play back tracks which I recorded with this mic are “nice” and “pleasant”. This is a mic that has a top end that is not biting, or too bright. It’s smooth, but not rolled off. It’s got a thick, full low end, but it is not boomy. It’s got a natural midrange that is not dull.
Recording - February 2012

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