Jim Lill’s at it again

I have gone down the rabbit hole on mic comparisons as well. His methods are solid but sometimes things cannot be measured using frequency response and amplitude only. Depth of field and transparency are something that is very hard to test and quantify. Making these types of comparisons garner very subtle differences. For me, those cannot be realized in the playback of a 1 second long audio track. If you can hear a difference that quickly then the results are drastically different.

I don't claim to have golden ears. Quite the contrary. After standing in front of a full stack guitar amp for years and then doing front of house sound for rock bands a bunch of other years, my hearing is definitely impaired but I can realize very subtle differences between things such as microphones and mic preamps. It's definitely a splitting hairs thing. In the big picture it really doesn't make that much of a difference when you get to quality gear. It's less about the gear and more about the guy turning the knobs and pushing the buttons skill level. Alan Parsons could probably record a better sounding track on a 4 track than I could in a world-class studio with high end gear.