With the vocal mic shootout, we setup 50 microphones in Sweetwater Studio A so we could record male and female vocals under rigorously controlled conditions.

To truly compare microphones in a fair and unbiased manner, you have to control all the variables.

We tried to be very scientific in the way that we setup these microphones. There’s so many things that impact the sound of a microphone. Everything from the positioning of the microphone in the room, the height of the microphone, to the distance to the microphone diaphragm, but the biggest factor in comparing microphones in calibrating the levels.

We calibrated these microphones to within plus or minus 0.1 dB.

[female vocals]

Our goal was to make it easy for you to compare the sound of these 50 microphones. For convenience, you can listen to ten second previews of all of these microphones at Sweetwater.com.

For best results, we recommend downloading the high resolution files. For Pro Tools users, we’ve provided a complete 24, 96kHz session. If you use another DAW, you can download a folder full of all of the high resolution files, and load them into your own session. This allows you to compare the sound of the microphones in the comfort and familiar monitoring environment of your own studio.

I was amazed at the differences I heard among the microphones, and I’m sure you’ll find the comparisons equally revealing. Setting up and calibrating 50 microphones side by side is a tremendous amount of work, but it was also a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the Sweetwater Vocal Mic Shootout. If you have questions about these mics or any other microphones, call your Sweetwater sales engineer.