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[Carl Nagy]

What do you guys think of the Behringer ECM-8000 measurement mic?

I have been offered one of these and a UB-802 miniture mixer at a very good price and would like to use them with a laptop to make smaart measurements to flatten the response of my cabs and for eliminating room modes quickly and easily.

[Bennett Prescott]

For frequency domain measurement they're fine, but their phase response is all over the place. Someone has theorized that Behringer builds an EQ filter or two into the mic to make it flat.

[Scott Shaw]

I know it sounds great on a hi-hat.

Scott

[Rob Smith]

Any other low cost measurement mics for Smaart use?  I'm looking for something similiar, and was considering the ECM-8000.

[Ivan Beaver]

Give the Superlux mics a look.  Cheap and very flat-They compare well to our Earthworks, untill you get down to around 30Hz and up around 18K.  Then they are like 1/2 dB or so off.

If you want to spend a little more money, look at the Goldline cheap mics.  

[RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS]

This topic came up a while ago.  I do not ike mine but it was mentioned by someone that the cheap plastic diaphram could be more affected by environmental issues.....I sometimes work in 110' heat and it has probably been completely ruined

[Ivan Beaver]

I do not know how the temp affects the mic element over time (is it perminent damage?), but the expensive metal diaphrams will perform much better in the extreme temps.

[Carl Nagy]

Bennett Prescott wrote on Sat, 21 January 2006 05:38

For frequency domain measurement they're fine, but their phase response is all over the place. Someone has theorized that Behringer builds an EQ filter or two into the mic to make it flat.

That seems a bit silly on behringers part. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have a mic with good phase response and not a not so flat freq response? As long as the freq. response in known and can be accounted for.

[Michael 'Bink' Knowles]

Quote:

That seems a bit silly on behringers part. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have a mic with good phase response and not a not so flat freq response? As long as the freq. response in known and can be accounted for.

Silly, yes; silly like a fox. Uli is just trying to make the specs look good and sell units. Mfrs don't usually include a phase trace sheet with their mics--its always a freq response trace if any at all. That and polar plots. So basically, Uli isn't looking at phase because his customers are presumed not to be looking at phase.

I have an Earthworks Smaart M30 and also a Behringer ECM8000 and the M30 is much, much nicer. My ECM8000 is a little screwy compared some others that have been analyzed. You see more unit-to-unit variation on the ECM8000.

Other low-cost test mics include the Audix TR40. Actually, there a ton of mics to choose from... Here's a response on the topic June of last year.

-Bink

[Bennett Prescott]

Not really... since 98% of their customers will be using it for an RTA only, phase is nowhere near as important to them as frequency response.

[Charlie Jeal]

I'll give another vote to the Audix TR40 I bought one to use whilst M30 was in for repair after some clown dropped it and knocked the diaphragm out of alignment. Needless to say the repair bill came out of his pocket not mine. But I've been pretty impressed with the price/performance balance of the TR40.

[Adam Robinson]

I'm about to buy a TR40 also.  The M30 isn't in my budget right now.

My Behringer mic is quite screwy.  I don't think it's even giving me the same frequency response that it did a couple months ago!  I'll second the comment about it's phase response being horrible.

[Andy Peters]

Carl Nagy wrote on Fri, 20 January 2006 05:07

What do you guys think of the Behringer ECM-8000 measurement mic? I have been offered one of these and a UB-802 miniture mixer at a very good price and would like to use them with a laptop to make smaart measurements to flatten the response of my cabs and for eliminating room modes quickly and easily.

I'm surprised that nobody in this thread has pointed out that you can't eliminate room modes with an electronic equalizer.

-a

[Austin Parker]

cheap mic with good specs : audix tr40
next step up: earthworks

[Rick Byers]

Another mic to think about is the DBX one that they partner with the Driverack.

[Michael 'Bink' Knowles]

Rick Byers wrote on Tue, 24 January 2006 07:16

Another mic to think about is the DBX one that they partner with the Driverack.

Well, there's the My First Driverack ...and then you have the real DriveRack line. The toy DRPA comes with the RTA-M and the mic is about $100 to buy separately online from a dozen or more places. I have no idea what kind of quality the RTA-M has within it because I've never heard one or measured one. I'd like to see it compared to a Superlux/Avlex ECM-999, Rane Mic 2 or Audix TR40.

For serious users, the 480 series has the DriveRack 480M mic as optional gear--it's basically a dbx-branded Earthworks M30. I see it retails for $550 at B&H online, so go to SiaSoft's site and get the Smaart M30 for $425 or work a package deal with your official dbx supplier.



-Bink

[Sage Plakosh]

 
Ok, let's think about this for a second guys.  You are using a $500+ analyzer tool, hopefully a decent quality preamp, and then a $30 microphone?

It does not take a genius to know that in the case of microphones, cost is directly proportional to quality.  There is a reason sm58’s cost 80-bucks and Neumann Km 105’s cost ten times that amount.  

The transformation of acoustic energy to electrical energy (and vise versa) is the most delicate of processes in the signal path.

Now if you are just buying this to make cool blinky lights on your laptop to impress the chicks, fine.

But if you intend to take accurate transfer function, impulse, delay and RTA measurements you had better keep looking.

Just my 2 cents.

[Michael 'Bink' Knowles]

Quote:

...It does not take a genius to know that in the case of microphones, cost is directly proportional to quality.  There is a reason sm58’s cost 80-bucks and Neumann Km 105’s cost ten times that amount...

That's a pretty black/white viewpoint. My take on the subject is more in the gray area between. I think price sometimes has more to do with market forces than with the item's inherent quality. That said, I don't think anyone here considers the cheapest test mics to be as good as the best Josephsons, dpas and Earthworks. This is especially true for a cheap mic that's been 'flattened' regarding frequency vs. amplitude using electronics to produce an counterbalancing EQ curve. Phase suffers horribly.

One gig I had with the Palo Alto Symphony more than ten years ago made me open my eyes regarding cost vs. mic quality. I was putting up and running the PA for the symphony's outing in the park (no bandshell=PA needed) when a guy came up and said he was contracted to record the group. He started setting up his mixer in the middle of the symphony between the tympani and the double basses and running some stiff, skinny, white, unbalanced wires around the area taped to my mic stands or the music stands or to the overhead tent struts. I said something about him setting fishing lines and he laughed. Further explanation from him informed me that the mic elements he was using were so small and delicate that they were soldered and shrink-wrapped to the ends of his skinny cables. The cables terminated at the mixer in 1/4" TS connectors. Each cable was less than 30 feet long. He said the elements were industrial transducers which could be had for $12 a pop. When the guy let me listen to one of them PFL'ed in his headphones, I was amazed at the clarity of sound.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  

-Bink

[Suso Ramallo]

Hello,

The ECM8000 have a near to good frec response from 40Hz to 8kHz, over 8kHz is very erratic, impossible any real measure over 10kHz (In the Smaart the coherence drops to the floor over 10kHz), but every ECM8000 I tried have a very different response. I know two types, the first one with Panasonic capsule and transformer, and the second one with chinese copy of Panasonic and without transformer.

Behringer ECM8000 (One of the better ECM I measured) against Earthworks M30 (transfer, coincident capsules 15