What’s the best vocal microphone? It’s a question I get a lot, and while I have my favorites, the answer is usually, “it depends.” Over my career in live sound, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a large number of microphones, from the ubiquitous $100 “ball” vocal mic to models costing thousands of dollars.

Surprisingly, it’s often the less expensive mics that are the “best” for a given source. And that’s the focus of this discussion – it’s not as much about selecting the theoretical “best” mic than it is about choosing the right mic for the source.

It’s A Process

Let’s start with a practical example. Recently we upgraded the sound system at my church. It’s a small country church with non-professional musicians and AV team. They’re wonderful people, but not world-class. We put in a great PA (I may be biased – I designed it) that’s very accurate. I knew that if we didn’t change out some mics, it was not going to sound as good as it could.

Starting with one of the female singers, we moved her from the standard vocal mic to a Heil Sound PR 35 dynamic supercardioid. She has a voice that can be a little edgy, and when she gets to the happy notes, it can be a tad piercing.

However, on the old mic, there was a distinct lack of clarity when she wasn’t in the upper range of her voice. So, when singing lower in register and volume, we couldn’t clearly hear her. When she went up in both range and volume, we couldn’t not hear her. The PR 35 does a great job of softening those edges while maintaining clarity. Combined with a couple dB of compression, her voice is now sitting right where it should in the mix.

On the other end of the vocal spectrum, one of our male vocals has a rich, deep voice that was also under-served by the “standard” vocal mic we were employing. The low end of his vocals never really came through, and again, there was a distinct lack of clarity that made it hard to get him to sit in the mix. His voice was always either too loud or too soft, but either way, it was hard to follow while singing.

Again, the answer came from Heil Sound in the form of another dynamic supercardoid, the PR 37. It has a significant presence peak centered around 5 kHz that makes it a lot easier to hear deeper voices. The extra boost in high-frequencies adds clarity and articulation.

This isn’t meant to be a promo for Heil; both mics are simply what I had on hand and proved to be the right fit for the job. The real lesson is this: when choosing a vocal mic, listen to what is lacking with the current mic and find a replacement that fixes it.

You’ll know it’s right when your EQ strip is flat (or nearly so) after the high pass. If you have to make massive cuts or boosts in the EQ of a vocal – or any source for that matter – consider changing the microphone.

Checking The Locker

Back to putting the right mic on the right source. At another venue where I mixed, there were a few men who primarily sang background vocals (BGVs). I tried the same mic that sounded great with our worship leader.

However, the flatter low-mid response of the that mic made the BGVs a bit muddy. Now, we could have simply put a cut on those vocals centered at about 350 to 400 Hz, about an octave and a half wide, and down a few dB and that would have cleaned them up reasonably well. But our goal is to minimize EQ through better mic choices.

Looking through the mic locker, we dug out a mic with a distinct low-end roll off. There was plenty of presence and a similar upper mid-range response that added clarity, but the low-mid dip cleaned up male BGVs quite nicely. Again, we could mostly flatten out the EQ and our male BGVs were now in the right place in the mix; they were clear and added body to the vocal mix but didn’t muddy it up.

We could have used other mics in that application; however (and again), they were what we had on hand. The more you have in the mic locker – or are able to borrow – the more you can hone in on the right mic.

A question that comes up often when it comes to selecting mics is, how do you even get started Certainly, much of it comes with experience. After mixing a few hundred events, you start to get a feel for what vocals sound like, what different mics to do those vocals, and what works and what doesn’t. But to augment that knowledge, most manufacturers publish standard frequency response curves for their mics.

If I were considering a new mic that I hadn’t used before, I’d take a look at the graph and see how it lines up with my source. Let’s say we have a vocal channel that currently has good boost in the 3 to 5 kHz range. And for the sake of argument, we’ll say this is a male vocal.

I might start off trying something like the aforementioned PR 37 or an SE Electronics V7, another dynamic supercardioid. Both have a high-mid boost on them, which should allow us to flatten the EQ. The PR 37’s peak starts a little lower so it might work better in this example. (Or it might not, it depends on the specific voice.)

That brings us to a key point: just because a mic right for one person doesn’t mean it’s right for the next person. A colleague relayed the story of once working very hard to find an appropriate mic for the lead singer of a band, and the other band members liked the improvement and all went out and bought the same mic for themselves – and it wasn’t a good fit for their voices.

Getting To The Goal

Note that the frequency response graph doesn’t tell the whole story, but it’s a good place to start. If you try a mic that appears like it should work but just doesn’t sound right, don’t be discouraged. Mics have qualities that are hard to measure. Stay at it until you find the right one.

Ultimately, the goal is to keep the channel strip as flat as possible, helping to keep the phase aligned and glue the mix together. Avoiding large boosts in the EQ also minimizes feedback. I’ve found I can get a lot more gain out of a system when the EQ is flat than when it’s all over the place.

In addition, over the years I’ve found I can really improve the quality of the mix overall by matching the mic to the vocal (or any other source, for that matter). It does require stocking a few more mics, but as each of the mics we’ve mentioned are in the $125 to $250 range, it’s not a huge investment.

Often, we buy one of a particular model and then try it out on a number of vocalists. If it worked for multiple people, we buy more. Making friends with other people who own a variety of mics is another great way to try them out.

When it comes to selecting vocal mics, the more you try, the more you’ll learn and the quicker you’ll get to the best result. Try changing mics and see if your mix doesn’t get better.