Testing Four Warm Audio Microphones & Comparing Them With The Original Mics - Can You Tell The Difference?

To compare the Warm Audio mics with the vintage versions, I set up each of the mics on a source with its counterpart as a coincident pair. All of the microphones were set with no pad, no HPF, and all in cardioid except for the 87’s which were both set to bidirectional. I ran all of the mics through Ampria mic pres and set each pre to a similar output across all mics.

Lucky for me there is no shortage of talent in Madison, Wisconsin, where my studio is located. Four musicians stopped by to play a bit and let me experiment: Bryan Drewyor, Sarah Pray of indie folk band Carrellee, Kaia Kalise, and Sam Ness. All four are wonderful singers and songwriters; two played guitar  and sang for this test and two played piano and also sang. I chose to skip the pop filters for the vocal mics to see if one would be more prone to plosives than the others.