hi Carl here for ProAV TV and today I've got three lavalier microphones from
Sennheiser to talk you through now I know lavalier microphones in general
have been something which causes a lot of people confusion and to be honest
myself included it's only been relatively recently over the last few
years which I've actually learned some of the differences between different
level ear microphones and why you might want to choose one over the other so
I've taken the three most popular ones from Sennheiser's lineup and I'm going
to talk you through some of the differences to hopefully ease up some of
those confusions for you let's start with the entry-level 1 this is the me2
microphone from sennheiser so this is the standard omnidirectional lavalier
microphone which is included in a lot of their kits it's actually the ones which
I use for this channel so I'm wearing one right now and it's what you're
hearing right now this is completely omnidirectional so all the way around
the capsule it doesn't matter whether it's upside down or the right way up
it's going to be recording sound and so they're absolutely brilliant for
situations like this it means I can turn my head from side to side or even if
there's somebody next to me talking and it'd probably pick them up as well as me
it's just a general 360 microphone that you can position very close to your
mouth now as we go along the line this is the me4 which in terms of aesthetics
is a very similar style microphone you can just see the head and capsule looks
slightly different it's much more bulbous but the actual capsule inside
here is very different this is a cardioid microphone and so it has a very
different pickup pattern rather than being 360 it's actually a little bit
more directional it's not fully directional like a shotgun microphone
but it's a bit more targeted and so you want to have it pointing at your
subjects mouth and it's going to reject a little bit from what's around you not
completely but a little bit more than one of these microphones would do and so
for pista cameras like this where I mainly look
at one place straight to camera I'm not gonna be turning and talking over here
or anything like that and also I'm the only thing that you really want to hear
if somebody's sitting next to me and talks you don't really want to hear them
if there's road noise behind me you don't really want to hear it a
microphone like this is very very useful but it's not for every situation for
example a lot of people use level ear microphones
maybe in weddings where you mic up the groom at the front but then you can also
hear the bride and for that a omnidirectional lavalier like the me2 is
brilliant and you really would have want a cardioid one like the me4 so there's
different uses when you choose the different microphones they're about a
very similar price it's really the use case which is going to help you decide
between those two this one in the middle though the Mk II - so this is the me2
and this is the Mk II - is a very different microphone indeed it's
omnidirectional exactly the same as this one so a completely 360 degree pickup
pattern but it's built for quality rather than for a specific price point
everything about this microphone is better made the first thing you're going
to notice is that it doesn't coil in quite the same way as the other ones
which all sort of get tangled up and that's because the actual wire here is a
steel cable rather than copper cabling like this now in practicality one it
means less tangles but it also stops a little bit of interference and it makes
it much more robust it's much less likely you're going to damage the actual
cable itself and the capsule at the end is much more durable as well it's got a
very clever diaphragm design inside it which makes it completely sweat
resistant so if you're wearing this directly next to your skin or actually
it's used a lot in theater like I actually stuck on to actress of faces
like here or up here maybe something like that so for a live theater it's
used to hear a lot now obviously you're going to sweat a lot and that can be
really damaging to microphones and it can interfere with the sound as well so
the mk2 is definitely one to choose and yes that's most important for theater
but it's still important for video if now here you can see my microphone but
say we wanted to hide it well what do we do we'd stick it directly to
my skin underneath my shirt and now as I naturally sweat that will go on the
microphone and it'll interfere and it will harm your microphone so the Emmett
k2 is much better in that regard it's also a lot easier to hide because on
these ones you can't take off this sort of bulbous exterior this windshield
wears on this one you can you get several different styles included with
the kit and you can put them over the top or keep it nice and small and slim
lined like this one here so you can directly stick it to something like a
sticky from rye coat with an undercover or an odor for cover over the top of
that and directly stick it onto somebody's skin so it's very flexible
the last little thing I want to talk about with this is the clip which might
sound a bit silly but I really think it's really cleverly designed most of it
is exactly the same it holds the microphone in place it clipped onto a
shirt something like that but this little bit at the end here is very
clever what this is designed to do is it's designed to take the slack off of a
cable because if I just take this straight on and then something tugs on
this maybe I twist my hip and pull the receiver away and it dangles like that
you can see that's going to affect the capsule and you're going to hear that in
your recording you're gonna get interference now what's very common is
what's called the broadcast not loop which is that you simply tie a little
knot in your microphone cable and then as I move that the knot is going to act
as a bit of a dampener and it's going to take out some of the slack it's not a
perfect system however which is why Sennheiser have made this very neat
little clip which clips onto the microphone capsule itself makes it
slightly bigger profile I guess but it's gonna take out any of that slack
absolutely brilliantly will we transfer to the clip rather than to this little
bit of cable connected to the capsule so you're not going to hear any cable
rustling or anything like that with the clip it's a really simple little design
but I think it's really well done so to summarize the me2 and the Emmy for are
both very affordable microphones all purpose
fines but this one is completely omnidirectional and this one is a little
bit more directional with its cardioid pickup pattern and then this is an
omnidirectional microphone similar to that but it's designed for the rigors of
professional use day-in day-out it's a really lovely little microphone
so we're going to finish up with a little bit of a side-by-side comparison
so that we can hear if there's any audio differences between the two Andy Ritcher
sounds or any more of a narrower pickup pattern to avoid background noise we're
going to do a couple of side-by-side comparisons so this is just a really
simple unscientific test to see what the difference between the three mics is
because because of their different pickup patterns they should have quite
drastically different sounds I'm using the g4 unit transmitter receiver for
each one of these recording straight into the c300 mark - that's filming me
now so first up we've got the me2 microphone omnidirectional one and i'm
just going to read a passage here from Sennheiser's website sennheiser consumer
electronics stands for comfort safety and quality our products offer life
style and an individual design our consumer division team works around the
clock at four locations in Europe and Asia to ensure that no trend or customer
preference passes us by so now we've got the me4 microphone which it's got that
different cardioid pickup pattern Sennheiser consumer electronics stands
for comfort safety and quality our products offer life style and do
individual design our consumer division team works around the clock at four
locations in Europe and Asia to ensure that no trend or customer preference
passes us by and now we've got the higher-end Mk II - so this is another
omnidirectional one Sennheiser consumer electronics stands for comfort safety
and quality our products offer life style and individual design our consumer
division team works around the clock of four locations in Europe and Asia to
ensure that no trend or customer preference passes us by so we're now
going to repeat those tests but with some background noise we've turned on
one of the TV using the showroom behind me we've also
turned on the aircon and a few other little bits and bobs like that so
there's some surrounding ambient noise that we might want these microphones to
block out so first up we've got the me2 again so let's see how that does our
strategic goal is to shape the future of the audio industry from the first idea
through to the marketing of the product our professional systems division looks
after customers in the fields of radio aviation studio recording the music
industry and live sound this is now the Emmy for so this is a cardioid pickup
pattern so might be just blocking a little bit more of that background noise
our strategic goal is to shape the future of the audio industry from the
first idea through to the marketing of the product our professional Systems
Division looks after customers in the fields of radio aviation studio
recording the music industry and live sound so this is now the MKE to our
strategic goal is to shape the future of the audio industry from the first idea
through to the marketing of the product our professional systems division looks
after customers in the fields of radio aviation studio recording the music
industry and live sound Sennheiser consumer electronics stands for comfort
safety and quality our products offer a lifestyle and an individual design our
consumer division team works around the clock of four locations in Europe and
Asia to ensure that no trend or customer preference passes us by our strategic
goal is to shape the future of the audio industry from the first idea through to
the marketing of the product our professional systems division looks
after customers in the fields of radio aviation studio recording the music
industry and live sound okay so hopefully this video has sorted out any
confusion that you might have over different stars of lavalier microphones
and helped you decide which one of these might be best for you and your
production if you've got any questions at all just leave them in the comment
section down below or maybe you've got microphones which you prefer to use let
me know let's start a conversation down in the
make section if you want to buy any of the products I've talked about today of
course get in touch with our sales team or links to our product pages on our
website or in the description of this video thanks so much for watching and
I'll see you in the next one