Earthworks SR117 Supercardioid Vocal Condenser Microphone

The sharpness of a condenser and off axis rejection of a dynamic! I use this in an untreated room and get nearly zero room noise.The flat frequency response gives it flexibility to EQ for spoken word or singing.

Remarkably flat and uncolored, just what you are really after.Great build quality.It only lacks a black chrome logo...lol.

Professional live sound engineer and I purchased one of the SR117’s to test at a show and the vocalist I used it on wouldn’t give it back, so I ordered 6 more it’s that good.Whom ever commented Earthworks mics are noisy, ba ha ha ha!Shure and Telefunken should pay close attention to this mic, it changes the game.

After thoroughly testing the SR117 for almost 5 months, I just simply gotta say, Earthworks is above and beyond every single microphone manufacturer out there worldwide.Unless some Chinese miracle happened, Earthworks is just holy grail status, not even Neumann comes close.I could only wish for Earthworks studio monitors - headphones, or even DACs, but at the same time being good at one thing doesn't always correlate to being good with multiple product lines.Either way, I wanted to express my gratitude, because the search is finally over - as far as brand philosophy goes, and that peace of mind is priceless as a consumer wether it's a professional or just an enthusiast.

It's rare to find a microphone with such a flat and linear frequency response on the market these days. Every single microphone, condenser and dynamic alike, have some sort of weirdo unnatural presence boosts in the 2-10khz range which interfere with obtaining a less processed, natural sounding recording, while emphasizing unwanted characteristics in a persons voice. I tend to use dynamics more than condensers as they are typically less revealing in untreated rooms. But, for me-the presence peaks on pretty much all of them is a pain to deal w/ when recording vocals, as they can come across as strident, harsh, or too nasal sounding. This is understandable though, as these were mainly designed for live use. However, strident boosted frequencies are also found in many studio condensers as well.What this microphone does, like most if not all of Earthworks mics, is provide a flat landscape to the mixing engineers liking. The microphone is very smooth and takes EQ very well. There is a bit of self noise, but compared to other mics of the same caliber, its not bad at all and very manageable, I'd rather have a Mic with a little bit of self noise than a mic that has a variability of anywhere between +5 to +10db of treble boosted. Being supercardioid, it helps reject room tone and has tolerable off axis coloration. I'm using this in a semi treated bedroom environment and for the first time, after setting the interface gain right to get a clean recording, I find that I've little use for deharsher and deesser plugins now. A touch up here and there, maybe taking away 3db at most with the deesser, but unlike 6+dbs of sibilance that I dealt with w/ other mics. I like the mic just as it is. No added boosts, coloration. For me there is no need to boost or cut anything after I'm done recording vocals minus the typical HPF if needed.I wish more companies would adopt Earthworks design philosophy, but that's what makes Earthworks unique over other companies.

They use small diaphragm condensers in all of their products so they have 16dba or worse self noise. This one is 20dba so loud audible hisses.

Expensive microphone died with no warning after only a few uses. Earthworks did a terrible job with warranty, and did not produce a satisfactory resolution. I wish I never would have purchased a microphone from Earthworks and want to save you the same trouble. Never again.

For the money, it is an excellent competitor to other condensers in the general price range like the RE520 and Beta87a. The mic is excellent at noise rejection, and stays very true to the supercardioid pattern throughout the frequency range whereas other supercardioid mics can open up towards either extreme of the frequency range. And in response to the review criticizing the self-noise level of 20 db and 74 S/N ratio of 74 db, a Neumann KSM 104 plus has a self-noise level of 18 db and SN ratio of 66 db at nearly 4 times the cost. The RE520 has a S/N of 77 db and self-noise of 17 db, and the Beta87a has an S/N of 70.5 db and self-noise of 23.5 db. So while the cheapest of the 4 mics, it is also not the worst.