Any Updates on Using the Sennheiser 8040 / 8050's?
 

The 8000 series was pretty hot topic around here for awhile but has now kind of gone quiet.

Just wondering if the any would care to update their experiences using these mics?

There was a popular belief that the 40 was actually better suited than the 50 for indoor dialogue boom micing b/c the 50 has a rather tight pattern. I've since read that this may not really be the case after all.

Thanks much.

Hi Peter,

We tested the Sennheiser 8000 series in the studio awhile back. Here you can hear them with the Sound Devices 302 feeding into my ole Panasonic HPX500.

The first minute is white noise, the second half is dialog.

Sennheiser 8040 Cardioid


Sennheiser 8050 Super-cardioid


Here's the link to the specs on the Sennheiser site Sennheiser USA - Condenser Microphones MKH 8000 Series - Professional Audio

One of the interesting things about the 8000 series is that you can later upgrade to the MZD 8000 digital module and connect directly via AES 42. Definitely an interesting mic if you've got the cash and are investing in the future.

Hope this provides some insight.

Guy, thanks much. May ask what mic you used for the shotgun in that series of tests? Thanks much!

Hi Peter,

You're more than welcome. I'm happy to have helped. The shotgun mic we compared in our studio example is the good ole Sennheiser MKH-416.


Someone here on DVinfo recently linked to an informative PDF from Neumann. If you haven't seen it Georg Neumann GmbH - Company/Publications/Basics of Microphone Technology

Page 19 may be especially of interest:

"For the user, it is often more important that a directional microphone can be placed further away from the speaker without any significant loss of direct sound, and thus of transparency and presence. The distance for a sub-cardioid may be 1.3 ... 1.4 times, for a cardioid or figure-8 1.7 times, for a supercardioid 1.9 times and for a hypercardioid 2.0 times that of an omni- directional microphone."

There's some additional nuggets in there as well as some propellerhead stuff to read if you're ever having trouble sleeping <grin>.

Wonderful videos, Guy. Thank you!

You're welcome.

Initially these video were not meant to showcase a specific model of mic. We just happened to be using the Sennheiser 8000 line because of the form factor and quality. These are not inexpensive mics. They're at the top for serious users. If you're looking at these, you may as well also be looking at the Schoeps MK41 Supercarioid and the CMIT 5U Shotgun. Schoeps has done a great job of putting together an interactive demonstration with these mics at: Schoeps Microphone Showroom

Note the distances from the mic to speaker - I've converted cm to in/ft for us here in the US:

10 cm : About 4"
40 cm : About 1.3'
100 cm : About 3.2'
200 cm : About 6.5'

Listen to the examples of the Speaker and note the distinguishing characteristics of the MK41 and the CMIT - especially at 100cm. Schoeps Microphone Showroom