Why in the world would anyone take a fancy, single purpose piece of equipment like a hyper-cardioid shotgun mic and try to use it for voiceover?
Well, when you ask the top voiceover studios what are their most used mics, an overwhelming majority of the biggest will say the Neumann U87 and the Sennheiser MKH-416. There must be a reason (we'll discuss "standards" later).
But back to our double-barrell break-out.
Bill Campbell is another multi-media monster-man as studio director at ASAP Studios. He asks the same question you might--"Why wouldn't the shotgun-for-voiceover advantage work for any other shotgun mic besides the famous Senn 416--only cheaper?"
I have been asking the same thing for a long time. Even Sennheiser makes lots of other shotgun mic choices--none of which sound like their 416--most of which are less expensive.
What about the other brands? AKG, AudioTechnica, Sanken and others do have models that are highly rated by users and some are even more expensive than the 416. But how are they for voiceovers?
The Rode NTG-1 shotgun has fans that rave about its capabilities on lots of video forums. Now we can hear for ourselves.
Bill has sent us a test of the Rode NTG-1 for the Mic Test Site.
It is really clear and clean--sounds nice. You can get a brand new one for around $250. Wow! Not bad at all.
In addition to using the Sennheiser MKH416 in my voiceover studio, I use it weekly on a boom-pole while doing video spots. I even use it hand-held for on-camera spots (it looks kinda sexy with the windscreen). It really sounds good.
But I like the way Bill's NTG-1 sounds too.
I still want all of us that use shotguns for voiceover to discuss the various techniques we use to get the most out of these very special tools.
Coming: Test of the Sennheiser 421 and EV RE27 Dynamics--worth the money?
VO Mic Test
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