Tomorrow night, I’ll be mixing FOH sound for Doc Severinsen and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Doc brought his own personal Sennheiser MD441U for this show (his preferred trumpet mic).
Sennheiser – MD441U
Sennheiser – MD441U PDF manual
For this show he actually needs a second trumpet mic but the house doesn’t own an MD441U & neither do I. ???
I volunteered to measure Doc’s MD441U in the morning and process one of my Earthworks SR30 to have the same frequency response for his second trumpet position. While this is not an ideal solution for many reasons (some technical and some emotional), I think we can get close enough to make him happy. He’s a very warm and friendly fellow in case you’re wondering. I spoke into his MD441U and my first reaction was how bass heavy it was. This might be the reason why he likes the sound. Because it “warms” up his trumpet. We’ll know soon…
How does one match one mic to another? The same we would match the frequency response of one speaker to another but with two mics and one speaker instead of one mic and two speakers. We will need our measurement rig (laptop, audio interface & FFT software), a sound source with the ability to cover the basic frequencies the MD441U is able to reproduce, Doc’s mic & my Earthworks SR30. This will be a very simple procedure.
Send pink noise through speaker & measure with MD441U
Save measurement trace
Replace MD441U with SR30 and match levels
Compare FR of MD441U trace with SR30 trace
Perform complimentary / corrective EQ on the SR30 to have the same frequency response of the MD441U.
Save EQ trace and paste on the second input channel strip
Bypass EQ on first input channel strip and put the MD441U back where it was.
Photos to come…