At Pro Tools Expert we are often asked, what is the best microphone to buy for voiceover recording? We usually reply with more questions such as...

What is your budget?

How much room treatment do you have?

Do you have phantom power?

Is this for narration or for ADR?

Which mic pre-amp do you have?

But to try and help the community, and the help of Richmond Film Services and KMR Audio, we undertook a series of tests in four groups under carefully controlled conditions using the same mic preamp, the same voiceover artists, a standard distance from the mic and all files carefully loudness matched.

What Microphones Did We Select for The VO Mic Shoot Out?

In the first 3 groups, we selected a variety of commonly used microphones representing a good spread of budget and styles ranging from industry standard large-diaphragm condensers to cheap dynamic microphones for our voiceover mic shootout.

Neumann Family Neuman U87 Neuman TLM 103 Neuman TLM 193

Dynamics And Shotgun Shure SM58 Shure SM7b Electrovoice RE20 Sennheiser MKH 416

Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphones sE Electronics 4400a Audio Technica 4040 Sontronics Saturn AKG 414 ULS



In the 4th group, we chose some of the higher end and specialist microphones to see how they would perform against the reference Neumann U87. You can compare any of them as they are all recorded under the same conditions.

Josephson C715

Brauner VMA

MicroTech Gefell UM900

AEA KU4

Manley Reference

Peluso 2247LE

Sontronics Aria

sE Electronic Gemini II

The Test