Bad measurement mic...
Posted: Mon, 2019-Nov-11, 01:41
Just a quick rant from me, to get this forum area started: I strongly dislike the Behringer ECM-8000 acoustic measurement mic! It's a disaster.
There's not many mics I completely avoid, but this one I do. Build quality is poor, there's a factory defect in many mics that leaves the internal grounding messed up, so you get major mains hum (I know, because I got one of them! Brand new, and it buzzes like crazy), and the consistency is all over the place.
It's supposed to be a piece of precision equipment that you can rely on for accurate acoustic measurements... but it isn't.
Here's a graph from a company that specializes in calibrating mics, showing the calibrated frequency response of 85 ECM8000 mics that were sent to them for calibration, (normalized at 1 kHz):
You can see the huge scary differences... easily +/- 5dB... and that's supposed to be a precision mic? 
Now compare that to what the manufacturer actually claims for their mic:
It doesn't match too well!
The only time I'd use a Behringer ECM-8000 is if it did not have the internal grounding defect, and had been properly calibrated by a company such as the one mentioned above. Otherwise... Nope.
For about the same money, you can get a much better mic, such as the PreSonus PRM1, or something similar from another reputable manufacturer.
Caveat Emptor.
There's not many mics I completely avoid, but this one I do. Build quality is poor, there's a factory defect in many mics that leaves the internal grounding messed up, so you get major mains hum (I know, because I got one of them! Brand new, and it buzzes like crazy), and the consistency is all over the place.
It's supposed to be a piece of precision equipment that you can rely on for accurate acoustic measurements... but it isn't.
Here's a graph from a company that specializes in calibrating mics, showing the calibrated frequency response of 85 ECM8000 mics that were sent to them for calibration, (normalized at 1 kHz):
Now compare that to what the manufacturer actually claims for their mic:
It doesn't match too well!
The only time I'd use a Behringer ECM-8000 is if it did not have the internal grounding defect, and had been properly calibrated by a company such as the one mentioned above. Otherwise... Nope.
For about the same money, you can get a much better mic, such as the PreSonus PRM1, or something similar from another reputable manufacturer.
Caveat Emptor.