Troubleshoot How do I benchmark the microphone quality?

[Majiturf]

Briefly explain your current issue(s)

Nil

Steps taken to resolve, but have been unsuccessful

Nil

I recently bought Blue - Snowball iCE microphone. It is working fine. But is there a way to benchmark or verify the quality of my mic?

 

[Digerati]

Not without sophisticated (and very expensive) audio test equipment. Also note when it comes to what the listeners hear, there are many many variables that can affect the fidelity (faithful reproduction) of your voice between this mic and their ears. Your sound card, their sound card, their speakers, the data transmissions across the network and Internet, as well as the many points in between.

 

[Majiturf]

Right now I am using my phone's(One Plus 6) mic quality to compare. When compared to my phone it is much better. But the real question for me is whether my "Blue - Snowball iCE " mic's audio reproduction is the same as the other's " Blue - Snowball iCE" quality? Since I only have one for me and none of my friends have it.

Is there any way to test it numerically?. Like running a CPU or GPU benchmark and getting scores and comparing.

 

[Digerati]

No.

How to test the performance of a microphone

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Is there any way to test it numerically?. Like running a CPU or GPU benchmark and getting scores and comparing.

Put your microphone on the table next to your PC and record the background noise without saying anything yourself. If you can't hear with your ears the noise from your PC, but your microphone amplifies it, you can tell from the dB level whether a microphone is better or worse.

Expensive microphones have no background noise, but cheap microphones do.

The disadvantage is that you must have several microphones. But I know from my experience that you can't find a better microphone for this price. I hope I was able to help you.

 

[slash/]

Are you going to be recording or streaming with this mic?

 

[Digerati]

Put your microphone on the table next to your PC and record the background noise without saying anything yourself. If you can't hear with your ears the noise from your PC, but your microphone amplifies it, you can tell from the dB level whether a microphone is better or worse.

No, sorry but that's not a valid test at all!

For one, many microphones are designed with gain in mind. They are called "high gain microphones". That is, they are designed to amplify what they pick up. How much gain is not a sign of quality in any way. Quality is all about the faithful reproduction (lack of any distortion) in the sound. Not about how much gain, or loss in amplitude of the signal.

Also, unless you have specific test equipment on the amplifiers (and speakers) too, you have no clue how much gain, noise and other distortions are being introduced, generated or amplified by the amplifiers or introduced by the speakers.

So again, there is no way you can do this with your computer - not unless you are a very qualified sound engineer with the necessary sophisticated audio generating and measuring test equipment, and you have the necessary training to use that equipment and to properly interpret the results.

All you can do is record something and play it back and ask others if that sounds like you.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

I'm not a sound engineer, but we're not talking about "high gain microphones", which are used in movies to record background sounds, but about microphones that record your voice and should record as little noise as possible.

Of course, it is a quality feature for me whether a headset microphone or something else that is supposed to record speech picks up a lot of noise or not.

I quickly did a test, a Pronomic USB-M 910, which costs about 80€ and a headset for 25€, which I got as a present.

With Audacity I recorded the background noise coming from the built-in electronics in the microphone. An expensive microphone has good electronics and produces less noise.
I didn't say anything for 5 seconds and then a sentence for the rest of the recording time. I increased the sound before the sentence, both recordings by the same amount. The headset microphone achieves a higher noise level (3 dB) and the Pronomic microphone "only" 9 dB (9 dB is quieter than 3 dB) at a very high gain.

 

[Digerati]

High gain mics are used for all sorts of things, not just movies and such. But not really the point. Without knowing the exact gain of the speaker amplifiers, attenuation in cables and connections, the distortion added by those amps, the speaker characteristics, or even the room acoustics, you cannot isolate any distortion or noise or gain or attenuation to just the microphone.

Noise is not the only quality characteristic of a microphone. I note one of the easy ways to counter noise is to just speak more loudly into the mic so your signal is way above any introduced noise. That's actually the primary principle behind Dolby noise reduction.

For the record (no pun intended), I am not a sound engineer either. But I am a certified electronics technician who maintained USAF air traffic control radio systems as my job, and audiophile quality consumer electronics as my hobby for 20+ years . To properly measure noise, distortion, sound pressure levels, S/N and S/N + N levels, you need reference standard audio generators, oscilloscope, reference standard speakers and microphones, all calibrated to yet another laboratory reference standard.

And another thing. It is very common to run through a total sound system calibration process and get a near perfectly "flat" frequency response from source to speaker output, and have it sound lousy to our ears. That's because human hearing is fickle and it is common to add "equalizer" effects to have reproduced audio sound "pleasing" to our ears.

 

[illumination]

Just record a few recordings under different circumstances/variables. compare them, then watch the recordings on a couple friends systems to get an idea of the quality. Also note, good editing/recording software can help as well.