Blue Dragonfly vs. Neumann TLM-103

A while back I bought myself two new microphones for my fledgling project studio.  Since I didn't have too much money burning a hole in my pocket I went with two mid-range options that I had heard good things about and was able to pick up off eBay for a pretty good steal.  The two winners were the Blue Dragonfly, and the Neumann TLM-103.

Both are cardioid large diaphragm studio condenser microphones.  Both seem to be geared towards the same applications: vocals, drum overheads, room mics - etc.  In many ways they are very similar and both were able to pick up a nice clean complete sound from whatever source I recorded - though there are some interesting differences that I'll touch on later.

Blue Dragonfly

At retail cost, the Blue Dragonfly goes for around $600 (I picked mine up off eBay for just under $400).  My Dragonfly arrived in a retro looking fabric blue case and it is unlike any microphone I have used up to this point.  The shock mount is actually part of the microphone - thus giving the microphone a resemblance of a dragon fly.  The construction seems fragile, but it is surprisingly resilient.  Let's be honest, any mic I'm paying this much money for I'll be careful with.   It's construction has been resilient enough to handle regular use and even a tumbles when the stand it was on was knocked over.

Neumann TLM-103

The retail cost of the Neumann TLM-103 is around $1,000 (I ended up paying about $750 on eBay).  It arrived in a nice metal case with a shock mount and a certificate of manufacture (or something like that).  This is a heavy mic, when using it I have to sandbag the stand to keep it from tipping over.  It was built to last and I have a feeling it will last for a very long time.

The first time I did a side by side comparison of the two microphones was when recording a female vocal track.  The equipment used was a laptop with Pro Tools M-Powered, a ProjectMix I/O, and the two microphones.  We didn't use any special preamps other than those built into the ProjectMix I/O.  One interesting thing - these mics don't require much gain at all - the TLM-103 requiring less than the Dragonfly.  When setting the gain levels for the mics I barely apply any gain at all.  If you are using cheap preamps (like those in the ProjectMix) you might find it hard to leave adequate head room on the tracks.  We addressed this by moving the mics a little farther away from the singer and increasing the gain ever so slightly.

We recorded the vocals using both mics simultaneously and did an A/B comparison of the two tracks.  Both tracks sounded better than any vocals I had recorded previously with my SM58 (it would have been a sad day if this weren't the case).  They were both nice and clear and a very good reproduction of the live sound.  The difference between the two was subtle, but noticeable.  The Dragonfly seemed to cater a little more toward the feeling of the song as well as our singers voice.  When our singer would push her voice and the mic would approach clipping it seemed to add a nice subtle retro-growl - whereas the TLM-103 would deliver a very clean (almost too clean) signal.  For this recording it was obvious that the Dragonfly was the winner.

The next comparison I did was using the two mics as drum overheads.  In this situation the preamp issue discussed above came into play - it was nearly impossible to get the mics no to clip while recording harder drum lines - though I'm sure this would be much less of a problem if you were using preamps that were a step above the junior varsity stuff in my ProjectMix I/O.  When we did the A/B comparison of the mics as overheads for drums the Neumann TLM-103 won out pretty easily - that "retro-growl" that made the Dragonfly win the female vocals test was a definite hindrance in the drum overhead test.  The Neumann delivered crisp clean high ends whereas the Dragonfly delivered some slightly muddy and distorted high ends (once again, both were better than the condensers I was previously using).

The setup we've been using to get ideas recorded lately is the following:

• Dragonfly as a room microphone
• Neumann TLM-103 as a drum overhead
• Audix F14 for kick drum
• Audix F10 for snare drum (and Audix F12 for floor tom if the song calls for it)
• Direct line for Guitar and Bass

We settled on this because the TLM-103 does very well as a drum overhead mic, and the Dragonfly seems to pick up the feeling of the room adequately enough to get some natural reverb and the feel of our space.  When mixing we find that we start with just Room track, and then use the other tracks to reinforce the parts of the sound that we feel are missing.  Here's links to two tracks that were recorded with this setup (actually using Logic Pro rather than Pro Tools):

• The Cure (It's not a Cure song, it just sounds like one)
• Modest Mouse (Once again, not a Modest Mouse song, just kinda sounds like one - also I wasn't happy with how the snare turned out on this, but that has more to do with the positioning of the Audix F10 than anything else)

Please keep in mind, the above recordings are just us getting ideas recorded so we have something to listen to later and remind us where we were heading - we're not shooting for something that's ready to ship off to mastering ;).

In the end, I'm extremely impressed with both Microphones and don't regret the purchase of either.  I will probably go to the Dragonfly first when recording vocals - and use the TLM-103 for drum overheads and instruments.  My spidey sense tells me that this will likely change once I pick up a decent preamp - my guess is that the preamp adds a little color of its own to each mic and will probably change my thoughts on which one works for which job.

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