NEUMANN USA TLM 49

Apr 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Myles Boisen

           

Around the Drums

Another role in which the TLM 49 excelled was as a room mic for drums. On a few different sessions in my wood-floored drum room, this mic delivered a huge ambient sound that mixed perfectly with the close-miked kit. When placed close to and outside the kick drum, the TLM 49 added low-end heft without muddiness or a lack of focus. Thurber gleefully described this bass drum effect on one of his rock sessions as a “wallop.”

In the wake of these successes, I also tried the TLM 49 on a live drum tracking session with the Afro-beat band Aphrodesia. On djembe and conga drums, the Neumann delivered woody, natural tone and also displayed above-average rejection of a full drum kit just 10 feet away. When mixing, I did have to add minimal high-frequency shelving EQ to bring out the attack on these hand drums.

On a later Aphrodesia date, the TLM 49 provided one of the best baritone sax sounds I've ever gotten in the studio. It also did a nice job as a room mic for a 4-piece horn section. Once again the distant TLM 49's timbre mixed beautifully with close mics and needed little or no equalization. On other sessions, the TLM 49 got high marks when used to record tambourine and a Leslie cabinet.

Speaker in the House

To gain further insight into the sound of the TLM 49, I conducted some controlled loudspeaker tests. For these trials, test tones and mixes were played through mastering monitors (Dynaudio BM 15s), which were miked at a distance of 15 inches. A Millennia Media HV-3 preamp was paired with the test mics, and the audio was recorded through one mic at a time into a Pro Tools workstation at 24 bits, 48 kHz.

The two TLM 49 mics were very closely matched during sweep tone and full frequency mix tests. In my judgment, this mic pair could be used without reservation for critical stereo recording. Neumann's M 147 and TLM 103 microphones were also included in the loudspeaker tests. Output levels and self-noise were very similar for all these Neumann models.

The TLM 103 is a good all-purpose mic that I use frequently around the studio. Compared with the TLM 103, the TLM 49 had a flatter response with a more detailed midrange and less presence boosting. Depending on the application, it could be heard as having either a fuller or duller sound relative to a brighter mic like the TLM 103. On a hip-hop mix, the TLM 49 also possessed a punchier midbass response, bringing out a desirable range of electric bass and kick drum without adding muddiness.

Relative to the tube M 147, which also uses the K 47 capsule, the TLM 49 was a closer timbral match throughout the frequency spectrum. Each of these two mics treated the midrange a little differently, emphasizing distinctive aspects of vocals, snare, and chordal instruments on a variety of mixes. Overall I found the TLM 49 to be more open, airy, and dimensional — more hi-fi, if you will — while its tube-based cousin yielded more of a colored and compressed sound.

The published frequency chart in the booklet shows the TLM 49 to have a flat response from 100 Hz to 15 kHz within ±2 dB, with the exception of about a 3 dB boost at 5 kHz. The response is down roughly -6 dB at 30 Hz and 20 kHz. An individual frequency trace was not provided with each mic. My experience with the TLM 49 is that it is, indeed, very flat and particularly smooth in the high end compared with most condenser mics designed for vocal use.

I noticed no distortion or tube mic-like breakup under any conditions, including close-miked vocals and the aforementioned drum recordings. Impressive specs like a 98 dB dynamic range (at 0.5 percent distortion) for the mic amplifier make audible distortion a fairly remote possibility.

The TLM 49 is heavy and bulky, weighing in at almost 2 pounds. The addition of the suspension mount makes the unit a little awkward to handle. As with heavier ribbon and tube mics, extra care is recommended when mounting this mic, especially on a boom arm.