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Audio-Technica AT2010 Microphone
There are a lot of factors to consider when you decide what kind of mic to employ for various tasks. Dynamic mics are more forgiving if the audio personnel are not highly trained, and they yield warmth, fullness, and punch, not to mention ruggedness and the ability to handle high SPLs. Plus, they’re usually less expensive, generally speaking.
Condenser mics, on the other hand, require a bit more understanding of audio in order to avoid feedback problems and to ensure that the higher detail produced by their superior resolution makes it all the way through the signal path to the ears of parishioners. Condensers also tend to be a bit more fragile, and are a bit more expensive than their dynamic counterparts. And we’ll save discussing ribbon mics for another day altogether. In every church in every town across the fruited plain you will likely find that 90% or more of the microphones available are dynamics, and rightfully so. As we said—they’re rugged and forgiving, and the conventional wisdom has always been that condenser mics are just too complicated (and/or expensive). Well—Audio-Technica offers its AT2010 design ($169) a handheld condenser intended for vocals. I put one through its paces and learned a bit about it.
A Close-up Look
The AT2010 presents an unassuming appearance; essentially just like any other handheld vocal mic you’ve ever seen. It’s a little over seven inches long and two inches in diameter at the business end, tapering down to about three quarters of an inch at its gold-plated XLRM connector. It’s finished with the same matte black surface for which Audio-Technica has become famous, and the mic’s black grille is made of a very substantial metal, lined internally with wind-noise dampening black acoustical foam. The mic’s element is a fixed-charge back plate permanently polarized condenser with a 16mm diaphragm, identical to the capsule in Audio-Technica’s innovative AT2020 side-address mic. This type of capsule requires 48V phantom power. The mic ships with a storage bag, a thread-adapter, and Audio-Technica’s “Quiet-Flex” stand clamp, which is claimed to provide “silent, flexible microphone positioning,” and it actually does.
The mic’s polar pattern is cardioid, which is the preferred pattern for handheld vocal mics, and Audio-Technica publishes a broad frequency response of 40 Hz to 20 kHz. This is one feature that lifts this condenser mic above its dynamic competitors—most handheld dynamic mics roll off at 15 kHz to16 kHz. Its impedance is rated at 100, and its typical dynamic range is rated at 113dB. The stated maximum input sound level is a very healthy 136dB SPL, and the published signal-to-noise ratio is 71dB.
Getting to Know Condenser Mics
Before we get into the test-drive, let’s talk about why condenser mics sound better for some applications. Dynamic mics either move a magnet against a coil or vice-versa in order to induce current, whereas the signal from a condenser mic results from a varying voltage potential that corresponds to the motion of a razor-thin diaphragm. It takes a lot more moving air molecules comparatively to budge a dynamic mic’s magnet or coil than it does to shake up a super-thin diaphragm. Condenser mics can hence transform sound waves of much lower amplitude into a corresponding electrical signal.
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