M-Audio Sputnik

What's In A Name?

We're all name-droppers – all of us. It's human nature to make comparisons or to use short-hand references in order to provide context. Then there's hyperbole – an exaggeration that tends more toward attention-grabbing than proper comparison. So when I saw the M-Audio's Sputnik literature with claims of being comparable to the best features of *both* the Neumann U47 and the AKG C12, I immediately became suspicious and curious. How could a microphone that lists in the hundreds of dollars dare to compare itself to those legendary mics? There are plenty of manufacturers that allude to the comparison, but I've not seen too many instances where a company will lay claim to two specific vintage microphones. That is, in a word – bold. I happen to have experience recording with both the U47 and C12 (along with a few of the AKG variants that are based in the C12 design), mainly in a classical recording context, but also in a studio where we laid down tracks for everything from bluegrass to rap. I have a fairly good sense of what these mics sound like, and even more importantly – what it's like to work with mics of this caliber.

Many people mistakenly presume that using expensive mics require a great deal of expertise – and while it's true that experienced recordists will get more from a great microphone, it's actually easier to get the right sound from a great mic since they can have a more tamed response across the frequency spectrum, can be more transparent across a wider dynamic range, and essentially a more honest representation of the original sound. If you're in a reasonably quiet and well-kept studio, simply obey the basic principals of microphone placement, don't trip over the cord or do anything else untoward in the session, and the take will likely go without a hitch and will sound great, too. But I digress... Since I don't have a U47 or C12 lying around – and no one was willing to just loan them gratis for this review (and yes, I asked around), I opted to take a right-angle approach to comparison. I decided to grab a few microphones that are in the same price class at the Sputnik (including one that also lays claim to emulating vintage German microphone design at nearly twice Sputnik's price) and run them side-by-side to compare how kindly they treat the subject. But more on methods and analysis later. For now I take a step back and look at M-Audio's Sputnik as its own product.

The Hardware

First of all – when you buy a Sputnik, you get more than just a vacuum tube microphone – you get just about everything you need, short of a pop screen at one end and an XLR cable to connect the unit to a console on the other – which makes the low asking price even more difficult to believe. Everything in the kit is housed within a snazzy aluminum carry case, and includes a power supply unit for the mic, a 7-pin cable to connect the two, a microphone shock-mount assembly, a draw-string carry bag that can be used to cover the Sputnik, a short line cord to provide juice to the external power supply, and of course the obligatory documentation and warranty/registration cards. I was fairly impressed with the way things were laid out, including a very solid-feeling foam insert that holds everything snugly in place – and you get a feeling of quality, that it won't fall part a few years down the line when I've gone into the case dozens of times while setting up and tearing down. I would have liked to have some room to toss in a short XLR cable or even a pop filter, but the case is really tailored to just the Sputnik and its hardware. As I removed and unwrapped the hardware I was impressed with the quality of each component. I was expecting the 7-pin cable to be short and flimsy, but it had a decent gauge and made for a good run, long enough to place the power supply next to my interface and connect to it with the shortest XLR cable I could find. Both the power supply and the microphone body itself had good heft and felt like both were very solid. I'm still taken aback by the microphone itself – it's just, so... bright. I don't think I've ever seen a completely nickel-plated microphone before – and find the decision to be an odd one, considering the stodgy, conservative, nearly military-grade look of the microphones that the Sputnik aspires to emulate. No doubt the Sputnik will show up in a fish-eye-lens close-up in an MTV video about two weeks after its “bling” potential is discovered. However, once it's placed in the basic black shock mount and behind a standard wind screen, you can take off the sunglasses and get right to work.

The Documentation

I've always gotten a kick out of the manuals that come with M-Audio's products. Not only do they not shy away from the details, but they also find a way of presenting the information with a bit of good humor sprinkled here and there – which is important if you want folks to read what you've written. Here, too, M-Audio does not disappoint. On facing pages you have references to the American Institute of Physics and Maxwell Smart. They even have a “philosophy” section – in a microphone manual. That's priceless (of course they were serious about that last bit, but once again I digress). Usually, the first thing you do when bringing out a new microphone is to chuck the documentation to the side and slap the thing into a mic stand and wail away - not so, here. M-Audio did the right thing in laying the groundwork on helping folks to understand the proper care and feeding of a tube microphone and its dependent parts. And there's lots of good stuff beyond the “do this” and “don't do that” handling instructions. It's well worth a read and keeping handy for future reference.

The one place where I took issue with the manual was the short paragraph on matched set recording. I think their explanation on how any two Sputnik mics can be used as a matched set was a bit incomplete, and in some places I outright disagree with the generalizations they make. They could have simply softened the language by asserting “This means that in most cases” instead of the absolutist tone they chose. There have been times I've found certain vintage tube microphones of the same model (that were manufactured in different years) to have significantly different frequency response from one another. I would never dream of pulling any two tube mics off the shelf and expect them to behave as a matched set. While I’m sure that Sputnik’s manufacturer has tight acoustic tolerances, many audiophiles would not be impressed by a +/-1.5dB variance per mic. If M-Audio is going to burn a column-inch on the previous page describing vacuum tube design and the potential effects of parasitic capacitances, they probably could have used the white space to push down the section on the flight case and mic bag and expound on the diverse opinions that exist in audiophile circles regarding what constitutes a matched set and how calibrating to various tolerances might impact results from coincident or near-coincident mic'ing techniques – in for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t mean to overburden the review with a subject that can be, well, so subjective – especially when the topic can take on religious tones in certain circles. This is just a side note in what is otherwise a well-written, informative, and occasionally entertaining user guide.

Setting Up And Getting Down To Business

Aside from the relatively mundane mechanics of threading the shock-mount to the mic and placing it on the stand, there are some order-of-operation factors in connecting the cables and powering up the mic. For those that are new to this kind of setup, the user guide is very helpful with step-by-step information (as mentioned above, keep the manual handy). Of course, since the Sputnik has its own power supply, applying microphone power from your interface is not necessary. In fact, the manual states specifically *not* to turn on phantom power from the mixer/interface – which leaves me to wonder what the effect will be in certain circumstances. If the user’s interface has a single switch that applies power to all mic inputs, there might be a case where one mic will need power and the Sputnik doesn’t. I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be a DC blocking circuit on the Sputnik’s power supply, but the manual doesn’t get into that level of detail – another odd omission. Since I’m using the mic inputs on my TASCAM FW-1884 (which has two phantom power switches, one for inputs 1-4 and another for inputs 5-8) I didn’t have to be too concerned about it. I set up the Sputnik on input 8 and the others on input 1. But it left me to wonder how other users might fare, since the price point of the Sputnik means that it will be making contact with a variety of interfaces and mixing boards.

On a more general level, there were a few challenges in configuring mics for direct comparison, including how many mics to record at one time and how to ensure the mics were getting the same signal. Setting up one mic at a time would introduce too many variables, and I certainly couldn’t mount all of them at once and place them in the same location. So I opted to place two mics at a time in a coincident over-and-under position, with the Sputnik permanently installed up top and inverted to place the capsules literally “head to head”. I then placed the other mics one-by-one in the lower mount and would baseline the pad for each mic by placing a band-limited noise source (essentially a battery-powered noise generator that I travel with to help me get to sleep while on the road) at the general level that I expect from the source (voice or instrument) and adjust the pad on the input of my FW-1884 to set both mics to equal sensitivity. It’s a rough equivalence, but it’s close enough for taming some of the various external factors in what will essentially boil down to a subjective test. The idea was to get down to the specific differences in the mics as they compare to the Sputnik, and I felt pretty good about my chances of narrowing it down to the relevant factors.

So, once I had a process set up for rotating the mics in and out of a session, I was ready to roll. I recorded my own voice, both speaking and singing, as well as a few takes strumming a hand-crafted Appalachian lap dulcimer (that was built by my uncle). I also called in some additional talent by enlisting the expert assistance of actress Kaye Kittrell and oboist/multi-instrumentalist Victoria Sabonjohn. You would have seen Kaye on TV shows ranging from “Saturday Night Live” to occasional appearances on “The Gilmore Girls”, but she’s also an accomplished stage actress (and talented still photographer, to boot). She brought some of her stage material from a play she recently performed here in Hollywood, along with some other bits and pieces of demos she’s done before. If the material we captured with the Sputnik was good enough for reuse, she planned to include it in her voice-only demo reel. While Victoria is known more as a professional oboist, she also brought an English horn as well as a rare oboe d’amore – which has a very unique sound and could be a challenge for a microphone to tame some of its characteristic jumps and dips as this older-styled instrument tended to be a bit more unwieldy through its register. She also brought along several pennywhistles, recorders, and fifes – all of which have their own unique timbral and dynamic range. This was going to be a professional challenge that I wasn’t sure the Sputnik was up to, since she pointedly remarked at the very beginning of our session that she has disliked just about every microphone she’s ever encountered in a close-mic’d recording session.

Listening In

I’m going to jump ahead of the description of *what* we recorded and go ahead and divulge at least part of the findings: the results were – in a word – startling. Before we even heard the first recorded syllable or note, the differences in what I was “seeing” in the waveforms as they were drawn in the track lanes and frequency representation in the spectrogram plug-ins (that were running in real time on each input) were *not* subtle. I intentionally chose to not monitor the session through headphones or near fields, since I didn’t want to “tune” my listening habits to any individual microphone. I chose to simply read the meters and listen directly to the performers as they sang, spoke, and played. It was amazing to see each mic take on its own characteristics, choosing which things it “swallowed” and which portions jumped out. I thought that the visual representation of the differences between mics that were essentially in the same price class would be so similar, and that differences would not be so plainly visible in a track lane. I was wrong. So now I'll jump back to describe a bit about the recording sessions and what we did to evaluate how the Sputnik proves out.

Kaye’s sessions were split between an afternoon to record a mock PSA and follow-up on another day with material to place and replace in her voice-only reel. In the first session I set her up with headphone monitoring to get direct feedback from the Sputnik. The session started with “Hello, hello… testing 1, 2, 3… hey, this sounds really good.” After a few takes I switched her monitor over to the solid-state large diaphragm condenser and she immediately requested (with a grin) “let's just switch it back to the other mic and just leave it there”. Without hearing the results first-hand, I was getting the impression that the Sputnik was holding up to at least some of its claims.

In our second session, she brought out several different types of voice over cues – ranging from straight-ahead talking-head news commentary to a whispered lament from a forlorn lover (in her best British accent), to a highly dynamic anecdote in the voice of a southern bell with an indignant, barky drawl. After we finished the first part of the session, we went through a few takes to listen to what each mic had to offer while the live session was still fresh in our minds. In every instance, it seemed that the response from the Sputnik was more detailed and forgiving than any other mic we put beside it. Only the other tube mic that we A/B’d against the Sputnik was in the ballpark, and Kaye and I both picked up the differences in the clarity of the sibilance and the general “air” around her voice – the Sputnik was clearly the winner here, too. After checking a few of the takes, and trying to use a channel strip plug-in to get the same level of consistency out of the other mics that we were getting straight from the Sputnik, we set aside all of the other mics. For one of her additional cues, she wanted to try a newsreel blurb as though she was in the middle of a crowd doing a live report. So I opened up the distance between the pop screen and the mic and switched the mic to figure 8 to get more of a “roomy” response. When we placed her take in an “outdoor” reverb impulse with some crowd walla behind it out of a sound FX library, the results were quite impressive. The first question from Kaye was “can we put *that* in my demo reel?” I think that says it all. But the important point that I don’t want anyone to miss is that in the time that I would usually be struggling with a channel strip plug-in, trying to tame the recorded take into something usable, we had already added a few creative elements and had something that was interesting and much more viable as a whole. That’s what using high-end professional gear is all about, the technical portion gets taken care of so that you can move on to the good stuff with a minimum of fuss. The Sputnik was beginning to shine on the inside as much as the nickel finish on the outside.

In between those sessions with Kaye, Victoria sat in with her bevy of instruments. We focused on comparing the Sputnik to the other tube mic and one of the large diaphragm solid state condensers. If anything, the exaggerated nodes that the other mics exhibited with the human voice were magnified with driven resonances from the oboes and English horn. Victoria played solo passages from Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” and Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” along with a few other chosen passages that showed more coloratura of the oboe, oboe d’amore and English horn. I placed the microphones intentionally close to the body of the instruments in order to capture a bit more of the key action than in a normal session. This was to hear how each microphone handled that range of frequencies in the context of a highly resonant instrument. The key action in the Sputnik was “present” without making the sound too harsh or objectionable, where the other mics that exaggerate the top end seemed to really bite.

When she broke out the fifes (one of which was a Civil War era military model) I backed out the Sputnik, re-baselined the levels between both mics and “let it rip”. That fife would take your head off at close range. To have something that high-pitched and that loud is a real acid test for any microphone. On the solid state condenser, the waveform it recorded looked noticeably “squared off”, and playback of the take proved the same. But with a pad adjustment on the FW-1884, the Sputnik handled it without breaking a sweat (or clipping) – its dynamic range is, in a word – impressive. When we wrapped up the recording session and sat down to go through the side-by-side comparison, our ears immediately told us what our eyes were seeing on the screen – the Sputnik held up, and the others did not. After rolling through a few takes recorded with the Sputnik, Victoria commented “That’s what I sound like – at least to me. That’s what I *should* sound like, except for all of the breathing that you caught.” So we went to work on a few of those takes and did some minimal processing with a touch of downward expansion to reduce the breathing noise in between phrases. We then ran her solos through a few selected reverb impulses, including Chan Centre in Vancouver, Bastyr Hall in Seattle, Sydney’s Opera Hall, and Lincoln Center. Victoria’s response was “That’s what I *should* sound like if I got a chance to play any of those places.” Even before we started adding the sampled reverbs, the sound was even and transparent. There was nothing to filter between her performance at the time and what we heard on playback. As soon as we switched over to the alternate takes, eyebrows raised and scowls emerged. There were instances where a microphone would turn a note from her English horn into a barky clarinet. Other times the notes seemed to completely disappear. At this point, it wasn't a comparison any more, it was a rout. The Sputnik is the kind of microphone that can spoil you for anything else in its class. All of the tech-talk in the user’s guide boils down to this – a true sound – and that’s more than many mics can deliver at any price.

The Inevitable Comparisons

The Sputnik is going to draw comparisons (and more than a little bit of ire) from all corners of the audiophile pantheon, and M-Audio asked for it. Any time you call out some of the most highly-regarded microphones in recording history, you’re going to turn some heads. But after spending a few days recording with this mic, and based on my previous experience, I can understand why they’re not shy about making the comparison. The Sputnik is most reminiscent of the vintage microphones (even more than an equally modern vacuum tube counterpart) in that you can set it up and trust that it’s going to give you a true, even, honest take. In large part, the recordist can forget about “fighting” the sound of the mic and simply move on to more creative tasks, or simply to the next take. In the same way that the Sputnik is transparent to the sound, so to is it transparent to the workflow, and that’s the real brilliance of this nickel-plated microphone, especially at its price. If someone asked me what to do with a $1000 microphone budget, I’d tell them to buy a Sputnik and a decent mic pre-amplifier. If they wanted advice on what mic to get with $1500, I’d tell them to buy two Sputniks. Remember, at some point you have to set aside the constant comparisons and just go with what you know – and M-Audio has come through with a vacuum tube condenser that, in my experience, holds up to the hype.

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