Audix ADX51

I have been engineering Live performance venues for around 14 years now. I started in a church setting but have gained experience in contracting/installing sound and running concert venues.

I do very little recording as most of my job is all live mixing so I don't have any fancy recording equipment.

This microphone is a condenser mic with a cardioid pickup pattern. Audix primarily markets this microphone as an instrument condenser but all of my experience, so far, is using this with group vocals in live performances.
I came across this mic while reviewing mics for my church choir. Our aging Audio-Technica choir mics had outlived their usefulness. I was originally looking at other manufacturers since I had never used anything from Audix before but the dealer I was working with loaned us one to try out along with some others.
I did quite a few A/B comparisons between this mic and the others that I tested. None of the others came close to providing as much gain before feedback as this mic does and very few could match or improve upon it's sound quality. The only ones that could were large diaphragm studio condenser mics which were much too large to blend into the decor of the auditorium.
Using this mic, I was able to get a huge sound out of our choir (about 40-50 people) and bring the vocal volume up to the level that we typically run soloists at. Before, we would always have to run the choir accompaniment music at a much lower level due to the fact that the old choir mics would feedback if turned up very loud. Therefore, the choir songs would lack a lot of the power and emotion that a typical soloist or small group could deliver.
Shortly after investing in a small arsenal of these mics, I tried them out on a women's vocal group with only 2 or 3 ladies per mic. These mics dleivered a much more natural and blended sound to the group than we previously got using our Shure Beta 58A vocal mics.
Overall, I would strongly recommend trying out these mics for group vocals. If you need a clean sounding group vocal mic with plenty of gain before feedback, these mics will deliver. The only reason that I am not rating these as a 10 is because of the sound quality. NOt that the sound quality is bad - because it's certainly not - but it just isn't quite up to the level of perfection that most large-diaphragm studio condensers deliver. If I were recording a vocal choir or group, I would use a different mic, bu for live performance, these can't be beat.