Audix Fusion 6 Set

15 years in the biz.
logic pro
ns10"s
Apogee d/a. a/d
Big Ben
Neve Lion Heart mixer

with a little eq this mic set rox.
I use em with a tlm103 as a room mic and this set up can fool the best set of ears.
I have seen some people slag this mic pack but if you use a good mixer with good pre's
you can go a long way with just this six mic set.
It is all about the sound, not the name.

I've been playing off and on as a hobbie for 40 years, guitar, bass, drums, keyboard - and had managed to never need to buy a mic. But I decided to try a bass experiment using a small, flexible tube amp (THD Univalve - which will drop to 40Hz) into a homebuilt cab(Vifa speaker from a Mackie Studio Monitor - down to 42Hz), and mic'ing that into a power amp to get the volume desired.

So I started looking for mics that were reasonably priced that would handle the frequencies and found they were hard to come by on the low end. I've always been surrounded by the standard, Shure. Vocals, drums, intruments, seems they did it all. Everyone said buy Shure. The SM57 stats are 40Hz-15kHz. After looking at the graphs of the SM57 and SM58, I said SURE too! -12dB at 40Hz, I don't think so.

But I really didn't find anything that looked any better without dropping 3 Bens till I ran across Audix. This was a personal experiment not government work throwing money down a rathole. I had an additional $800+ in it as it was. I figured I'd pull the mic(s) of choice and sell what I didn't need if it worked out, and ship the lot off if it didn't.

I post this review in the hopes of getting something started cause there's a million Fusion mics out there but NO reviews here, which amazes me.

The set consisted of the case/keys, couple condensor mic clips, 4 dynamic mics (3 F10, 1 F12), and 2 condenser mics. Intended for mic'ing drums.

Bottom line is I was impressed by the performance of the Audix mics for my application. They did everything Audix said they'd would do and they put out the sound that was put into them according to their parameters. In looking at the F15 condenser mic graphs they fudged on the specs like Shure did, otherwise true to their word. The F15's listed as 100Hz-20kHz I think but it's not flat till 200Hz, about -10dB at 100. Nitpicking there but the Shure at 40Hz at -12db is not, at least for a drummer/bass player, even guitar for that matter as it's not flat till over 150Hz - lllllong way from 80Hz. And the Audix is practically half the price.

Overall, the Audix mics were actually significantly under-rated.

The F12 stats are 40Hz-10kHz. But it's +4dB at 40Hz and it's below 30Hz before hitting -2dB. -3db I can live with if required. The curve is also humped at low and top ends with a slight dip in the mids - THAT is a bass curve. The Shure SM57 is basically flat, that is not a bass curve.

The F10 stats are 50Hz-12kHz but it's still pulls -2dB at 40Hz, which stones the SM57. Humped curve to it but it's a midrange mic not low end.

The F15 I've already addressed as much as I'm going to.

In practice, the Audix performed like their curves. The F12 took the bottom, the F10 was noticeably brighter but not major so, and the F15 took the top end. The combination I found best for my purposes was running the extremes, F12 to take the bottom and F15 to cover the top with them overlapping for mids - and they complimented each other well that way. For bass guitar you need minimum to 7kHz, 9kHz better, 13kHz is pretty optimal, and beyond is icing on the cake short of slap tones. Upper order harmonics make a difference for bass and personally I prefer to have a choice of what to cut rather than have it decided for me.

For my application, I found no issues with these mics and was pleasantly suprised. Far as I now, it's the best bang for the buck in mics.