Sony ECM-778

Sony take aim at one of the big guns of the shotgun world...

Japanese electronics giants Sony are not a company to do anything in haste. The short shotgun mic that is the subject of this review has been in development for many years, and was partly prompted by a research exercise undertaken before the Covid pandemic. Sony wanted to understand why many sound engineers still preferred Sennheiser’s ubiquitous MKH416 to their own ECM‑678; the feedback they received was, as I understand it, bracing, with participants scoring the MKH more highly on almost all criteria. Sony’s designers gritted their collective teeth, took the results on board and went away to design an entirely new model. So, despite the very similar model names, the ECM‑778 is billed as a big step forward — and, Sony hope, as the mic that will finally end Sennheiser’s dominance in this sector of the market.

Here's the hi-res WAV file to audition in your own DAW:

paul_hayes_voiceover_demo.zip

Tube Mics

All of these mics use the same core design principle, whereby a slotted ‘interference tube’ is placed in front of a small‑diaphragm capacitor capsule. This introduces cancellation at mid and high frequencies, suppressing the capture of off‑axis sound to an extent that isn’t possible simply by varying the design of the capsule itself. However, this increased directionality comes at the cost of several compromises. The tube needs to be relatively long, meaning that it’s difficult to miniaturise a shotgun mic; and although off‑axis sound is attenuated, such off‑axis sound as is captured tends to be highly coloured. Further to this, the off‑axis response at any given frequency is typically quite variable with angle of incidence, and this can mean that sources moving off axis sound phasey.

Some manufacturers have attempted high‑tech responses to these issues, for instance by using built‑in DSP with multiple capsules to maintain a narrow directivity across a wider frequency range. However, Sony have chosen to stick with a single capsule and an all‑analogue approach, with improvements coming courtesy of old‑school electro‑acoustic know‑how. Several breakthroughs are claimed for the new mic: at just 176mm in length, it’s significantly shorter than the MKH416, and it weighs only 102g to the MKH’s 175g. This is potentially a significant advantage in a mic that will often be used on boom poles and on the edge of camera shots. Like most of Sony’s recent mic launches, the ECM‑778 is Hi‑Res Certified, meaning that it has an...