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 extended high‑frequency response. Sony say that it is within ±10dB from 40Hz to 40kHz. Finally, Sony say that their newly developed interference tube maintains an unusually consistent on‑axis frequency response regardless of distance.

ECM Records

The ECM‑778 ships in a robust and practical hard plastic case. As well as the mic itself, this contains both foam and ‘dead cat’ windshields, a 50cm XLR cable and a plastic clip with a hollow 8cm‑long base that serves to get it out of the user’s way when mounted on top of a camera. No shockmount is included, but the mic will fit comfortably in a Rycote lyre suspension. Specifications were unavailable at the time of writing, but the E in Sony’s ECM mics usually stands for ‘electret’, so I assume the ECM‑778 is a permanently polarised design rather than a ‘true’ capacitor mic; regardless, it requires conventional 48V phantom power. A recessed switch introduces a high‑pass filter.

As I don’t do a lot of work that calls for shotgun mics, I enlisted the help of TV sound specialist Patrick Pretorius with testing. He took the review mic out with him on a couple of major sports broadcasts, and rigged it pitchside at a Wembley Arena tournament alongside a Sennheiser 416. He was also able to get it into the hands of radio presenter Paul Hayes, who usually uses a 416 and kindly recorded a voice sample comparing the two, which you can hear in the audio example file above. And, of course, I tested it in my own studio.

We were, I think, all impressed. The Sony mic’s compactness is a clear advantage in real‑world use; it’s only a little longer than a typical small‑diaphragm capacitor mic, and extremely lightweight. Compared with a 416, it’s less likely to droop on its mount, or protrude into a wide shot when mounted on camera. The relative shortness of the interference tube also means that voiceover artists can work it up close to exploit the proximity effect, and you can clearly hear the resulting low‑end enhancement in Paul’s vocal sample. But the most obvious differences between the ECM‑778 and the MKH416 are located from perhaps 7kHz upwards.

Front Row Seats

The Sennheiser mic has a familar, warm on‑axis tone that flatters male voices when used close up, and presents backgrounds and ambiences such as crowd noise in a fashion that is comfortable and non‑fatiguing, if not exactly natural. By contrast, the new Sony mic has a much crisper high end, both on and off axis. On the whole, I felt this was well judged; it assists with intelligibility and subjective clarity, without making the mic sound thin, or becoming tiring in the long term. Directionality seemed pretty similar to that of the 416, but the additional brightness did mean that off‑axis sounds sometimes grabbed the attention in a way that they didn’t on the Sennheiser mic, and on one or two occasions this made the inevitable off‑axis coloration more apparent. But if you were to equalise one of the mics to match the on‑axis sound of the other, I think this would largely eliminate such differences.

Shotgun mics are frequently used for dialogue capture in film and TV work, where their directionality allows them to capture an apparently close‑up sound whilst remaining out of view of the camera. This generally works well if you’re on a purpose‑built set, but can be a bit of a minefield in more confined spaces. Near to the source, the enhanced directionality means you can capture an apparently dry sound, but there’s a critical distance at which room reverb starts to be audible, and once you get beyond this, everything starts to fall apart. This is an inevitable consequence of the interference tube design, and is as true of the ECM‑778 as any other mic. Before you reach that point, though, the vocal capture does remain impressively consistent in tone.

The interference tube on the ECM‑778 features two rows of 19 slots on opposite sides. These slots each span rather less than 60 degrees of the tube’s circumference, and increase gradually in width from about 1mm to 2.5mm or so. The off‑axis response of the mic varies quite a bit with rotational angle; typically, it would be set up as shown in the photograph, with the low‑cut switch and the helpful Up legend at the top, and the slots running along either side. Rotating it through 90 degrees considerably alters both the character and the level of the off‑axis pickup. Again, this is typical of shotgun mics, though Schoeps claim a uniform response for their much more costly CMIT range.

Point & Shoot

To music producers and studio engineers, shotgun mics might seem like a niche category, but they are everywhere in sound for picture, and the MKH416 must have generated millions over the years for Sennheiser. There are sound reasons for this. If you’re working on a World Cup that’s being watched by billions of people worldwide, the incentive to stick with something that you know will work is pretty strong. Like most of Sennheiser’s mics, the 416 is also an RF design rather than a conventional capacitor mic, which gives it some advantages in terms of resistance to humidity. I wasn’t able to test this aspect of the ECM‑778’s performance.

It’s both positioned and priced as a direct rival to the MKH416, and is clearly a very high‑quality alternative.

The MKH416 occupies a relatively sparsely inhabited price band, perhaps because other manufacturers have been reluctant to go head to head against such an industry standard. Historically, other popular ‘short gun’ mics have tended to be significantly more expensive options for pro use, such as the Schoeps MiniCMIT, or more affordable models targeted at on‑camera use in semi‑pro and consumer environments. In recent years, however, DPA have been making inroads with their 2017, and my time with the ECM‑778 was enough to convince me that this, too, is a serious challenge to Sennheiser’s dominance. It’s both positioned and priced as a direct rival to the MKH416, and is clearly a very high‑quality alternative.