Sony ECM-MS957 Stereo Microphone with Rotating Mid Capsule

by Sony

Product Details

Product Manual [1.02mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 1.6 x 1.6 x 7.2 inches ; 11.7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00001WRI0
• Item model number: ECMMS957
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #88 in Electronics > Accessories & Supplies > Microphones > Dynamic Microphones > Vocal
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

1-Point Stereo Microphone Ideal For Instrumental Recordings Electret Condenser Microphone Design Works With Sony Md Walkman & Dat Walkman Portable Stereos Mid/Side Capsules For Natural Stereo Panorama Set Directive Angel To 90 Or 120 Oxygen-Free Copper Microphone Cable Gold-Plated L-Shaped Stereo Mini Plug Includes Stand/Holder Windscreen & Carrying Case Turning Capsule Mechanism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great mike, but hypersensitive, January 26, 2004

By 

Iver E. Peterson "ipeterso" (Lawrenceville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sony ECM-MS957 Stereo Microphone with Rotating Mid Capsule (Electronics)

I bought this mike for use with my minidisc recorders, mainly to record choral concerts at church and in other places. It has a nice stereo directionality and separation choices, but I advise you to watch your record levels or mike sensitivity setting because the sound levels tended to overload on loud passages or with percussive music like piano when used with my recorder's default (high) mike sensitivity setting.
It's very solid and well made. I'd rather have a boxed carrying case instead of the soft pouch provided, but that's a quibble.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting mic for field recording... quite nice, January 5, 2010

By 

D. Usleton (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sony ECM-MS957 Stereo Microphone with Rotating Mid Capsule (Electronics)

I do a lot of field recording and studio work both. I got this mic strictly for field recording. I typically record on a Marantz PMD661 (Oade Brothers with Super MOD). I wasn't sure I'd like a set stereo width pattern for field recording (I'm used to setting up whatever alignment I want for a given situation, either indoors or outdoors (ORTF, MS, XY (90-140 degree), etc.) Well, I tried this mic out, tested my recorded results, and I can now say I like it *very* much. I wasn't entirely sure of what type of stereo image it was giving me, though, so I did some analysis with different stereo imaging plugins (Ozone phase correction section) and software (wavelab, samplitude, speclab, etc.) and observed the following elements:

Setup:

- Rotated the Sony ECM957 mic capsule forwards in order to get better bass pickup. I was recording at the edge of a stream over cobblestones (of sorts) on the day in particular. Aimed back of mic at water at about 45 degrees to the ground. This mic has descent stereo width coming off the top of the mic at 90 to 120 degree angles to the mic, but bass pickup seems rather thin at those points. However, bass pickup has fairly nice pickup a touch lower down the far side of the mic facing away from me (I had the switch facing me). I tried to angle the mic over the water and stones such that the bass, mids, and highs balanced smoothly in my headphones. Had width switch set to 120 degrees.

- Marantz PMD661 recorder (from Oade Brothers with the Super MOD for field recording. Makes for much quieter preamps than the stock ones. Tested this with Rode NT1-A mics. Very quiet results indeed.)

- Rode NT4-DXLR stereo XLR mic cable (separate left and right XLR 3-pin connectors to one 5-pin stereo XLR connector - really hard to find this cable (cheap or otherwise) - finally found at markertek for good price.)

Recording:

Flash card in the Marantz recorder using 24-bit/96KHz quality. Set record level knob at about 7.5 to 8.0 - fairly high in other words for extra sensitivity - manual level (turned off auto-leveling feature in recorder).

Results:

Transfered wav file to computer. Opened in wavelab and dropped in Ozone plugin. Studied stereo widths in these default bands: 0Hz to 120Hz, 120Hz to 2KHz, 2KHz to 10KHz, and 10KHz to 20KHz. I noticed that 0Hz to 120Hz had the widest stereo width, roughly 120 to 140 degrees of width, or a little more at times. 120 to 2KHz kept an average width around 120 degrees, but with lots of peak movement between 90 and 130 degrees. 2KHz to 10KHz seemed to become a bit narrower, hovering between 120 and 90 degrees only. 10KHz to 20KHz stayed pretty tight around 90 degrees, even though the mic's switch was on 120 degrees. Used Ozone to adjust all widths above 120Hz to hover around 120 degrees. I set 0 to 120 range to pure mono, since the ear doesn't perceive direction under about 110 or 120 Hz (bass frequencies, in other words).

Conclusion:

Looks like this mic, with minor adjustments to the one-off stereo recording, seems to narrow the stereo pattern as the frequencies get higher. I'm sure some of this has to do with how I angled my mic for a smoother pickup of the water sounds, rather than just aiming the stronger stereo region of the mic directly at the water. And, it may also have a little to do with angling the capsule forwards. I'll have to investigate all of this further with more tests and see if my conclusion needs adjusting as well. Either way, with just minor adjustments, I widened the stereo pattern just slightly with the plugin and ended up with a finished recording that contained a very nice width to the sound. I also tested the result in mono and nothing perceptively disappeared. After listening for a while, I viewed a spectrum analysis of the mono setting and didn't notice any comb filter bands occurring, so that was a relief.

Again, the mic did quite a nice job with just plain stereo imaging for my purposes and produced a very nice stereo nature recording, given the minor adjustments. It was also much quieter than I'd expected. I have to admit that I expected a much louder noise floor on this mic. It's certainly noisier than Rode NT1-A mics (billed as the quietest mic in the world by the way), but it did a *wayyy* better job than I was expecting, considering I'm more accustomed to much quieter studio mics. I'll certainly be using it as one of my two main field recording setups consistently.

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Recently did some calculations on the Sony ECM-MS957 mic to try and figure out what the actual noise floor of this mic is. I haven't found anywhere online that has this info posted, so I thought I'd add that here. (Still using this mic after about 3 years). Anyway, the mic has these specs:

MaxSPL: >115 dB (1kHz, 1% distortion (THD?))
Dynamic Range: >90dB
Frequency Response: 50-18,000 Hz
Signal-to-Noise (SNR) Ratio: >69dB
Operating Temps: 32°F to 104°F

My calculations are:

115dB MaxSPL - 90dB DynRange = approx. 25dB noise floor
OR, another way:
94dB ref. signal - 69dB SNR = 25dB noise floor

So, it roughly has a 25dB noise floor, more or less. Based on a comparison of recorded material to my KSM27 mics (14dB noise floor) and NT1A mics (5 dB noise floor), I could accept this. Not horrible, but not great, just depends on what you're using it for:

- For live music (both acoustic or electric), I've found it more than works great. Some acoustic may reveal the noise floor if it's a single instrument being played softly, at least from my own personal experience.
- For field/nature recording, it really depends on what you're recording, and the following references are things I've personally recorded with it on a Marantz PMD661:
* Ocean waves: great
* Lake waves in a 5+ mph wind: almost always not noticeable
* Lake waves in a 1-3 mph wind: iffy - noise floor starts showing up in-between faint wave crashes; can be fixed with tweaking and multi-band downward expander
* Lake waves in a 0-1 mph wind: almost impossible to get rid of noise floor, other than downward expanding, or eq'ing a few magic frequencies; it's not massively loud, but it *is* noticable
* Crickets: if they're not very loud, noise floor will show up a little bit; again, 'loud' here is subjective
* Frogs (spring peepers mainly): if no other sounds are present to mask the 6000-12000 Hz area, it'll show up
* Insects: will show up more when they're quiet, is generally masked when the insect songs are louder (like with cicadas, for example)
* Wind: if there's nothing to mask those higher mid-range or high frequencies (5000-15000 Hz), it'll show up (as was my experience). If you have additional sounds in there for masking, like leaves blowing on the ground, leaves in the trees, insects, rain, bird song, etc., it'll likely mask the noise floor.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SONY STEREO CONDENSER MIC ROCKS!, September 29, 2005

By 

A. LOWE "happs01" (LA, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sony ECM-MS957 Stereo Microphone with Rotating Mid Capsule (Electronics)

I have taken this mic from the tropics of Puerto Rico to the London Underground and it has worked superbly. Once I figured out the sensitivity adjustment, I got louder recording levels. Remember to set it to max if you are recording ambient sounds outdoors. Super sensitive mic. Remember to hold it still and don't let the cable rub against clothing. Also, watch your breathing. It all gets picked up! I was trying to record nature sounds and picked up the cars on the road and dogs barking 1/2 mile or more away. I like the capsule adjustment as I can record sounds above me without turning the mic. Doesn't need phantom power which is nice.