Electro-Voice "only" has 75 years in the field of live sound, always with technologically advanced products designed to meet its users' demands. Unlike other well-known brands, Electro-Voice's catalog includes not only microphones but also loudspeakers and amplifiers. But here we focus on the former, the microphones, specifically the RE410 condenser and the N/D967, both basically for live applications. Is Electro-Voice a prestigious brand? As an anecdote, take a look at the series "Frasier" and the brand of microphone its main character uses in his radio studio; or consider that Neil Armstrong, back in 1969, used an Electro-Voice microphone to say his famous words when he landed on the moon. Let's come back to the blue planet.

The Electro-Voice brand
Personally, when someone talks to me about an Electro-Voice microphone, the same thing always comes to mind: their characteristically shaped grilles and their soft-touch, scuff-resistant handles. And that's how our two guests arrived for testing. Both with that characteristic, durable handle (a couple of old Electro-Voice mics that must have quite a few years and hundreds of gigs behind them confirm it), and that plastic ring protecting the grille from unwanted knocks. By the way, on the N/D967 the plastic ring (yellow, in this case) can be removed, perhaps allowing you to fit a ring of another color, which would make it easier to identify the microphone from a safe distance (for example, recognizing from FOH the channel of the "red," "yellow" or "blue" Electro-Voice). A pity that putting the ring back on isn't entirely easy.

Like the vast majority of live microphones (if not all), the connection is made via an XLR connector, with a balanced output.

RE410, the cardioid condenser
Very similar to the "Electro-Voice versions" of the SM58 (actually a misconception), I was surprised to find a condenser microphone with this shape. When I received both microphones, I thought the condenser was the "flattened" one (look at the images), but it wasn't. The RE410 is the one that needs its corresponding 48 V. It's a mic designed for vocals, with a typical cardioid pattern. Its features, besides the polar pattern and the anti-handling-noise grip, include a design that eliminates singers' unintentional pops while improving its behavior against feedback, or so says the little leaflet that comes with the microphone. In its frequency response graph we find a significant peak at 10-12,000 Hz and a smaller one between 4,500 and 7,000 Hz. According to this, vocal reproduction will have excellent presence, making mixing easier for the sound engineer. The peak between 10 and 12 kHz can cause some problems in the monitors, easily solved with a dedicated equalizer.

I made my first contact with it on a system set up for live sound. The first impression was of a certain aggressiveness, with a sound that was too "shrill" and lacking in low end, with the microphone placed about 15-20 cm back from the voice. Curiously, at just 1 or 2 cm, the proximity effect causes a very excessive presence of lows, giving a completely different sound from before. After some EQ, I got a much more correct and compact voice, slightly cutting the highs and looking for a certain tonal coherence with the mids. But a noticeable change in the distance between the mic and the voice threw the EQ off again. I had no choice but to insert a high-pass filter around 200 Hz (which probably indicates a high resonance frequency), and although the resulting voice was still correct, I had to give up that touch of low end that enhances a male voice. Likewise, with a monitor in play, I had few problems controlling the treble in the high frequencies, although this gave a certain nasal, slightly unpleasant sound. Once the EQ for this monitor was under control, the singer was comfortable with the monitor sound and I stopped worrying about possible feedback. At FOH, the RE410 behaved very well, apart from those lows, fitting into the final mix quite capably.

N/D967, vocal precision
When an engineer has several gigs coming up with bands he doesn't know, he tends to turn to "tough" supercardioid mics for the monitors to avoid musicians (or would-be musicians) badgering him every two minutes with that phrase: "I can't hear myself." Electro-Voice's 967 is a delight in these cases, thanks to a magnificent design that largely prevents feedback even with terribly designed monitors.

The N/D967 stands out for several things, although we could sum it up as "concert architecture," a phrase I've just made up based on the "concert vocal" label printed just below the model name on the microphone itself. So its shell designed to keep saliva from damaging the capsule is surprising, as is the interchangeable colored ring I mentioned earlier; but above all, it stands out for its perfect control of feedback.

Curiously, the N/D967 is not really a new microphone. Electro-Voice took it off the market at the end of the last century! (well, in 1999), and a couple of years ago brought it back after many requests, precisely because of its robust behavior with feedback.

It's a tremendously tough microphone physically, easy to grip and simple to use. Designed for vocal use, its frequency response again shows the typical supercardioid pattern with quite a lot of presence in the area between 3,000 and 9,000 Hz, at +10 and +15 dB, but without a recognizable peak. As for the proximity effect, in principle it would be quite similar to the previous RE410, although the N/D967 includes a fairly effective high-pass filter (you'll avoid using the console's filter, unless it's absolutely essential, which I doubt).

But that's not all: it's very sensitive. It includes an N/DYM magnetic motor, which means the signal reaches the console at a good level, giving power and control over the preamp gain.

Although its performance as a vocal mic from FOH is quite good, the best part comes when we set out to check its much-touted effectiveness in the monitors. And even starting with no EQ at all (that is, everything at 0 dB), the result is surprising. In fact, the monitor engineer will be able to focus much more on getting the sound the singer or artist wants instead of focusing all their attention on avoiding annoying squeals. Simply sensational.

Conclusion
Although our two guests on these pages come from the same manufacturer, and although the manufacturer has wanted to give them similar looks, we are looking at two very different microphones. The Electro-Voice RE410 condenser microphone will seduce with its good frequency response (although with a certain aggressiveness), but it's difficult to handle live when the monitors are sent, for example, from FOH. Useful for "intimate" applications, it will work well in acoustic settings but may fall short in electric ones.
On the other hand, the more than robust Electro-Voice N/D967 will be appreciated when the monitors could be a problem, when a good signal output is needed and when you don't want to sacrifice too much sound quality. In fact, it becomes a somewhat expensive mic when you think only of its sound quality at FOH (although its high-pass filter works very well), but tremendously useful when, from a realistic point of view, it reminds us that musicians want to hear themselves, and hear themselves well. So it looks like we're out of excuses.