Comments about Nady Nady CM-2S Stereo Condenser Wired Microphone:

My very first recording was a of chamber music quartet (piano/violin/viola/cello). Due to unrelated issues, I was arriving just 1 minute before the start of the performance. As performers were being introduced, I plopped the microphone on an empty chair in front (no time to set up a stand) and pressed "Record" on my Boss Micro BR, guessing gain at 0dB.

The recording is very detailed, with good spatial placement of instruments and excellent rejection of noise from the rear. (My 4 year old son was within 3 ft of the microphone during the entire recording, and cannot be heard at all!) One effect of this rejection of room noise is that recordings do benefit of a little reverb added back after the fact.

There is very slight noise from either internal amplification in the microphone , amp in the Micro BR or the building A/C, which was running. As I did not use the microphone's bass roll-off, I needed to add some base roll-off in editing to eliminate the rumble caused by the air conditioning. I'm very impressed with small details recorded, every page turn or sigh will be heard. I'm sure the recording would have been better if the building AC had been turned off, or if I had put the mic on a proper stand, the level was determined more precisely, if I had recorded uncompressed 16-bit 44.1kHz instead of 192kbps MP3, if I had disabled the Micro BR's built-in compression, or if I had used a real pre-amp instead of the one in the Micro BR. Still, if a slight -60dB hiss is the most prominent thing to complain about, that says a lot about all the things that are right.

The recording turned out very good, with lots of detail and a very nice balance and accurate stereo field. I entirely attribute that to the wide frequency range and good first stage (AA-battery powered) amplification in the microphone. The included 10 feet XLR-to-double-1/4" cable seemed to be broken: after unscrewing the connectors it is clear the tension relieve clip wasn't installed properly and the cable seems to be of dubious quality in any case. The 1 foot XLR-to-3.5mm-stereo cable worked fine and is all the length I want to use for an unbalanced mic signal anyways.

So all thing considered, the bottom line is that before hitting the limitations of this microphone, you'll be hitting many others and already have achieved a very good recording.

-Geert