DPA Microphones - 6060 CORE Subminiature Normal SPL Lavalier Microphone

The best is DPA 6060, 4060 sounds better in my opinion, but 6060 has a smaller profile, but cos11d is a work horse for sure.

Cos-11s are incredible mics for the price you buy them for. Yes, DPA6060 probably sounds better, but at twice the price, I find myself sticking with my Cos-11s for their durability. In general, the Cos-11s might not always be the *perfect* choice, but they will never ever be the wrong choice (outside of specialized uses like underwater/sports)

The best professional quality? That would be a current Lectrosonics, Zaxcom, Sound Devices, or Wisycom wireless system. There are many models of transmitters and receivers, but for argument sake let’s say Lectro DBSM and DCR822. As for lav mics themselves? DPA 4060, DPA 6060 or Sanken COS-11D. All great. (There’s tonnes of other options top, those are just too of mind). Boom mic will sound better in general though, and best would be a Schoeps CMIT5U or miniCMIT or SuperCMIT for exteriors, Sanken CS-3e for very noisy locations that need a laser-like focus, and a Schoeps CMC6 MK41 or Sennheiser MKH50 for interiors. Best would be used with a plug-on transmitter like a Lectrosonics DPR-A or HMa, and the paired receiver running into either a Sound Devices, Zaxcom, Sonosax, or Aaton recorder with maybe a Sonosax or old Cooper 208D mixer in front of it. (Again there’s tonnes of somewhat equivalent options for mics, transmitters, and mixers, I’m just illustrating a point.) Then presuming that’s all utilized properly and recorded well (meaning proper wirelesss signal distribution and power distribution and proper gain staging), it would be a matter of taking the best of both worlds, the open natural sound of the boom and combined it with the up front body of the lav, using Auto Align Post 2 to phase align the two. Then some in depth editing of cut/fill/fade, layer in additional ambience, foley, library effects, sound design, etc. and mix using EQ/compression/reverb/etc.. with a high degree of automation across many parameters written in through a physical control surface for fader moves. Listening while moving a physical control gives way better and faster results than drawing automation lines and curves on with a mouse. or wait… did you not actually mean THE BEST MOVIE-LIKE QUALITY for realsies? People seem to get okay results with the DJI for a cheap, social-media-quality, streamlined, user friendly system. [If you learn](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk55CEmjflkbEK-P8jag5pqZ1CpbjaVwZ&si=5dkXp77d7NCOQdaG) how to do a half decent job in post production you could probably squeeze a lot more life out of it too. Or if you can tolerate a little more complexity in operation, a Sennheiser G4 system would probably sound better. Best upgrade you could do for it is to replace the kit mic with something better like a Sanken COS-11D. Just gotta make sure it’s wired correctly. Recording separately from the camera and syncing up afterwards also will help since camera audio inputs typically have terrible noise floors. A cheap entry level recorder like the Sound Devices MixPre series would be where to look for that. Again increasing complexity. Sorry, didn’t mean to be snarky at the start, but it’s extremely unrealistic to expect the BEST or MOVIE-LIKE out of inexpensive consumer/prosumer grade gear. The truth is that there is an unbelievable amount of cost and skill that goes into getting that movie sound you’re talking about. There’s a reason it’s a whole department.

Indeed it’s a complicated question to answer, and it ultimately depends on the person’s voice, but If you’re asking “best” lav mic without a boom, and you’re renting, I would say get DPA 4060’s or 6060’s. COS 11-D’s are great as others have said, and they’re workhorses, but in my experience the DPA’s generally surpass it in quality, and arguably have the same tonal quality as a nice boom mic would.

At this level of gear it’s not really an “across the board best” situation. In my opinion the best sounding lavs are the DPA 6060 and 6061 but they’re not as sturdy as the Cos-11. The Cos 11 sounds good, especially on male voices and is a very durable mic. Also the support from these companies is better than a prosumer company like Deity or Rode so that’s another factor.

I love the DPA 6060’s. Very easy to hide.

They better be for $600-$700 with microdot adapter. 🙂

COS-11Ds are work horse lavs that sound solid. In terms of sound quality I like to lean more on the DPA 4060 or 6060 line but they are more fragile. It's incredible pairing the DPA shotgun mics and lavs with how close they sound alike in times when you have to use the wire instead of the boom in post. In rooms that have reverb/echo I feel like the COS-11D's perform better over your average high quality lav but that's just my opinion.

I don’t think there is a single best microphone. COS-11D are very sturdy and work well to get a decent sound, but will always sound like a lavalier mic. DPA 4060 sound absolutely wonderful, but the capsule can be hard to hide in tight clothing. DPA 6060 wants to solve this problem and has a very small capsule, but doesn’t sound as good. Countryman B6 are wonderful to hide, but hard to get a good sound out of it with certain voices. And so on, and so on. Every mic has its strengths and weaknesses. The COS-11D are a good work horse in my opinion that can get you a long way, but for some cases it’s simply the wrong mic

Also **incredibly** good mics -- my pal Richard Ragon swears by them.

To some degree, if you physically **wear** a lavalier and keep it close to your mouth, it will eliminate a lot of the room from the sound. The trick is you have more potential for mic noise if you bump it or the cable in use. There's an art to placing lav mics carefully on people (as is done everyday in film & TV). There are great condensor lavs like the Sanken COS-11, the DPA 6000 & 4000 series, the Sennheiser MKE series, and the Countryman B6.

It’s kind of silly how fragile the 6060s are. I keep a few, but do not use them as my primary mics for this reason.