DPA Microphones - 6060 CORE Subminiature Normal SPL Lavalier Microphone

I find the DPA 4060 or 6060 as good as it gets, but the Cos-11 is a workhorse, something I’ve noticed with Cos is the black cable is the best, the grey and white tend to perish more easily, another aspect to consider is the mounting options, I think DPAs clips are better. Finally a midway option could be a Countryman, they sound good are robust and will fit DPA clips arguably better than the DPA mics themselves

Oh yes they’re the 4060 they have a reinforced sleeve around the head, it makes them a bit higher profile but still sound great

The Cos-11 is a good lav but to me it sounds too punchy and doesn't mix as well with a boom mic. It's also larger and the cable is thicker. Which can make it trickier to hide. The DPA 4060/6060 sound much more natural when mixed with boom mics. When I was working on Game of Thrones post specifically asked for 4060's from the beginning.

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.

I use both Sanken and DPA. I find that DPA sounds more natural, but to my ear gets a touch dark if somebody has a deep voice, while the Sankin “pops” voices out a bit more, though can be slightly sibilant if somebody has a higher pitched thin voice. However, I’ve had a couple of DPAs go DOA on me now, but have some Sankens that are a decade or more old and most are still working! (and when it was time to get a couple new lavs, I went with Sanken instead of DPA. One of my DPAs now has intermittent problems, and another one was ruled to be non-repairable).

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.

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.

As others said, it could be sounding bad inside the mask, and it could feedback if you have loud monitoring. That said, as others said, DPA lavs. You can wire them to a preamp or to a tx, they have models that sustain huge amounts of SPL, they have been used for decades hidden on talents, in the hair, on the chest, in a hat, they're tiny and sound surprisingly good.

As mentioned elsewhere, DPA probably gets the title of “best sound”. I have 12 (8 406x and 4 606x). Cos-11D sounds great, and from my understanding, is touted for its ubiquity. It’s not the most expensive lav. The capsule itself is small enough (in the direction that you want it to be). It’s not the absolute most durable, but will outlast most DPA’s. It hits a sweet spot of price:build:sound. People like the accessories.

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.