Sennheiser - MKH 50 P48

The 50 can be used outdoors but it doesn't have the same "reach" as a longer shotgun. I use the DPA 2017, great clean and natural sound, super flat response and it can handle condensation and RF. Same price as the 416 but shorter and lighter.

I think I know what you mean about the bite. To my ears as well the 50 comes across as too forward at times up close. With the HP off I usually roll off quite a bit of low end and use some dynamic eq on the low mids to mids. Have you tried it with the HP filter on?

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.

Cool, just curious. I’ve counted on the MKH50 for 3 decades of features and episodic as the primary choice for my booms. Post loves my tracks. I stopped using the Sanken Cs3e completely and bought more 50’s to put in Zeppelins for outdoor work. So it’s 50’s all around for me.

Indoors in a tight reflective space - definitely the MKH50. YMMV, but that would absolutely be where I’d start. It’s an incredible mic for the price and my go to for indoors. Also I would hardly call it a dark sounding mic, it had a notable boost in the higher freqs.

You gonna need sensitive mics. So capacitor mic with small diaphragm like neuman km184 or schoeps cmc6. But that’s expensive. You can use shotgun but sometimes it will be difficult to have enough distance in a small room. Sennheiser have good shotgun (mkh series) and it’s cheaper than Neumann KMR or schoeps CMIT. But my best mic advice would be Line Audio CM3 are really cheap and sounds great.

Maybe others have better recommendations. But I was very surprised at how well the Sennheiser mkh 50 isolates.

If I were you, I'd get a nice wind cover from Radius or Rycote and ditch the h5 for a better recorder like a zoom f4/f8. The h5 with the stereo mic is ok for ambience imo, but the noisy pre amps are not the best for dialogue. And the 50 is a superb mic for indoors and outdoors too if you can avoid the wind noise. A used f4 will be very cheap and will get you decent pre amps, also will be nice when you can afford lav mics for dialogue

Have you tried another MKH50? I’m wondering if something might be wrong with the one you’re using because mine is definitely not dark. It does feel more full than a Shoeps from what I remember, but when I think dark I think Shure SM7b (not a condenser, I know). My MKH50 certainly has much more high end than that.

The F3 is a perfectly viable first voice recorder. My first recommendation is to try what you have access to. Borrow mics from friends and see how you sound in them, go to a store with display mics and ask to plug into them and record a voice sample. The more informed you are the happier you’ll be with your purchase. I know someone who makes about $10k a month as a voice actor using a Sennheiser MKH416 that I personally would not have considered using in a booth. I use the MKH50, and AKG SE300b with a CK91 capsule, or a Shure SM7b if I want a more broadcast sound. I will also recommend a dynamic vocal mic like a Shure SM58. It doesn’t pick up too much room and it’s inexpensive.