Review: Telefunken M80 Dynamic Microphone

The Telefunken M80 ($249) is a high-quality dynamic microphone offering unbelievable bang-for-the-buck. Designed with top-quality vocal reproduction in mind, it delivers exceptionally good sound quality both live and in the studio, with a clear, crisp frequency response that cuts through any mix to reveal a finely detailed vocal track. Built like a tank, the M80 is priced competitively and offers overwhelmingly good performance. The M80 is easily a mic that every engineer should consider for their mic locker, especially useful if you spend time mixing both live and in the studio.

Finding a good microphone is hard work. There are literally thousands of options -- from top-name, high-end German condenser microphones to the cheapest Chinese dynamic microphones that look strangely inspired by well-known brands. Finding the right mic is a challenge, as any audio engineer can tell you. It takes a strong understanding of what (or who) you're recording, the different types of microphones and their characteristics, and balancing all these technical details with your budget. It's not easy.

Meet the M80

The Telefunken M80 was kindly supplied by our friends at Telefunken USA for this review, and it's one eye-catching microphone. It's a dynamic microphone, developed primarily with vocals in mind, and on vocals, it delivers unbelievable performance. More on this later.

While part of the magic of the M80 is its low-mass voice coil with a mylar membrane, the heart of this great mic is the step-up output transformer built by AMI/TAB-Funkenwerk. The M80 features a cardioid pickup pattern with exceptional rear rejection, and a frequency response of 30Hz to 18Khz, with a gentle peak between 2kHz to 7kHz. It's built with an exceptionally rugged rubberized body and an eye-catching polished chrome windscreen.

Sound Quality

The M80 prides itself as being a really good vocal microphone, and in this area, it doesn't disappoint. Vocals are polished, accurate, and full of body without much proximity effect. With processing kept to a minimum, the M80 sounds fantastic. Easily in a class of its own, the M80 really shines with a touch of tasteful compression and situation-appropriate EQ. This is an extremely good-sounding mic, especially on female vocals. While there's very little proximity effect, the low end response of the M80 is still impressive, given a naturally good source.

The M80 is a killer vocal mic -- one of the best in its class, for sure -- but it's also a tremendous utility microphone for stage or studio. I tried the M80 on a lot of sources, and it really performed well on most everything. On snare, it sounded amazing, with a full, sharp attack and great body, the best part being the rejection of outside noise, especially pesky high hat. It also sounded exceptional on guitar cab, allowing even the dullest-sounding rigs cut through the mix without requiring EQ that stepped on the valuable frequency real estate needed by vocals.

The tight cardioid pattern of the M80 is one of its strongest points. When used live, monitor feedback was rare. The tight pattern also eliminated stage bleed, perfect for artists using in-ear monitors.

Build Quality

The M80 is built extremely well, and is very rugged for everyday use by performing musicians. While I really appreciate the rubberized finish, I found that taking the mic in and out of the provided clip produced some light scratches on the rubber. However, given the exceptional sound quality, this extremely minor cosmetic issue disappears the minute you hear the M80 in action.