That microphone primer is interesting and detailed.

About halfway down he discusses Sensitivity and Max SPL. For condenser mics or others with built-in preamps, another spec of interest could be noise floor.

Dunno if all premium expensive mics would necessarily have higher Sensitivity and lower Noise Floor, but if you go looking for a Sensitive low-noise mic, you can expect to pay more money.

If most home recording is done pretty close to the mic, then the Sensitivity and Noise Floor is not real important because you have a good loud signal that will help swamp a noisy mic or mic preamp.

But for the folks in the situation of needing to make squeaky-clean recordings of not-very-loud instruments, and at a fairly long miking distance-- Those folks will inevitably have to spend the big bucks for very low-noise mics and mic preamps. For instance, stereo-miking a string quartet from 8 feet distance-- Them violins ain't very loud, and that is a long distance away, relatively speaking. Often you don't get the right sound close-miking such things, and you have to move the mics back.

So if you have an otherwise nice sounding mic and preamp that is a little noisy, that string quartet recording is gonna be noticeably noisy. But the same mic right up in a vocalist's face or a foot away from a loud-played acoustic guitar, might make nicely low noise tracks.

Am ignorant of mics, but years ago was studying the Audio Technica mic line. AT sells some fairly inexpensive condenser mics which are remarkably flat and have good neutral accurate tone to my ear. Then AT sells a-lot-more-expensive mics that are equally flat, and probably do not have raw tone much better than their 'cheap' ones. But the specs on the expensive mics brag slightly higher sensitivity and slightly lower noise floor. It is only a difference of a few dB, worth hundreds of dollars difference.

James Chandler Jr
http://www.errnum.com/