Originally Posted by Mike Halloran
The fact is that the state of the art is pretty good except at the bottom end where cheap components, feedback circuits and zero quality control still rules.
That is entirely the difference between an actual pro microphone and a "cheap but good" microphone. You pay for the quality control - cheap capsules are all over the place in terms of response, be it frequency, transient, noise, etc. You also pay for having the circuitry designed specifically for the capsule - you mention feedback so you likely know what I'm talking about, but for everyone else:

Most cheap microphones are built the same way. Iirc lots of them knock off the Neumann style of capsule (which on its own has a significant boost in the 4khz-ish range) and typically paired it with circuitry that had a negative feedback loop to tame the high frequency response - except the clones didn't bother cloning the appropriate Neumann circuitry in an attempt to use fewer components. Without the negative feedback, even a "good" capsule would end up sounding unnaturally bright and can often distort the treble range, which to an untrained ear can sound "detailed" as it picks up a lot of stuff your ears don't necessarily catch.

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