Review: AKG C314 Multi-Pattern LDC Microphone

I’ve been playing with AKG’s C314 for a while now, and I can’t help but wonder: what is AKG thinking? The C314 just seems too good to be true. Especially for someone who has a hankering for a C414 but without the capital to match.

The AKG C414 is a classic. Since the ’70s it’s been put in front of anything, sometimes everything, with good results. Classical people have always liked them because they’re quiet and transparent; rock people for the way they record acoustic guitars, drum overheads and vocals. Live engineers like their compact size, robust build and resistance to feedback. 

AKG updates the C414 every 10 years or so, and sure there’s been variations in sound with different models and manufacturing materials but it’s always maintained that signature smooth midrange and distinctive, airy high end. The current versions are very nice. The silver-faced C414 XLS and the slightly brighter-sounding, gold-faced C414 XLII, are luxuriously engineered with nine polar patterns, multiple pad settings, multiple high-pass options, and electronic switches with indicator LEDs.

Good value they may be, but the price for these new C414s is quite high and perhaps beyond many project studios. I also think they might be too nice for the majority of live shows. At a certain level of production, sure, but in the real world it’s a lot of money’s worth of microphone at risk in unpredictable live environments. Stage mics get bumped and occasionally knocked over — regularly during band changeovers at folk festivals, I’ve found — and it might rain. AKG has gone some way to addressing both these issues with its latest release: the AKG C314. It combines the capsule from the C414 XLS with the body from the single-diaphragm, fixed-pattern C214 to create a product some users, me included, see as combination of the best elements of both.

NATURALLY QUIET

In the studio, my first impression was that it’s almost eerily quiet, and the off-axis response is natural. Its combination of high sensitivity (20mV/Pa) and low self-noise (8dBA) contributes to the C314’s very modern sound. It’s also accurate and fast, with great transient detail and a slightly flattering overall response. On paper it’s close to flat in the Omni setting, but compared to the C414 it has a wider and deeper dip centred around 2kHz, and a wider boost above 5kHz, in the directional settings. 

Through speakers it’s so uncoloured below 1kHz you don’t really notice the mic at all unless the source is close enough to induce some proximity effect. This is not an aggressive mic; the couple of dB attenuation around 2kHz contributes to the overall smoothness and tames harshness in strident vocals. The high-end boost delivers the distinctive AKG airy sheen to vocals and it won an acoustic guitar shootout by having the shiniest top end when I was setting up for a recording. It’s bright without being forced or spiky. I used it for vocals on a session that was already half done and it made the mic I’d been using sound grainy… hate that. I then started using it on everything I could for a while and it doesn’t miss technically, all recorded sounds are usable and I found it really brought out the character of different preamps.