This is the review comparison between two well-known brand’s microphones i.e. Blue Baby Bottle and Neumann TLM 103. There are a day and night price gap between both microphones. The features and the design of both the microphone are totally different. There is one similarity in both microphones and that is both have a cardioid polar pattern. This review comparison will make it easy for you to decide, which one is for the price.

Blue Baby Bottle	Neumann TLM 103
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Gives Vintage look. The output is high. It’s Well-balanced. Different and attractive styling. The clarity for a variety of sound sources. A number of applications are more. Great on electric instruments. Quite and Reasonable.	The frequency range is wide. Amazing Quality for the price. Looks Distinctive. Ideal for lead vocals. Low self-noise. Takes EQ well. The great Bright tone for crisp pop vocal sound.
CONS	CONS
The pop filter included not enough for louder vocal use.	Only one pickup polar pattern. Additional controls missing. Doesn’t work great on many acoustic instruments, not even acoustic guitar.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Blue Baby Bottle

Blue Baby Bottle is a studio professional-quality microphone made by Blue Microphones. It comes in a really nice ivory wood packaging. It will set you back around 400 dollars. This microphone is ideal for recording vocals, any acoustic instruments, or drums. This is a great mic for a home or new and growing studio. Because of its neutral mid-range response, it will also be good for electric guitars. The model line for this microphone is ‘warmth and presence’. This microphone is great for the vocals and gives the vintage look.

Neumann TLM 103

The Neumann TLM 103 is one of the highest price-range microphones in the market. This microphone is retailing for around one thousand and one hundred dollars currently on Amazon. The Neumann is actually a German company if you know about the Germans, they produce qualitative products always and this one also got such quality to it.

DESIGN:

Blue Baby Bottle

This microphone really feels good in the hand as per the price tag and it looks like kind of holding a bottle in the hand. It has an all-metal body that feels very precisely machined and it has a double mesh metal grille to help with plosives which are really sturdy and it doesn’t flex it all, even when you will squeeze it.

On the front, you will find two switches, the first one being a low-cut filter that rolls off frequencies at 100 Hertz at 12 decibels per octave and the second being a high-cut filter that rolls off  -20 decibels pad in case you’re recording loud sound sources. The microphone itself looks a little bit like the PlayStation Move. There is absolutely nothing on the mic, there are no plugins or anything, it takes a regular XLR cable to get connected.

Neumann TLM 103

The build quality of this microphone is amazing. They did a great job. It feels like a quality microphone. They used some really sturdy materials on this thing. It’s kind of freaking heavy and it is just a sturdy piece of equipment. This microphone available in two different colors one is satin nickel and the other color is matte black. This mic has only one polar pattern that is the cardioid polar pattern, so there is no switch to switch between various polar patterns like other mics in the market.

FEATURES:

Blue Baby Bottle

When you will open the box, you will get a quality control certification that gives information about when the mic was made, who packaged it, or who checked out all the specifications of it, and everything. Also, you will get the shock mount in a small box and it has a little piece there just in case the mic stand that you’ve has a different fit, so they have given a little adapter of 5/8 to 3/8 inch. Then you get the pop filter also, Blue has given really good stuff this little pop filter looks pretty good. Also, you got the paperwork and all stuff that comes with accessories. Lastly, the microphone itself comes in an amazing red wooden box which is really nice, the quality of the box is so good you can even use the box for personal things.

As far as the specs, this microphone has a cardioid polar pattern, a frequency response of 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz, a max SPL of 134 decibels, an impedance of 50 ohms, the sensitivity of approximately negative 28 decibels, and a phantom power requirement of plus 48 volts. This microphone uses XLR input right there and for that, you can buy an audio interface. The audio interface has an XLR to USB adapter, so you can attach the mic to your computer and record through it. You can attach the shock mount to a mic stand, you can attach to a mic arm that attaches onto the wall, you can attach it to wherever you want easily. 

Neumann TLM 103

The price of this microphone $1100 which is pretty expensive but I will say it’s not really that big of a con because you are getting $1100 worth of microphone. I really don’t think you’re overpaying for what you’re getting for that price. This is an awesome microphone but it is expensive. The Neumann TLM-103 only has one polar pattern and it is a cardioid front addressed microphone. It does what it’s supposed to really well. As this microphone is a cardioid polar pattern microphone, it picks up from the front and rejects sound from the back, if you have noisy stuff going on outside your window in your home studio, you can point the back of the microphone at the noise and minimize that bleeding into your tracks.

The frequency response with this microphone covers 20 Hz to 20kHz and you have a bass roll-off starting around 70 hertz. It’s pretty flat all the way up until 3.5 k and around 5k to 15k, you have a pretty legit treble boost that’s gonna add a lot of brightness to whatever you’re recording but it does not do it in a harsh way. This microphone has very low self-noise at 7 dBA, which is super quiet and your max sound pressure level is going to be at 138 decibels, that’s a lot of room to work with there your dynamic range of 131 decibels,  I don’t think you’re ever going to need that but if you ever do you got it in the Neumann TLM-103.

PERFORMANCE:

Blue Baby Bottle

You can really use this microphone for voiceovers as you can get some awesome ideas for videos but this microphone is overloaded microphone like a dog bark or something like that it would really overload it. So, if you speak really loud it would overload this microphone, if you going to talk really loud or even scream to this microphone it’s not going to do anything because it’s meant for vocals. The one thing you would love about this microphone is the warmth that it provides.

There is nothing about this mic that you won’t like but many users have a habit of using pop filter and mic which have distance between each other, but this microphone is different, this microphone comes with screws on and it’s like right up against the microphone which maybe is not a problem for many as it still sounds good. But you compulsorily need to pop filter for this mic, in order to get a clean signal. 

Neumann TLM 103

This microphone gives different sounds with different positions like you talk on axis directly into the microphone or at 90 or at full 180 or at 270 degrees distance from Neumann TLM 103. As this is a unidirectional microphone a side effect of that is you get the proximity effect, so that means the closer you are to the microphone the more beefed up your sound is gonna be. It’s a very smooth sounding, bright microphone and if you’re trying to kind of offset some of the brightness that this microphone provides, you can get this microphone.

This microphone sounds very smooth and it does a great job in my opinion. One thing to notice is that whatever you will record with the Neumann TLM 103, seems to cut through the mix by itself just as a raw track because of that treble boost and, it’s smooth it’s not obnoxious but it helps your tracks really find a place in the mix and it kind of does a little bit of the mixing work for you. Acoustic guitar sounds great with this microphone. It’s a super clean sounding microphone, it’s bright, it’s smooth, it helps your tracks cut through the mix just by itself, it is a sturdy build and that proximity effect really helps you beef up your sound if you want to.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER FOR THE PRICE?

In comparison with the slightly more expensive Neumann TLM103, I found the Baby Bottle to be about 4dB less sensitive and a couple of decibels noisier still very impressive results.  Also, the Blue Baby Bottle definitely has more ‘presence’ than the Neumann, it also seemed to have a little less ‘air’ and openness, although you would only become aware of this subtle difference in a head-to-head comparison. Despite its comparatively low price, the Baby Bottle retains all the essential and desirable qualities of its more up-market siblings. If you are in the market for a good, general-purpose large-diaphragm cardioid mic, and you want something that stands out from the crowd, I would recommend the Blue Baby Bottle without hesitation.

Expert Reviews of Blue Baby Bottle:

By soundonsound
The Baby Bottle is claimed to be ideal for recording vocals, percussion, or any acoustic instruments — and I feel happy to go along with that. It seems to be a very ‘crisp’ microphone, handling transients well on…

By PROSOUNDNEWS
At first look, Blue’s Baby Bottle SL doesn’t look like much of a “baby”—that is, until you compare it to its behemoth predecessor, The Bottle. I’ve reviewed The Bottle, and it is indeed a testament to…

By oldtimemusic
This microphone could be described as being a studio workhorse. By that we mean it has a lot of strings to its bow and gives the user a lot of options. We would go as far as to say that in its category it is…

By performermag
Like all microphones, placement is key, but that overall sound profile of the Baby Bottle SL is still quite ‘present,’ and thankfully works across a lot of other applications. Higher…

By macproviedo
The Baby Bottle is an incredible accomplishment by Blue. It’s really amazing what they were able to do at this price point. I would confidently put the Baby Bottle up against a number of…

Expert Reviews of Neumann TLM 103:

By sustainpunch
In our opinion, the Neumann TLM 103 is a microphone best suited for musicians/recording engineers who are looking for an ultra-high quality microphone, that you really won’t need to replace! Now, of course, with the…

By soundonsound
Essentially, the TLM103 has a big, open, natural character, which has a tendency to sound warm and full rather than thin and clinical. It may not be completely accurate, but it is certainly musical and…

By audiogearz
Neumann considers the TLM 103 to be a low-budget microphone (we don’t know about that..). Although, its over $1000, this microphone is certainly worth the value it provides. It’s true…

By microphonegeeks
Neumann TLM-103 will be a great addition for anyone striving to achieve a clean professional sound and this model is very hard to dislike. It may take some time to adjust but its numerous benefits will truly worth it. The microphone has its own sound, which is full of life but… 

By musicaroo
To put it simply: the Neumann TLM 103 is one of the best microphones available. It provides an extemely “convincing” input, picking up all the important frequencies of a voice or an acoustic instrument. The resulting…