I've been shifting away from electronic music and working on more indie/shoegazey material as of late, and I've been fighting my vocal takes tooth and nail. I've been using a Neumann tlm-103 and have also tried an AT-4040 and the results have been less than spectacular. The 103 has been coming off as too up-front and lacks dynamics, and the at-4040 has been giving me a lot of midrange discoloration. The major x-factor in my process is the room I record in, where I have some padding put up to flatten things, but could be much better insulated. Basically, I'm saying that results could vary for you.

I got the K2 home today and did back-to-back-to-back recordings with the 3 mics for comparison. I got the usual results with the 103 and 4040, but I must say that the K2 has completely decimated the other mics in all of my testing so far. Where the 103 is very in-your-face and the 4040's been real heavy in the middle, the K2 has a steady and balanced character. In cardoid mode you can hear the higher range boost, but it's been complimentary on both my vocals and acoustic guitar work I've recorded tonight. The end result has been a bright and vibrant product where all of the frequencies come through nice. I also like the fact that everything I've recorded tonight has been sitting well in my mixes with little work done. Normally with the 103 I'd have to pull out some bass and spike the high-enda bit, but this hasn't been the case at all with the K2. In Omni mode very little changes, you can hear the brightness fall off like the frequency response chart indicates, but it's not drastic or detrimental. Omni mode really exposed my room for its bad acoustics during some scratch vocal takes, but an acoustic guitar take recorded in Omni felt like I had reverb on it with a small room setting, and none-the-less came out really clean.

RODE has been getting really high marks lately for putting out mics that exceed their price tag in terms of quality. And I must say, I've worked with many different mics aside from the ones I own and the K2 stands toe to toe with the best ones I've worked with. A review I'd read of this mic had the author guessing it'd be selling for $2000, and I'd agree with that assessment. For $700 you're paying substantially less than what the mic could reasonably sell for, and IMO it's a must-have, especially if you're limited on funds and need something that will perform strong and be versatile.

Two thumbs up from me, if that's worth anything.