Testing a microphone is a great psycho acoustic experiment

It may for example involve how it performs in an environment from singer's vocal chords to listener's brain.


And therefore this test does not involve only a mic. It may be a mic, an input transformer, a head amp or prepreamp,..,and how all these interact.


The monitoring system quality is extremely important.


On the Pleiades experiments the Sennheiser HD580 precision headphones are used.


Reference:


Flat frequency response from actor's. singer's vocal chords to listener's brain, Sound picture recording and reproducing characteristics - Loye, Morgan