M 160
microphone
$1,050
Used market: $820*
Specifications
3 of 8 values have a recorded sourceExpert Audio Engineering Commentary
Tonal Profile
A hypercardioid ribbon, which is unusual enough that beyerdynamic's own sheet calls it out: almost every other ribbon is a figure-eight because the ribbon is open on both sides by construction. The pattern is what put it on toms and guitar cabinets in the seventies, where a figure-eight would have picked up the rest of the room.
Gain Staging Advice
1.0 mV/Pa, -60 dBV/Pa - the quietest microphone in this batch, four decibels below an SM57. On a close-miked snare or guitar cabinet that is fine; on anything at a distance it needs a genuinely quiet preamp at 65 dB or more, and it is the reason ribbon-specific preamps exist.
Production Warning
Passive ribbon: no electronics, no need for phantom power, and no protection against it if the cable is faulty. Turn 48 V off on the channel before you plug in, and leave it off - the failure mode is a stretched ribbon, which shows up as lost output and a soggy top rather than as silence, so it can go unnoticed for a session. Nothing in beyerdynamic's documentation for the M 160 mentions phantom power in any form.
What the datasheet actually says
Quoted verbatim from the manufacturer’s own page, with the date we checked it. We state what is printed, not what anyone intended by it.
«Transducer type. Dynamic»
The M 160's specification table names the transducer with the same word beyerdynamic uses for its moving-coil models. Only the sheet's headline, 'M 160 Dynamic Double-Ribbon Microphone', identifies it as a ribbon, and no beyerdynamic document for this microphone mentions phantom power at all - neither to require it nor to warn against it. A reader who takes the table at face value will treat a 1949-design ribbon element the way they treat an SM58.
checked 8/6/2026* Estimated with the depreciation fallback (~78% retained value). · checked on 8/6/2026