I've been doing foley at least once a week (sometimes all week), for about 10 years now. When you're doing this kind of work, the general quality of an individual effect may seem like it doesn't matter that much. But those effects build up in layer upon layer and in the final product there is a huge difference between good audio and bad audio. If you do it really well, the average consumer won't even think twice about it; if you do it badly they will notice. That's the point you're, making sound that feels so natural people just see it as an organic piece of the work.

As for the equipment, every microphone has it's own uses. There is a reason that DPA and the Sennheiser cost a grand more than the Rode; they are better quality and they are far more versatile. The Rode has it's uses, but they are limited.

Now you may think, 'hey I'm listening on some cheap speakers or headphones, how will I even know the difference?' When sound design is edited, it's done on ridiculously expensive and perfect sounding monitors. However when it's mixed you're doing that with the average consumer in mind. The final mix is done on equipment like the Sony MDR-7506 Headphones and Yamaha NS-10M monitors. These are great for monitoring mixes not because they sound great, but because they are great at sounding average. So in the end the point isn't to make a mix that sounds great on great hardware, you're making a mix that sounds great on what the people listening will actually have.

So if you're doing it right, people won't say 'wow that footstep, or that laser blast, or that car engine sounds great', they won't even notice it at all, because it sounds natural and you're immersed in the environment.

i'm not going to contest CCH or anyone else in the industry, we all have our POVs.

mine is that i've been entrenched in audio s/w industry for a while as well, but my interest is less in sound quality and more in memetics, the ideas people have about culture and how that interacts with the medium... specifically, to deauthorise authoritative sources and reauthorise local sensibility.

as a result of my objectives, which are definitively anticommercial, i have made a great number of enemies in the audio industries, who do not appreciate me saying "you can do that with a bent fork and a bottle of bleach" when they are charging $599.

it is the interest of professionals and hopefuls to maintain the perception of hard to attain qualities, and certainly, and practiced person has skills which are appreciable.

as a noncapitalist potentiator, my interest is in dissolving this appearance of inaccessibility /"quality", and to assert that hopefuls practice the fine art of fenangling their way to objectives instead of feeling dependent on capital requirements. your pristine engineered sounds will be played back on a multitude of hyped out consumer level systems. if buying your sound guy a $900 mic helps them feel like they can really get to work, maybe it's a good investment :p

i cut my hardware teeth in the mid 90's.. before that, i was using any beat up radio shack crap i could get. in the mid 90's sites like the gas station and dancetech were focused on exchanging h/w solutions on minimal budgets, anyone who put time in then would have a vocabulary of odd devices with superlative odd features. to me, it was cool to lower the noise floor of 80's crap.

but my generalised advice is, don't worry too much about it. i used to have a room filled with keyboards. those crap illuminati folks kicked my ass for trying to empower the impecunious so my studio now is a 1.6g netbook with a 2001 graphics chip and a wacom graphire 3 tablet, which is pretty much fine because it's what i do with it that counts :p

the realistic (radio shack) stereo electret i have or had probably got more use than the rode, octava and AT mics because of less fuss to pick up and use.. the recordings from it are all crisp, clear and low noise.

i'll slither away back into the gutter now where all the other scumbags who think people just spend too much money and are psychologically limited by their artificial dependence on consumerism, with my nasty ass little realistic electret :)

one thing is for sure - if you're dealing with humans, at least humans in moneyed countries, you want a big ass expensive looking mic with all the fancy things.. don't try to make a pop screen out of shadecloth or nylons, people will be all like, "this guy? bugger off" and then one night you go to sleep and they're outside your window with torches, crucifixes and pitchforks.

perception and authenticity may be different, but for many people, perception is as deep as they are ever going to go, so sometimes you have to do things on their terms.

So I was more wondering, with the audio mics, how noticeable the quality increments are,

Yes there are diminishing returns just like with most equipment. I have some really nice mics that I got in the $300 category that are comparable to $3,000 mics. So you can do good work with a minimal investment. As your skills improve it is absolutely worth the investment to upgrade, that is when you can start really making a difference with the better equipment. I think the break down in cost vs quality would be something like:

Less than $200 not suitable for audio work

Huge increase in quality to

$200-$499 suitable for hobbyist work

Moderate increase in quality to

$500-$999 suitable for paid professional work

Small increase in quality to

greater than $1000 top end professional gear

There are tons of exceptions to that of course. The Shure SM57 is about $100 and it's the perfect snare drum mic. The Blue Bluebird is $300 and it sounds fantastic on acoustic guitar. I could go on forever about this but In think my list above is a fairly good representation of cost vs quality increments on general audio equipment

To some degree the mics will color the sound a little - like in this example, the PCM-D50 recorder is quite sparkly it grabs a lot of high end. The Sennheiser picks up a little more detail and the room noise. But you can see from the recordings, mic choices produce slighly different results.

What is the most most important thing when recording foley is to collect your sounds so the raw material is easy to work with.

1. Clean noiseless sounds - creating an as silent as possible environment - you can always EQ or process the sounds to fit together better but removing background sounds is difficult.

2. Reverbless sounds (unless it is a creative choice or you need the sound in a particular acoustic setting where you need the natural room reverb sound) - you can always add reverb to some degree - but removing it is difficult

3. Collecting different perspectives - up close and slighly furhter away sounds will record differently. Up close there's such a thing called Proximity effect"

So I wouldnt' focus so much on what microphone sounds best - but what microphone will work for you in your recording environment to get you the sounds you need at the best quality that you can record at - hence rent your equipment before buying it and experiment with a few different mics.

If you go with a few different types of mics at different distances - using your ears to place them during your recording session - you will get a decent set of sounds to work with. If you have one mic, at one distance - you will have to struggle with multiple recordings, more editing time, more recording time - and less variation in your recordings meaning - more post processing to make things sound similar in the same world. $30 for an extra mic per day, or $??? / hr to edit, process, record a smaller amount of workable material.

All sounds you gather with a mic are never final assets that get added to a game / cutscene. You will always need to process the sounds - clean them up, fit them to what is happening visually through trimming, fading, cleaning, eqing.

I have never used a recording just as is - even footsteps and perhaps this is what you're worried about trying to find the right mic that sounds fantastic right off the go?

hence rent your equipment before buying it and experiment with a few different mics.

If you're in the states the people at SweetWater are always happy to come by and demo gear for free. They have reps for just about every major city. They can usually cut you a deal too if you decide on something you want to buy.