Hi,
If you are interested, I just took the liberty of uploading one more file with a sample of a newly acquired, used microphone. It is a Rode K2, a tube mic, and although it has a few decibels more self noise than Blue Baby Bottle I usually use, I like the more buttery smooth quality. I made one other change to my other recordings in that I recorded directly to the computer with an interface instead of the portable recorder (not sure how much difference that makes but the Audient id4 preamps seem very slightly more transparent than those in the Tascam recorder).
Note on the recording that although I started at a distance of 10-11 inches from the mic, I leaned closer at some point during the reading, so that accounts for an increase in volume part way through.
I have moved your recording up from Section 57 to the vacant Section 41.
Nice reading - PL OK.
The Rode K2 certainly has a warm and inviting sound - "buttery" is an excellent description. It is definitely free from the boominess often associated with tube microphones.
Just a little feedback on the Great Microphone Showdown.
Of the mic recordings I noted that I thought numbers 11, 41, 42,,45, 51,53 were all excellent - but of course there were many, many more that were very good. It was a very quick run through - and the conclusion I came to was that there are many mic's that are excellent and it really comes down to other things (which can be difficult to control) such as room acoustics, closeness to mic, the recording on computer or stand alone machine, and other factors. All in all, there were no recordings that were poor, and all in fact were good to excellent, as were the readings.
In the end the mic probably has less impact than the quality of the acoustic than the readers voice.
But as I say, all the recordings were very good. And I note that all the readings published and carried out by Librivox members are very good indeed, and a credit to all. The general public are VERY lucky to have such a great source, and long may it continue.
Just to add a little more, I have listened again to some of the files and I must say that I was impressed with the sound and performance of two mic's in particular. (1) Sennheiser MKH416 shotgun mic - and - (2) Blue Baby Bottle. (Of course there were other mic's that were virtually as good such as the Rode NT1A of which there was more than one recorded version).
It also of course comes down to how well the mic was set up and used, the acoustic, and the speaker's voice. But this was a very useful test and gave good indications as to how the various mic's performed.
I would trust this test over and above the mic shootouts on the internet as one can never be sure if there could be a commercial interest which might give more weight to one mic over another.