To avoid any misunderstanding: I dont care about people who want to use tube-devices, may it be tube-microphones, tube-preamps or amps, tube-effects and so on. I am glad to live in a free world and so anyone is free to decide his own preferences.
And why should Neumann not offer a modern tube-mic? There is a market and a demand and they can make lots of money this it!
But if some of these adepts claim, that only this sort of gear will produce the true and best sound and all hat modern digital stuff will be from the devil I permit myself to call this a bullshit. In my opinion, Geerslutz is not a sort of eevblog for audio, there you can find lots of gurus and audio-mystics. And as long as I could observe, the subject ¨microphones¨ is one of the most esoteric , mystic and non-objective items ever. There are simply really no objective tests which meet for example a standard like double-blind-tests. Only and ever subjective opinions, but mostly they pretend to be scientific but are nothing but opinions, mostly sentiments only.
If you are a bit engaged in auditory nerophysiology and the brain-functions of hearing, you will know how easy it is to here great differences also if there are no differences at all!
My main profession is (classical) musician and recording is only my secondary business. And I only record classical genres and acoustic ensembles like an orchestra, chorus, chamber music, organ etc. - no pop..
And in this genre old technique or tube-technique is nearly irrelevant. You can find these audio-esoterics mostly in other genres like pop etc.
I use some Neumanns, some AKG´s, some Sennheiser and Haun-Microphones, all are small-diaphragm. My preamps and interfaces are RME and Behringer (X18 + X32). And I can reproduce the sound of any natural instrument in a quasi neutral manner (within the scope of neutrality a technical reproduction can deliver).
My customers are allways satified.