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Choosing mikes for vocal and voiceovers
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  • I use SSL EQ plugs here and there. They do emulate the character of the analog EQs pretty well. I'm not saying they aren't good and useful, I'm just saying I prefer the real thing more as I feel that analog just has a better sound. If I have to sum it up in a word, plug-ins sound "small" compared to the analog device they are trying to emulate.

    As far as replication, it starts with the room you record in. All of these rooms will have a "sound". Every instrument will have that "sound" imbedded into it when recorded. When tracking, you want to get the best sound *for the mix* when you are setting up your mics. Sometimes, this isn't the best sound at the mic. This is a huge learning curve and becomes intuitive once you've done it enough. A lot of times, if you've done your instrument set-up correctly, EQ is actually used to account for room/mic sound rather than fixing something wrong with the sound of the instrument. This can lead to repetitive settings on your console/plug-ins. Once I dialed in the sound of my room and the usual mics, I typically don't change the EQ a whole lot, just levels and dynamics (which can both influence the sound more than you think..). You'll find that most people that use a LOT of EQ are attempting to account for a problem that happened while tracking and usually those same people believe that simply sticking a mic in front of something should yield perfect results because the marketing of the mic/instrument/preamp/plug-in/etc told them they would have pro results. You'll also find that professional mix engineers use a lot less EQ than you think because they and their assistants spend a lot of time getting the sound right at the source.

    Anyway, to sum it up, I don't use a lot of EQ if I can help it and most of that is accounting for room tone or slight instrument tweaking so it doesn't change a whole lot usually.

    In fact, I'd like for you guys to critique this mix:

    http://www.theopiumdenproductions.com/eller/UPTHATHILL2.wav

  • ---i always forget to post on-topic :) -----
  • @svart @johnnym
    Guys, please, use different topic, ok? It is too deep into specifics, I think.

    About 99% of the people reading this are interesting how to choose mike, and about 99,9% of the are looking at some cheap and budget :-)
  • Yeap I'm the 99.9%
  • Like I said, the cheapest large diaphragm mic I've enjoyed using is the Rode NT-2A at around $400.

    The Cascade Microphones small diaphragm mics I used were a good value for the money, but they are not mics I would choose if I could afford something more expensive (while the NT-2A is). I'm less of a fan of their Fat Head or Fat Head II ribbon mics: some people compare them to the Royer line but you can DEFINITELY hear an unflattering difference on just about any decent system. I'm more intrigued by some of their more recent mics, like the X-15 stereo ribbon.

    http://www.cascademicrophones.com/cascade_X-15.html

    Haven't heard the more recent Golden Age ribbons (didn't like them a few years back) but the X-15 sure sounds better than the old Golden Age stuff, and the price (with the stock transformer) is once again at that magic number: right around $400 US. Of course you can get it with Lundahl for a couple hundred more, but I haven't heard the comparisons yet.

    Anyway, I mention the Cascade mics because they were introduced to me a couple years back by a friend of mine that used to be one of the engineers that handled live sound for American Idol, The Super Bowl and (if I remember correctly) the Academy Awards. He was struck by how much they offered for the money (but I was still hung up in the remaining disparity). I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the needs of live sound and studio recordings at times, though.

    Long story short: cheap for good mics is around $400, from my point of view.
  • Just found this one. It seems like a European alternative to the Peluso, as it uses the same capsule. http://opalmicrophones.com/Opal_Microphones/OM7_INFO.html
    Price is pretty nice so it seems. I wonder how good it is. There are no reviews, as it's just released.
  • I think that we definitely need separate topic for high priced mikes.
    And yes, for most people high priced is all >$150-200. :-)
  • Good mics start at $400? That's just silly. There are plenty of excellent mics, no qualifiers needed, under $200. Even an unmodified Nady SCM900 Chinese Neumann knockoff is a very good mic, and you can pick these up for $50. You can even go in and mod it to your heart's content and make it sound much worse if you like. Plenty of guys with no engineering understanding trolling mic geek fora to help you with this.

    The Nady's a large diaphragm condenser. Need a good cheap omni? Behringer ECM8000 measurement mic. Excellent small-diaphragm omni for, yes, $50.

    Seriously great vocal recording mic on the cheap? Shure SM57, old Unidyne or new Mexican, doesn't matter, unscrew the windscreen and toss it, load it at 600 ohms. >$100, and anyone who complains about the sound is a mic snob, a gear fetishist, or both.

    Mic religion might be the most over-bloviated topic online. There are expensive mics and there are cheap mics, but there is no correlation between price and sound quality. Some of the most muffled and peaky mics I've worked with have been the most expensive and boutique, and some of the cleanest and more musical have been the cheapest (e.g. the "naked" SM57, which was a real eye-opener).

    Also, "the best mic" is like saying a hammer is better than a screwdriver. Different tools for different tasks. I like my old RCA ribbons for horns and guitar amps but the naked SM57 sounds better for vocals.

  • >Mic religion might be the most over-bloviated topic online.

    Loudspeakers religion is much worse. As it has much more followers with defective ears :-)
  • Well, speakers and mics are both transducers, mechanical devices which convert acoustic waveforms to electrical signals (and vice-versa). Transducers have always been an imperfect science, lagging far behind electronics in terms of linear transfer function. So mics and speakers all have imperfect transfer functions, hence distortion, hence "character".

    Certainly people are entitled to their opinion that this mic's character sounds better than that mics, but as there is no objective standard for mics and sound quality is purely subjective anyway, I feel it's more helpful to offer some good budget mic recommendations rather than tell people they can't have a good mic if they spend less than $400. The skill of the recording engineer, the acoustics of the room, and the placement of the performer and mic all swamp whatever differences exist between a $5,000 mic and a $50 one.


  • Relax @Shaveblog Of course there are good mics under 400$. But if you compare a Rode NT1A to a U87 of which it's a clone, there's definitely more resolution in the Neumann.
    And the Chinese mics can get you the same quality of a Neumann at a lower price, but not 50$. I think @thepalalias has a point it could be well around 400$ for a large-diafragm, if you pick the right one and have a good sample, cause QC is probably less than at the Neumann factory. Yet the TLM102 as the cheapest Neumann costs less than a GH2 body, so i don't think it's outside the budget of people in this forum.
    And no i don't agree sound quality is merely subjective. As a statement that's stupid, but i'm sure you meant something else there. I do agree that skill can make a cheap mic sound great, and lack of skill can make a good mic sound awful. But that's stating the obvious, cause Vitaliy has given us near-perfect HD picture quality and still it's rare that you see something made with it that's really good.
    So let's not get into a flaming argument that a GH2 is as good as a RED, but then for mics, please.

  • So, from this moment no >$300 mikes discussions in this topic.
    We'll make new topic "Good large diaphragm mikes" and will continue to discuss pricey mike in it.
  • @johnnym
    If you want to discuss my actions, use PM, ok?
  • @johnnym

    I've been engaging in ob/sub debates for decades now, even predating the Internet as we know it, and I always wind up regretting my involvement. Entrenched non-reality belief systems are immovable objects. But since you called me stupid..

    Look, clearly you're belief-based when it comes to these things, whereas I'm experience-based. So I don't think we're going to agree on this stuff.

    That said, I do think you're a bit confused with terminology. Sound quality can't be anything _but_ purely subjective - how can something that requires an individual's own unique ears/brain/biases/preferences/beliefs to render an opinion be anything even remotely objective?

    Objectivity is measuring your penis with a ruler. You may disagree that your penis is 3 inches long but that doesn't change the objective, settled fact that it is. I speak purely hypothetically, of course.

    But if I say I don't care for the sound of a Neumann on a particular vocalist and prefer the way a Rode sounds, or a Shure, or an RCA, there isn't any objective standard you can cite which refutes my opinion. There's no measurement, no ruler you can lay both mics against and declare that one's "better". The only thing you can do is render a subjective opinion. And if someone else has a different opinion, he's not "wrong" or "stupid".

    RE "resolution" - no, there is no more "resolution" with a Neumann than a Rode, or any other decent mic. Actual resolution relates to bandwidth, i.e. a mic's HF response. A mic flat to 80kHz has more resolution than a mic which, like many Neumanns, has a big resonant peak around 4-8KHz and rolls off after that. You are mistaking coloration for resolution. What you describe as resolution is actually just transducer resonances and frequency response peaks which brighten the sound. It's a common mistake. You hear something more forward in the mix and you equate that with "more resolution", when all it really means is the mic has a presence peak and emphasizes details by pushing them forward in the mix relative to a mic with a flatter response. But both mics resolve the same information, and neither mic is recovering "lost details" that the other is missing. Psychoacoustics 101.

    At the end of the day it all boils down to this: some people think about microphones more than they listen to them, and vice-versa. It's my experience that the former group spends a lot of its time arguing about "better" mics and "resolution" on geek fora, and the latter group gets a rep for good sounding work. And there is little to no overlap between the two groups.




  • It looks like we really need three topics.
    This one for general thing.
    I move tomorrow few messages to the large mikes topic.
    And third one will be called "Microphone religion". :-)

    And, guy, I always prefer, before any mikes/loudspeakers/headphone "best ever" discussion you attach your ears measurements.
  • @Shaveblog
    >But both mics resolve the same information, and neither mic is recovering "lost details" that the other is missing.

    This tells me that you have never compared the Rode and the Neumann. While i like both, and have both, i cannot make this same statement from my experience and neither will any experienced engineer.
    No offence but you will probably regret entering this kind of discussions, because you do not have the experience, hence you make wild statements that defy any logic.
    For instance : why would a bad mic with a bad capsule transfer the same information as a good mic with good capsule? If you make such a statement, then i know for fact it doesn't make sense and that as a statement it is stupid. (I didn't say you were stupid, as i don't know you and cannot possibly make any assessment about your intelligence whatsoever.)

    Then the part about subjectivity which you confuse with quality : yes, any mic, even the dirt cheap mics, will have their use in one or another application. (If you read my earlier posts in this thread you'd know i don't have anything against cheap mics)
    But to claim that a 50$ Nady, Studio Projects, SM57 or whatever will give you the same result (provided it suits the voice of the individual) as an expensive Neumann in a thread on vocal mics, is just misleading to a lot of people that don't know one mic from another.

    Yes, a cheap Chinese mic like a Nady can be "hacked", where they fiddle with the electronics, and nearly always replace the capsule, so it sounds like a Neumann, but those modifications often cost more than the mic itself, so this will give you some idea of the necessity of quality materials. That's why i think @thepalalias made a valid point saying that quality comes at a cost and that 400$ is probably the point from where you get into really good quality mics, provided you have a good sample, because chinese mics don't have consistent quality control.

    Now mic religion is something completely different. It's to do with the snobism that only expensive mics are suited for certain applications. I wonder when a 400$ mic became an expensive investment in a forum about a camera which body has just been discounted to 700$ and which brand sells a 50mm equivalent lens for exactly that price?
  • >Now mic religion is something completely different

    OK, I'll rename this new topic to something like "Mikes fight night" :-)

    >I wonder when a 400$ mic became an expensive investment in a forum about a camera which body has just been discounted to 700$.

    Always talk more with people.
    I did.
    $400 is the sum most won't spend on mike. Even $300 won't spend.
  • Then they should reconsider their priorities if they spend that much money easily on a lens.

    But this doesn't mean we can't have a sub-300$ topic, or even a sub-200$ topic to discuss the gems in that segment of the market.

    >OK, I'll rename this new topic to something like "Mikes fight night" :-)

    It's the same stupid discussion like the GH2 vs RED discussions. People think they can have top-quality at a fraction of the cost without tradeoff. This is not true and it's stupid to think so. There's always a tradeoff, and i am open to discuss it, if we stay away from GH2 is as good as RED wild statements.
  • >It's the same stupid discussion like the GH2 vs RED discussions

    May be, may be not.
    But it'll keep SNR for main topics.
  • >Then they should reconsider their priorities if they spend that much money easily on a lens.

    You can always make and shoot open letter to them :-)
  • SNR = Signal to Noise ratio.

  • I know what it means, just not the context in which Vitaliy used it.
  • He's being cute. :)

    He means the ratio of "on topic" to "off-topic".
  • This is topic for more pricier mikes
    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1934/large-diaphragm-mikes#Item_1
    I didn't move to it anything as it becomes out of context.

    I'll make one for "Mike fight night" if more similar posts will appear.