Buy a Studio Projects C1

LoL!!!!! You're using a sound blaster card and looking to use the "best" microphone?....Blahahahahahah!!!!! That's like saying, "can you tell me, what is the best tasting bread, because I want to make a good tasting sh*t sandwhich." There is no such thing as a "best recording Microphone. " Go take some recording classes and get some audio education, it will make your recording career go so much further than buying a microphone. You will soon learn there are a few different types of microphones, and each will record different sounds better than one another. For now go spend $20 at radio shack to get you by in the meantime.

Or more gently - there is no such thing as a Best Microphone, at any level. You do not mention if you use a mixer or not. If not, you need a mic that works with your SB. Most aimed at that market are not likely to be very good at all. You could try a dynamic (try SM57, MD421, D3700 maybe) or a battery-powered condenser, such as Rode NT3 or AKG C1000s(hell, I never recommend a C1000 normally, but it is going thru a SB !)

With a mixer added, you can then choose from a whole world of mics, and choose the one best for your recoding aims. And then you can start paying more and more until you get the 'Best' ranges, for which you can expect to be over US$1000 each.

geoff

You haven't mentioned what you will be using the microphone for, ie is it for voice over, music, sound effects etc. Each of these applications have different microphone requirements.

You mention that you have Audiogy 2 Card. This card and most other cards in this category are consumer based products and will be the waekesk link in any form of audio production you undertake.

You mention that you have a Mixer which I am not familiar with. But if it has a balanced input and can supply phantom power then the market is wide open. For the best advice go and visit a good music store, they will have at least 50 different types of microphones ranging from less than $100-5,000 or more. They will also be able to show you some different ways of getting audio into your computer than using a the Audiogy card.

Once you start researching your requirements then it will be a lot easier to provide avice on what you require but you will have to do that research first.


Warren

buy a 57 and an adapter at ratshack so it can go into your soundblaster. You can always use the 57 no matter what level you get to

then you can proceed to advertise to local bands how they dont need to waste money on the big boys with their big equipment and tell them that you can get just as good a sound with your blaster and auralex treated rooms

be sure to put egg crates on the walls, and remember that yellow rooms make the best sounds

>>be sure to put egg crates on the walls, and remember that yellow rooms make the best sounds
<
Pipeline is joking - I hope<g>.

You mean I just threw out 6 dozen eggs for nuthin'!?!

M

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-4146

Of course he's joking.......we all know that red rooms sound the best - not yellow!

"Of course he's joking.......we all know that red rooms sound the best - not yellow"

And don't forget that authentic 70's shag carpeting is way better than egg crates also. Red shaq, to match the walls will give you a more professional sound.

The best mic is the one that Norah Jones used to record, but that one just sold at auction. Sorry you missed it.

I've done a fair bit of background reading so I think I'm headed in the right direction but I still have one thing I'm not 100% certain about.

What I'm looking to add to my capabilities is being able to record VOs. I'm not really aiming for 'best' here but something a few notches up from having the guy talk into the camera mic (shudder!). This is only for cheapo corporate stuff and training videos, anything more upmarket than that and I'm smart enough to drag the client screaming into a real studio with a real engineer.

So from my research it seems the best type of mic for this is a large diaphragm condensor, I'll admit to having a soft spot for Rode as I'm not far from the factory, sure they're not cheap but it'll be something to leave my kids.

Anyway the question is this. Where I'm working trying to get the place quiet is going to be nigh impossible, and I'm figuring a unidirectional mic might help. I understand these are not normally used for recording voice, question is just how bad do directional mics perform on voice, could something like a K2 be set narrow enough to make any real difference to background noise pickup.

I have a M-Audio Firewire 410, I know it's not exactly top flight gear but I figure it's a reasonable piece of gear that I can use in a number of ways which kind of leads me to my next question.

The other thing I'm interested in is recording audio at live indoror events events. I've been burnt badly twice by 'feeds from the desk' and there's no way I have the resources financially or physically to run my own desk and a dozen mics to say nothing of the experience to use that kind of setup.

So I've been looking to a X-Y stereo mic setup. I know I'm going to be at the mercy of the place's acoustics but we regularly shoot at the Sydney Opera House and our audio feed comes off a pair of mics suspended from the ceiling and it sounds pretty damn good. I'm not looking to record opera myslef, mostly corporate shows where they have a few musos for some light entertainment, that sort of thing. We'll still take a feed from the desk into a camera if we can get it but I like the idea of running a pair of mics through my 410 and into a laptop just to be certain I've got another sound recording in case the feed from the desk doesn't have everything in it.

Farss,
Some response to your concerns. Actually, directional mics are primarily used for Voice Over type of work, I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. It's very important to cut down on room noise when doing VO work, so that is greatly achieved by using a cardiod pattern pickup(ie directional) and close micing the VO person. I've heard good things about the Rode Mics,but don't own one. I have to disagree about the price point, because that's one of the things that is suppose to be attractive about them. Good bang for your buck. As far as price, I guess it's where your frame of reference is from. I use AKG 414's and Neuman U87's for VO work, so comparing the Rode Price to those, it's a steal if it's as good as everyone says it is. Definately, get a large diaphram condenser mic with multi-pattern pickup switches, it allows you to use the mic for multiple applications, so you might spend a little more, but you're actually saving money from having to purchase multiple mics down the road.

As far as your VO setup, I would also look into getting a microphone processor channel strip. Probably something like a DBX 286A would be ideal for your applications. It has a good quality Mic Pre, followed by a compressor and De-esser and +48V phantom power, which are all essential for VO work, and is very reasonably priced. I have 2 of these and will never part with them. You might also take a look at the DBX 376, which is a comparitive unit but has tube pre's and a digital output. Using tubes on the road is usually not a good idea though, because of the abuse due to the road conditions and tubes aren't famous for robustness. I recently picked up a 376 on ebay, for what I considered to be a steal. I got it for $300 and the guy also included a Lexicon MPX100 with it for free. Seeing that I'm a Harman International employee and both of these units are Harman products, I couldn't even touch the price with my employee discounts, so I definately think I got a pretty good deal. So if you're into doing the Ebay thing, I've seen the 286A usually going around $100-$150, and the 376 for $300-$350.

For the X-Y micing, I think this is ideal for a Live minimal micing stereo situation. Placement is your main concern. You need to be able to listen to the room, and judge where the "critical distance" point is. The critical distance is defined as the point in the room where the direct sound and reverberant sound are equal in level. You need to place the mics, just inside the critical distance. This might be a problem, depending on how the room is set up.

Thanks Red,
some really good input there.
Guess I wasn't really thinking about how I was decribing the mics for VO. I realise cardiods are the norm, being a video guy that's not "directional", I was thinking hyercardioid, something like a short shotgun. They seem to cut down the noise but trying to keep the talent in the sweet spot seems pretty difficult and as they move I'd imagine the response shifts, that was my main concern.

Farss,
You're probably a killer video guy when it comes to giving video advice, but you definately need some brushing up on your audio terms. "Directional", means that the mic will pickup better from one direction than the other. Therefore, the only NON-directional pickup pattern is "Omni", because it picks up the sound equally coming at it from all directions. Bi-polar, Cardiod, Hyper-cardiod and Super Cardiod are all directional pickup patterns. The differences in the different cardiod types is the off axix "rejection" point. Cardiod, will reject sound coming into it from 180 degrees off axis. Thus, the mic pics up the best from sound coming into the front, and rejects sound coming from the back. A hyper cardiod is similar, except it's rejection points are at +/- 120 degrees off-axis, with a slight increased pickup bump at 180 degrees. Hyper cardiod will give you a wider rejection area than a cardiod, but will pickup slightly more at 180 degrees off axis. The most important part of using a microphone is to obey these rules in this order.
1. Point the rejection of the microphone at what you DON'T want to pick up.
2. Point the front of the microphone of what you DO want to pick up.

Notice how "1" comes before "2", this is more important than pointing it at what you want to record. You can have the microphone off-axis from the sound you're trying to record +/- 45 degrees and still get a good sound with usually only a -3dB drop in level compared to 0 degrees on axis. That's why pointing the rejection of the microphone is more important.

Sorry Red,
I was being a little sarcastic I think!
I do know the differences between mics, I was sort of paraphrasing how most video guys consider these things, usually when they talk about a 'directional' mic they mean a shotgun, something like a 416!

Obviously to be technically correct anything that isn't omni is directional, same applies to aerials and even there when most RF guys talk about directional they'll be talking about something with a very narrow polar response.

But my concern was this, the polar diagrams are oftenly at only one frequency and that isn't the whole story right. From my limited knowledge there maybe more to this than the numbers and simple polar diagrams tell. This is where experience takes over from study. I'd imagine I could easily find two mics that look like they've got the same frequency responce and same polar response. One might cost $100 and the other $1,000 and despite the similar looking specs yet in a real world situation the $1,000 one will sound vastly better than the cheap one.
Now I'm only guessing here so bear with me, I'd imagine part of the untold story is how mics perform when you're slightly off axis. Why am I saying that?

Well years ago I worked with this old gent who used to build loudspeakers by hand, I mean really build the things by hand! He used to make the cones himself using some very ingenous process he managed to makes ones that went from rigid in the middle to very flexible at he edge. His aim was to build a single speaker that would do 20-20KHz, to test these things he built his own condensor mics as well. Well he gave me one pearl of wisdom, stop thinking about frequency and start thinking about wavelength. Of course being the typical young know it all I thought he was just an old nutter but over the years his words keep coming back to me. He did explain that of course they are one and the same thing, but its how you look at sound. When you start looking at it as a problem in the wavelength domain and not the frequency domain then you see a different view of the world of sound. You start to see how the environment interacts with the sound.
This chap always used to refer back to the ancient Greeks, he reckoned they knew more about sound then they we do today.

Oh, and why was he trying to build one speaker to cover the audible range? Because using more than one meant there were holes in the polar response at certain wavelengths!

Sorry if that story is rather boring but you're obviously passionate about your craft so I though you might find it interesting.

Yep, being an audio geek I actually enjoyed that.

You are correct, in that there are a few things missing when just comparing frequency response graphs, and polar patterns. One that I can think of for the biggest price difference is transient response comparison. That is how quick the diaphram can react to quick impulses and properly reproduce them. Dynamic mics are known to have slower transient response than a Condenser microphone, but may show similar polar patterns and frequency response. This is a major reason why condenser mics are usually used for micing cymbals over a dynamic, because cymbals have a lot of transient energy. Another thing you must remember is that dB is a relative measurement. Meaning the polar pattern will make 0dB as the max output level and show the response of the off axis rejection relative to this 0dB point. Well another microphone can have a higher output level, and use it's max output as the 0dB reference point. Output level is crucial for getting the best signal to noise ratio for the mic. So the one with the lower output, would make the noise floor more noticeable than the one with the higher output. This is another major difference between a dynamic and condenser microphone. Condensers have higher output levels. Also, alot of these graphs are made by seeing the frequency response, by doing a sinewave sweep. Well that means that only 1 frequency is seen at a time. So this measurement will neglect intermodulation distortion problems. That is some diaphrams will have a hard time reproducing the correct sound when a low frequency and a high frequency signal play at the same time.

One more thing is that on the spec sheets' fine print you will often see that the polar response graph is "normalized". While the picture makes it appear that each frequency is EQUALLY represented for an awful lot of the "globe", what reads zero on the chart at 3khz could be -12db down from that same spot at 1khz but the chart shows both as zero

there was an eq mag featured "room with a VU" where there really was shag carpeting on the walls. Joy will be had by all if someone can find a pic of that on the web!