is it all hype?

[CoolCat]

talking HR here, not recording Adele's next album...

but the Sweetwater Mic Shootout makes me wonder how big a deal is it with this mic thing?
Vocal Mic Shootout | Sweetwater

I'll try a POLL....and see if the $49 mic is not good enough for HR.
It sounds fine to me, maybe not as perfect as a $9000 mic but its not that far off either. It doesnt sound like crap.

 

[42low]

If i look at bands perfoming on TV they many times use shure mics (sm58 like types). And they still sound good too.
Even big bands perfoming use simular mics.

Yes there are differences. One mic grabs all sounds, were another excludes backgroundsounds. One is better for vocals were another does a greater job on instruments.
But i don't want $1500 mics. Not even 1/3 of that. A good and wide freq mic over EQ does most off job too. (don't forget that i'm a non professional, like most overhere aren't )
Now everyone for instance focusses on shure mics. Like there are no other good brands.

Said it in another topic already.
Reading about people homerecording who can choose between several $1500 mics, plugged in to thousands of dollars of gear. And then they produce there projects in 16bits and 44.1khz, using 16bit/44.1khz im- and exports.
I still don't get it at all.

To me personally 80% of that all is hype. Although i understand and respect gear fanatics, so it's no more than difference in opinion.

 

[CoolCat]

yeah, on one hand I was thinking what a great mic sample project they did and the other hand I thought this isnt going to help all the mics being sold for so much? haha maybe the sales dept will have them take down the shootout.

its like food and $22 hamburgers vs a good $6 burger...the $49 mic really surprised me in that shootout.
I know for Shure 57 and 58 theyve been around a long time and theyre cheap enough and built well. Like Fender guitars and amps its decades of name brand and owners....

im astounded the $49 mic sounded so near the $8995 mics, its a brain tease or something.

 

[42low]

Like Fender guitars and amps its decades of name brand and owners....

Yes. And because fender long time had great guitars many guitar players buy fender (or Gibson or...).
But is a nowaday's one the same quality als say 20/30/40 years ago?
We have a 30yo handmade guitar which i yell that it's better quality than many nowaday's guitars from famous brands. (is becoming a collectors item btw)

Among my best mics is a $20 used one from a not that know brand (but at least shure quality).

its like food and $22 hamburgers vs a good $6 burger...

Ever seen that test in which a Big Mac was presented as a five start restaurant burger? With reactions alike "you can taste the culinary influence of the cook and the quality of special attention for mixture and blend."

 

[Bobbsy]

It's a sad fact of life that, as prices go up, the improvement you get for the extra money goes down. However, chances are that the $9000 mic is being used in a custom designed studio with acoustics done totally professionally. It's probably also being fed through a top of the line pre amp and a top end mixer like a Neve or something.

I didn't listen to anything like everything, mainly just the $49 C1 and the sE2200 II which I know well. I can hear a difference in the detail and how "natural" the sound is. The C1 sounds a bit "nasal" to me.

Whether the price difference is worth it only the user/potential user can decide. I own several of the sE mics so obviously I've voted with my wallet.

A couple of other points would be that, the more recording and mixing you do, the more critical your listening skills will become. Issues you don't hear to start with start to rear their ugly heads after a while.

Second, you have to be very careful comparing recording to live work on TV or in a venue. On TV there's likely a 50/50 chance that the song is being mimed to something recorded in a studio using different mics. Or, even if genuinely live, the considerations for doing a mix in these circumstances becomes very different--you work about thing like feedback from monitors, vocalists moving the mic position etc. etc. However, on the positive side, you're unlikely to listen over and over for days hearing every error.

 

[CoolCat]

i love the topic because it keeps my cash in my pocket for other things.

this Mic comparison is strange though because its from someone who sells hi-dollar stuff.
this is HR, right?.....so $49 not bad.

I did the same with guitars the Squier 51 Ive had sounds fine for me and the US STrats and all that was a work of art etc...and sold really easy because people like them but I couldnt justify the $1000 extra for what Im doing and also it didnt play or sound much better to me.

MCD's and some fluff words...ha..yeah the best trickbrainteaser was Ethans with the Myth on amps and the expensive one wasnt even plugged in and everyone said how much better it sounded.(including some magazine reviewers)

still this 50 mic thing allows a pretty stellar listening opportunity of a lot of mics....the results are good.

 

[42low]

It's a sad fact of life that, as prices go up, the improvement you get for the extra money goes down.

It's with everything in life. Pareto-principle, a rule of life. Managers learn that too about 'work and results'.
It only costs 20% effort to reach 80% result. Were the remaining 20% extra will cost 80% effort to reach the perfect 100%. Think about it.
And it's a (personal) choice were one is happy with.

You can mirror this almost one on one on the mic prices.
20% of the costs ($200) to reach 80% quality, were it will be raised with 80% (€800) to reach the 20% more quality of a $1000 mic.

 

[garww]

talking HR here, not recording Adele's next album...

but the Sweetwater Mic Shootout makes me wonder how big a deal is it with this mic thing?
Vocal Mic Shootout | Sweetwater

I'll try a POLL....and see if the $49 mic is not good enough for HR.
It sounds fine to me, maybe not as perfect as a $9000 mic but its not that far off either. It doesnt sound like crap.

It is only a issue if you make it one.

 

[miroslav]

I'll try a POLL....and see if the $49 mic is not good enough for HR.
It sounds fine to me, maybe not as perfect as a $9000 mic but its not that far off either. It doesnt sound like crap.

Well..that $49 mic is clearly the worst sounding of the bunch. Yeah, there were others that had some similarity in tone, but the $49 mic to my ears had the most annoyingly strident/harsh sound of all of them...and I'm only hearing it on cheap computer desktop speakers. I'm sure if I heard it on my studio monitors, that would be even more obvious.

But you don't need to go from $49 to $9000...and there's no implication that the $9000 mic is $8951 better than the $49 mic.
The way to look at it is more about tonal personality, finding the one that absolutely complements your voice (or a variety of voices) in most situations, and delivers vocal tracks that just seem to fall into place without a lot of work...and also the overall build quality.
I can bet that the $49 mic has about $25-$30 in the build quality, and I bet if you got like 10 of them, they would be all over the place with their specs, since they are obviously churned out on some assembly line, with parts-is-parts.
Hey...if it sounds good to you, and you don't hear anything bad about it...then go for it...but just comparing those two sets of vocal clips...doesn't tell the complete tale about every mic in the shootout.
EVERY voice is different...and man, sometimes you can go through a dozen mics trying to find one that really works for a given voice...other times you have a voice that sounds the same or as good even if they sing through a soup can.

Also...there's something to be said for brand names. Maybe that doesn't always resonate with the "I got $200, is that enough for a home studio setup?" crowd...but if you are buying from a build quality, specialized use, and resale value perspective...if you are buying for the long-term and looking to build up your studio, rather than just put something together on the cheap, as long as it gets you recording...then there's more to buying than pure price.

Like a car.
You can say that a $10k compact, or even some cheaper used vehicle will get you from home to work just the same as an Audi...or a BMW...or what have you...but really, what would you rather drive?

That said...don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should always buy the most expensive audio gear. I'm a deal hound and will window shop and research for a long time before I commit even $49 on something...but one thing that's been repeated over and over for me throughout my studio recording years...is that even though I've bought cheap when I needed to, I have never, ever once regretted buying up when I could, yet there have been many times that I regretted buying cheap just so I could save a few bucks to then spend on some other cheap items.

It only feels like you're getting a deal when you stretch your $$$ real thin and buy a lot of cheap items with it, rather than buying a couple of better quality items, and then having no doubts about them and thoroughly enjoying them...rather than making do.

YMMV....

 

[garww]

I usually want to spend more. I've gone up to $99

 

[miroslav]

I always suspected you were a closet high-roller.

 

[42low]

Like a car.
You can say that a $10k compact, or even some cheaper used vehicle will get you from home to work just the same as an Audi...or a BMW...or what have you...but really, what would you rather drive?

Something to think about.
Some people drive a 100K car, but that doesn't make them a good driver. Their crashes will even be bigger by the underestimated power.
Many times, if not most, someone in a 10K car can easily win a race from a 100K car driver. A bad driver will loose in both cars.
And the one with a half a K car will probably blow op his engine during the race.

Ow man, how often i see those. Driving a big blingbling 100K car, but they can't even park it proper.
Exactly like i said earlier, a 1.5K mic plugged into several K's gear, and producing with horrible used expensive plugins in 16bit/44.1khz. I still don't see it.
Why i alway's ask myself why one should have a 1.5K mic and xK's off gear? Because he's that good? Just interested in it? Or because he has to hide his shortcomings behind all that bling shine he tries to impress with? Like they also say about man driving big cars.

 

[garww]

Well, there's no Cathedral Organ, Sandy Nelson, or, Sinatra hangin' around my music room. haha There's that story that Gary Numan put his sock over a 57 - what is it we need ?

 

[garww]

....." but they can't even park it proper".

As you imply latter, a big part of it is confidence. A period RCA would help, though. Anyway, if we have enough sensors and amps around, we should be able to engineer something desireable

 

[snow lizard]

To me the C1 sounds fizzy.

On the other hand, it's a microphone so it will work in that capacity to an extent.

These shootouts don't tell the whole story in my opinion. What was Henry's sig line? Any microphone you use will be perfectly suited to your needs until you use it long enough to realize that it isn't.

Consider workflow. Let's say you record bed tracks for a band and it's all good. Then you have a bunch of overdubs. Rather than futzing with this or that, you take the best mic you have and just move it around to get what you need. If it gives you great results everywhere it can help to make the session run smoothly. Good gear doesn't get in the way.

So 50 large condensers on vocals. Hmmm. What about wind instruments, strings, percussion and amps? How about SDCs and dynamics?

Good God! Make it funky now!

 

[JefferySmith]

I listened to the $50 and then bounced around to some of the others. They all sounded like crap on my laptop. It might have helped if the male singer sounded more like John Denver. I would try it again with headphones, but it's easy to get really tired of the clips.

 

[garww]

Well, we got VST from IK to Slate to make a 57 sound like something else : )

 

[CoolCat]

I listened to the $50 and then bounced around to some of the others. They all sounded like crap on my laptop. It might have helped if the male singer sounded more like John Denver. I would try it again with headphones, but it's easy to get really tired of the clips.

I mainly focused on the sample with the track behind it, I dont see a lot of reasoning to hear it too much dry.
The track with music has some compression. I forget the preamp and such...I think its a Millenial or something and hidollar converter.

I didnt download the hires version just played the MP3 320kpbs. The solo vocal is dry no eq or comp etc...

Its a impressive set of samples imo, if I went to the store a persons going to do a short bit and make a decision so this does offer some of that. The chics vocal were even less different imo, the dudes vocal was what it is...not a same freq to mine but overall theres a lot of mic's and some Ive never heard.

each sung piece was done 50 times, so theres some slight differences in takes..not much. very good singers.

 

[CoolCat]

Well, we got VST from IK to Slate to make a 57 sound like something else : )

yeah, I wonder about that. I dont really buy it because you cant put back what isnt there can you?
like the old crooner records the singer and all his bass is there, and that country singer (who was drunk and naked buying cigs..wasted in Dewey Cox land..haha).... he would need something that doesnt have the 100hz filter cut.

for most the filter cut off thats used alot makes mics like the 57/58/7 already done for us.my KSM have filter cutoff at 80hz etc...

and for HR isnt that enough?

I could hear small, tiny, nice handling of the higher freqs on some other mics that cost more. but the C1 Behringer sounded a lot better than I would think for so cheap?

I looked up my response from Matt Wallace and he used a Neve or Quad 8 preamp into a original black face 1176 and a MXL990 for the Billboard hit....so yeah that proves cheap can work fine.(but thats not a cheap channel strip?)

maybe the really nice channel strip helped the $49 mic too? or did it make it sound worse to some?

 

[miroslav]

Its a impressive set of samples imo, if I went to the store a persons going to do a short bit and make a decision so this does offer some of that. The chics vocal were even less different imo, the dudes vocal was what it is...not a same freq to mine but overall theres a lot of mic's and some Ive never heard.

each sung piece was done 50 times, so theres some slight differences in takes..not much. very good singers.

I find that having that many samples actually confuses the issue...because you start to lose the subtle differences after you hear the first handful...and then it's all a blur.

The fact that so many sound kinda similar, only underscores that...and probably will mislead rather than help....not to mention, people then just focus on the price if they totally believe in that similarity.

Again...not saying one needs to use a $9000 mic...but when you really put mics to the test, to some real-world hands-on use in your own environment, you can start to hear the differences and how they matter or not.
I've got probably over 3 dozen mics in my locker...and of those, I would say there's at least 2 doz that would qualify as "vocal mics". I've had most of them on stands, and tried them all out, recorded tracks...etc....and it wasn't all that hard to narrow things down to 2-3 "top" mics for any vocals.