Suggestion on a condenser mic for male vocals

W

wedge43

New member
Hi everyone
I currently own a B1 by Studio Projects that I have bought about 6 years ago when I first got into home recording. Obviously I grew tired of it as got what I paid for...

I've been looking for a new condenser mic to record my vocals. I am a pop rock singer with quite a wide range and sing with lots of dynamics from very loud to very soft.

I have tried the AT4033 recently and thought it sounded great though a bit too <in your face> and harsh in the highs. I would like something that is as clear but has more body (and I don<t mean boomy... that I got plenty with the B1)

my budget is 800$. I know a lot of you are going to tell me that in that price range I will grow tired of my purchase again and that I need to spend a little more but eh... life is what it is...

Does anybody know a mic that might fit what I am looking for?

thanks friends
 
it sure is an interesting suggestion for I have read about that topic for weeks now and you are the first to come up with that model. I'll look into it. Any other suggestion people?
 
Does the M-Audio Ultra 8R have enough pre-amp gain to drive an RE20? I've been thinking about getting an RE20 myself, but I've read you ideally need about 60db of gain on tap? And the Ultra 8R only have 54 Db. Is it true you need that much gain to drive the RE20?
 
It never hurts to have as much headroom as possible with your preamp no matter what micropone your using!
 
Here we go again. First, for vocals, cardioid is just fine. In the studio, feedback and bleed isn't as much of an issue, so supercardioid and hypercardioid mics are not necessary and are more of a pain in the ass to use for vocals. Some people use omni, and that's OK if you have a really good room (most people don't) and you don't use proximity effect as a performance tool (I do). Figure 8 is OK, and has been used for many years, primarily because ribbon mics are mostly figure 8. While they pick up a lot of stuff from the rear, they have some really cool null fields to the left and right which you can point at reflection problems. If you put a reflection filter or gobo behind a figure 8, they are fine. However, the proximity field tends to be abrupt and aggressive on a figure 8, so you need good technique. People who can't stand still when they sing don't usually do so well with them.

As far as vocal mics go, there is one major consideration- they are like shoes. They either fit, or they don't. I can't look at you and tell you what kind of shoes fit you, and I can't listen to a clip and tell you what kind of vocal mic you need. If you have a preamp with enough clean gain to feed a dynamic (including ribbons), they work for many people. Standards include Moresound's suggestion, Electrovoice RE20, and some other studio standards, Sennheiser MD421/MD441, and Shure SM7b. All of them require a preamp with balls. Many people like the current crop of cheap Chinese ribbons, like Cascade Fathead, and I do too, but they wouldn't be my first choice for vocals. They are great cab mics. The cheapest ribbon I can recommend for vocals, unfortunately, is just out of your price range- AEA R84, about a grand. It rocks.

Condenser mics have many more options, and a much wider price range. All I can do is recommend mics that work for *somebody*, and which are proven useful studio mics on a variety of sources. If I were in your position, I would buy 2 mid-priced mics, a badass dynamic and a solid condenser. For the dynamic, I would choose SM7b or EV RE20, whichever I could find a good price on, used. For the condenser, I would select any of the following, depending on how much money I had left over: Rode NTK or K2, Shure KSM32 or KSM44, Neumann TLM102, Audio-Technica AT4040 or AT4050, B.L.U.E. Baby Bottle, Dragonfly, or Bottle Rocket Stage 1, Sennheiser MK 4, AKG C2000B or C214.

My experience says that in the end, a $300-$400 dynamic and a $400-$500 condenser are more useful overall than any $800 mic on the market. Good luck-Richie
 
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