Which of the two ultra low budget mics?

T

Thomaswb

New member
Hi everyone,

Im trying to make a decision between 2 microphones i have been looking at.

But since this is a dedicated home recording forum, i imagine everyone will say such a low budget mic is a waste of time and buy a $200 mic ect ect...

Nevertheless, if anyone has experience with either the TAKSTAR SGC-598 Or SGC-698 (the newer stereo model), Or both, please let me in on which you believe is best.

I have seen great reviews on the older SGC-598, but it is mono, so i perfer the idea of the SGC-698 because it is stereo, But i haven't seen such great reviews on the SGC-698.

So if anyone here could help me out with finding the better of the two microphones, please do, any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance! :)

- Thomas.
 
kastus said:
Do you want to use it in your home studio? Both of them are for camera.
Click to expand...

I intend to use it mostly for recording an acoustic upright piano and occasionally talking head. So most of the time that would mean taking it off the camera.

But i will always be plugging it into the camera - so i would need a jack extenstion.

And i have a Canon 700D, so it has a built-in pre-amp.
 
They are cheap and have no 'cleverness' - just a couple of cheap electret capsules mounted internally at 90 degrees in X/Y, so they will work in terms of creating a stereo field, if one is actually present where you stick the mic. The question of course is - what do you want to record in stereo? Talking head? Not a stereo source, so ideally, you want to point one of the elements at the subject, not have them in the median between the two capsules - every head turn generating conflicting left/right data. For talking head you need a single capsule. For a piano, even an upright, to get a stereo spread the mic needs to be close - perhaps 3 to 8 feet. Further than that and the room sound will become ambient, and the stereo width reduced to very little.

On camera mics are the worst place to put them, unless you position the camera for best sound, which will NOT be best picture.

On camera stereo mics also have the horrible effect that if you pan, listeners on headphone feel nausea because the left right shifts with the picture which is very strange. Your brain processes it fine when your ears do it with their omni directional function, but two cardioids is yucky.

Quality wise, they're like most cheap condensers - ok. Nothing special. I'd just query of you actually want pseudo stereo?
 
rob aylestone said:
They are cheap and have no 'cleverness' - just a couple of cheap electret capsules mounted internally at 90 degrees in X/Y, so they will work in terms of creating a stereo field, if one is actually present where you stick the mic. The question of course is - what do you want to record in stereo? Talking head? Not a stereo source, so ideally, you want to point one of the elements at the subject, not have them in the median between the two capsules - every head turn generating conflicting left/right data. For talking head you need a single capsule. For a piano, even an upright, to get a stereo spread the mic needs to be close - perhaps 3 to 8 feet. Further than that and the room sound will become ambient, and the stereo width reduced to very little.

On camera mics are the worst place to put them, unless you position the camera for best sound, which will NOT be best picture.

On camera stereo mics also have the horrible effect that if you pan, listeners on headphone feel nausea because the left right shifts with the picture which is very strange. Your brain processes it fine when your ears do it with their omni directional function, but two cardioids is yucky.

Quality wise, they're like most cheap condensers - ok. Nothing special. I'd just query of you actually want pseudo stereo?
Click to expand...

Hi Rob.

Thank you for your reply!

I take all your thoughts on it.

Thanks for the comments re talking head and stereo. This is really a minor part of what this will be used for. So having understood what you have said, i wouldn't buy the stereo one if that is what i was mostly doing.

But it seems it will work quite well for the piano.

Regarding how you mentioned placement and panning could be a issue, - it isnt.

The way i record is in multiple shots, multiple camera angles. So for starters i could take the camera and mic and point it wherever i want for master sound, or just take it off the camera and mount it on another tripod. Then do video only shots in sync with the playing.

And then i splice it together in premier and clean the audio in audition.

A few questions i have re your comment -

(Edit - i googled xy stereo and i understand how it looks now.)

And you say its pseudo stereo, what makes it less stereo? For example compared to the zoom h4n, just the distance between the two microphones?

Thanks very much for your reply. :)
 
I tend to regard 'real' stereo as something that allows you to close your eyes and point accurately at the sound source. If you had four people singing, 'real' stereo enables you to hear each one almost in isolation. A piano at a distance isn't a 'stereo' instrument. If you're playing the damn thing, clearly the bass is on your left and the treble the right - but if you only had one working ear, it wouldn't bother you. A solo singer or speaker has a point source, so recording it with two mics can be problematic. Especially if your recording technique has a hole in the middle where neither mic is really on-axis. If you put a zoom on your camera, it will sound pretty similar to the mic you're talking about - but I doubt it will sound very nice in terms of balance and the real sound vs the room. Move the zoom or the Takstar closer and the sound perks up. Distant sound rarely gets improved by an audio editor, because the room has kind of contaminated it.

close sound is crisper, drier, and more clinical - which you can perk up nicely with some decent reverbs. The other way is difficult or often impossible.
 
rob aylestone said:
A piano at a distance isn't a 'stereo' instrument. If you're playing the damn thing, clearly the bass is on your left and the treble the right - but if you only had one working ear, it wouldn't bother you.
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I was recently recording an upright piano when I discovered that going down the keyboard the notes start to cross back to the right. That made for an interesting stereo image.
 
Thanks again Rob.

I see what you mean by real stereo...

I think pseudo stereo will work for me.

So ill just close mic it after researching the best position. :).

I will also be mixing it with violin and maybe cello audio. So both of these instruments would be better in mono because they only really have a point source?

Thanks, i really appreciate that you're helping me out.
 
Save your money a bit longer and buy a Rode video mic, even the cheapest model LINK will kill the TAKSTAR's

They start at US$99

Alan.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
It's not an effect. The strings for the lower notes are oriented differently so the sound comes from the right.
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Yes, thinking geometrically, that would be because with an XY stereo mic placed vertically upside down above the upright, the right side mic will be closer to perpendicular to the bass strings and the left mic will be also closer to perpendircular to the treble strings.
 
witzendoz said:
Save your money a bit longer and buy a Rode video mic, even the cheapest model LINK will kill the TAKSTAR's

They start at US$99

Alan.
Click to expand...


I checked both out tested on pianos:

YouTube (rode videomic)

YouTube (Takstar)

They sound equally bad.

They are both setup incorrectly.... too far away form the piano, most likely have been set incorrectly so are too hot, are both subject to room acoustic differances, and one piano is a grand.

But given all that i still would expect to hear a drastic increase in quality with the Rode. And i have seen many other tests comparing higher end Rode shotgun mics and the audio is comparable to the takstar....

Anyway.... im unsure.
 
The comparison test does not work as the 2 positions are different is it the same Piano and room? Mic position and room are everything.

Really you should have the mic in a different place then the camera. Can you set up a mic above the middle C and run a cable to the camera?

Alan.
 
Yeah like I mentioned in previous comments,

I would remove it from the camera and record a master audio track. So that would mean i could put it above the center of the piano.

And yes, perhaps the room differences could make that test void...
 
You'd probably have better luck on a camera forum for those mics. I honestly can't imagine how they'd sound any better than the camera's built in mic.

You *can* get a pretty darn good digital recorder for about $100, like a Zoom H1. That's what I'd get and put it where you can get the very best audio recording of the piano. Then shoot your video with multiple cameras while the recorder does its thing. Create the video using the cameras' soundtracks to sync the different angles, then throw that soundtrack away and use the recorder audio, since it can be placed where the best sound can be recorded.
 
I would just like to weight in here about "Stereo"?

As well as capturing the subject, stereo also gets a good impression of the 'acoustic', the room sound. Ms Callas sounds stupendous at the ROH, would not be quite as captivating in my (dead) living room!

Never forget, good recordings come from excellent performance AND a 'nice' place.

Of course most of us don't HAVE the Albert H or RFH on hand and so 'close mic' and bit of 'verb' has to do.

Dave.
 
Adding the violin and cello needs close miking and then image placement. Probably best to record everything dry, work out their place in the stereo field and then add some decent artificial reverb - which will simulate a real environment to a degree, but is of course just manipulation.

That swapping of the notes is quite common on overstrung instruments where to save space, some string pass over others, you you go down and the largest audio producing part of the piano suddenly goes the opposite way. This is also why close mic positions do odd things too. I've never seen it in print, but I've always wondered why this makes uprights and compact grands quite obvious on recordings when you wear headphones. I never describe big instruments as being stereo - they just have width that your ears hear as being big. Often too big. if you listen to some very early stereo recordings - some early Elton John, for example - on headphones the piano is just HUGE. On speakers it can only be as big as the gap between your speakers.
 
witzendoz said:
Save your money a bit longer and buy a Rode video mic, even the cheapest model LINK will kill the TAKSTAR's

They start at US$99

Alan.
Click to expand...

Sorry - just read this. It should say
even the cheapest model LINK will kill the TAKSTAR's
Click to expand...
WHEN USED PROPERLY - and frankly the task is tough, and the differences between mics is overshadowed by having them in the right place.

I may well be wrong, but I have always understood the Rode video mic to use quite ordinary electret capsules sourced from China? If they're custom made in the Rode plant, then it's the bargain of the year. The Rode mic is a good product for a pretty compromised design. It has decent isolation so not too noisy, has good frequency response and just suffers from being in the wrong place. Frankly - if they were good, everyone would use them for broadcast rather than employ a dedicated sound person. Compromise product for a compromise job.
 
rob aylestone said:
I may well be wrong, but I have always understood the Rode video mic to use quite ordinary electret capsules sourced from China? If they're custom made in the Rode plant, then it's the bargain of the year.
Click to expand...

All rode mics are manufactured in Australia

Alan
 
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