USB microphone for piano recording..

T

TCLow

New member
Hello, I'm just new here.. I would like to ask about which USB microphone(I just new to recording, so just think to start with easy-going USB) is suitable to record piano pieces.

I've search around and comes out with Samson Meteor, Samson Q2U, Blue Microphone Snowball... which will be a better choice?

Well, I also came out with Blue Yeti, Audio Technica at2020 but just figure out it's too much over budjet... any suggestion or other recommendation? :)
 
Not to sure about a USB microphones in that application ..... but if I were to get a USB microphone I would go with the Blue Yeti.
 
For best quality purchasing an interface is the way to go. M Audio Fast Track, Steinberg's CIs, Tascam US 200, Lexicons, there are endless varieties. I know there are alot of connections and more to buy, but the sound is always better than with a USB mic.

Be sure to research a good mic for your piano. It will mainly depend on your budget.
 
Well, thanks for all advices.. but i'm currently short on budjet, which as low as less than 100USD?
is it possible to find some not-so-bad mics at this price?
 
Bane01 said:
For best quality purchasing an interface is the way to go. M Audio Fast Track, Steinberg's CIs, Tascam US 200, Lexicons, there are endless varieties. I know there are alot of connections and more to buy, but the sound is always better than with a USB mic.

Be sure to research a good mic for your piano. It will mainly depend on your budget.
Click to expand...


Erm.. i would like to ask, is the audio interface affect much to the sound quality? because i though the audio interfaces are the same as just to convert analog to digital signal?
 
For $100USD you can probably get a usb mic, but as the other guys are saying, it may not be ideal for your application.

If you just want to do a few tracks for a bit of fun or whatever, it'll be fine, but if you plan to get more into home recording over time, please save your money for a while and shop for interfaces later.

Even just having the option to record in stereo would be very important to me with piano.

It all comes down to what you want.
 
so if i go for interface, at least how much budjet i should save?

and i just came across pieszo contact microphone, what actually is that? as i never heard about the name..
 
Those are good interfaces. Also check these out: Details :  | http://www.steinberg.net/

This one has phantom power which you must have if you are going to use condensers. (I would not try to mic a piano without condensers, although it has been done.) Steinberg has also improved their drivers so that you can monitor at lower latencies than ever before without unwanted artifacts in your audio. Some have reported using latencies of 64 samples (that's about 3ms) without problems. Remember that 6 ms is the threshold that the average human ear can detect.

Product: US-200 | TASCAM

Everything Tascam is high quality in my experience. This one is an Audio/MIDI interface, and would come in handy if you have a keyboard you want to connect to your computer. M-Audio, Tascam, and Steinberg all have nice interfaces, but in the end it's a matter of taste and what you need. Personally, I don't think you can go wrong with any of these.
 
why is it better to mic a piano with condenser? is it because of the condenser more sensitive?
and what you mean by latencies of 64 samples and the following "ms" things? (i'm know not much in audio terms)
how about the price? are they among the same price category?
 
There's no hard fast rule, but yes, condenser mics generally perform better than dynamic mics on instruments with greater dynamic ranges/more important subtle nuances.
You'll see dynamics on snares, bass amps etc, and condensers on choirs, pianos etc.
There is overlap and preference to factor in, but that's a decent rule of thumb.


Samples, ms, latency etc......

When you record through a computer, it has to take a small amount of time to calculate what it's doing, before it can let you hear it.
This amount of time can often be heard as a subtle, but off-putting delay.
We call it latency.

You can adjust the way your computer works in order to reduce latency, but of course, you're making it work harder, increasing the possibility of it giving up during a recording.

I suppose if you think of the computer as recording audio in packets, rather than seamlessly.
The latency can only be as small as the smallest packet.

I might not be 100% here on the way it works, but think of those 'packets' as your buffer size.
The greater it is, the longer you have to wait for the first packet.

It's something (almost) all of us have to deal with, and as pointed out, 6ms or there about isn't really going to be heard.
 
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