room mic vs. polar pattern for ambient sound

[MrZekeMan]

Is there any advantages or disadvantages to using a room mic as opposed to a polar pattern such as figure 8 or omni to capture the ambience of a room?

Zeke

P.S. All I have right now is a C3000B, a MXL V67 and a sm57. I hope to find a good price on a MXL 603 today. I'm headed to Dallas today. I'm going to my brothers for my first attempt to record something that sounds decent. He has a bathroom that has a really nice natural reverb to it, and I'd like to try and capture it with what I have to work with.

[Harvey Gerst]

Originally posted by MrZekeMan

Is there any advantages or disadvantages to using a room mic as opposed to a polar pattern such as figure 8 or omni to capture the ambience of a room?

Zeke, The ambience is created by moving the room mic closer or further from the sound source. While an omni and figure 8 WILL give you more of the room than a cardioid, it won't give you the same feeling of the room as a well-place room mic in a good sounding room.

P.S. All I have right now is a C3000B, a MXL V67 and a sm57. I hope to find a good price on a MXL 603 today. I'm headed to Dallas today. I'm going to my brothers for my first attempt to record something that sounds decent. He has a bathroom that has a really nice natural reverb to it, and I'd like to try and capture it with what I have to work with.

Keep in mind that sound travels about one foot per millisecond to calculate the reverb time of the first reverb return. A reverberant chamber then adds additional reverberation due to multiple paths. Longest reverb time will be achieved by putting a speaker in one corner and the mic in the furthest corner away from the speaker. Have fun. Call me if you want some other mics to play around with, since I'm only about a 1/2 hour away from Dallas.

[MrZekeMan]

Thanks Harvey,

I might take you up on the mic offer.

I went to the VS-2480 seminar today. This machine is incredible. It blew me away to see all that this thing can do.

I booked 4 hrs of studio time with Rick Knepper. I know you probably know him as he's on the R.A.P compilation CD. He sure is knowledgeable about The Roland VS series. We're gonna record some acoustic guitar and vocals using his mic locker and my 2480. He's gonna put me through the paces on the recorder and give me a good kickstart on recording and mixing on it.

We were supposed to record tomorrow. I called him up tonight and left him a message trying to reschedule for Wednesday. My brother and I could benefit from a full day of rehearsing tomorrow. I might holler at ya in the next couple of days about hooking up. I will be here until at least Sunday.

If your interested I might leave this C3000B with you when I go so you can give it a listen and let us know what you think of it. I could leave you a few bucks to send it to me when you get through.

One more thing. This is probably a stupid question, but I just want to make sure. Do you try to get as hot a signal as possible on your room mic, as you do on your source mic? The reason I ask, is because the noise will probably be higher on the room mic being farther from the intrument. I'll no doubt have to turn the preamp up more on it to get my level up to what my source mic will be doing with less gain.

Zeke

[Harvey Gerst]

Rick's a great guy, and it should be a lotta fun. He knows he can always call me if he needs anything I have. I'll be happy to listen to the C3000B, since I'm curious to see if they fixed the high end problem. I try for a reasonable level if I'm using a room mic (which I rarely use). I tend to try and keep peaks around 3 to 4 dB below full scale. That way, I'm still using all the bits, but preventing the A/D converters from adding their own colorations.

[MrZekeMan]

Harvey,

You were correct sir. It was a blast. Rick is an awesome laid back guy. He's in it for the music. He let us run a couple of hours over from the time we had scheduled.

It was good for me being being a newbie to see how he had his home studio set up. I have to find a decent site I can do my recording in. We did some preliminary recording before we went to Ricks yesterday, and it was night and day from what we did at Ricks.

I'm sure the $3,000 mic didn't hurt either.

How can I get ahold of you Harvey to try and get this C3000B into your hands?

Zeke