I'm looking for a good starter vocal mic for under $300 USD - is it possible?

Eric V said:
...

And thanks Keith, for adding to my list and the options to consider.
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I have a very untrained, baritone voice, but I've got a few YouTube videos (links below) with 3 of the mics mentioned, all in similar, acoustic styles. Not all the same recording situations, though all at home, and some bleed into different acoustic guitar mics may contribute to differences, as well as mix decisions about reverb, but, in general somewhat comparable. (I have a template for these kinds of fooling around/experiments, and other than high-pass EQ, and some surgical tinkering for sibilance they should be very similar - didn't go try to find the mixes that went into these, if I even still have them. IOW, My $.02, YMMV, FWIW, etc...)

N.B. I suspect I posted all of these on this forum before.

YouTube links:
Miktek PM9 (Sixteen Tons, duo, AKG C214 on the acoustic)
Shure SM58 (Columbus Stockade Blues, duo, AT4051a on the acoustic)
Shure SM57 w/A2WS (Walk On Boy, solo, ATM450 on the acoustic)
 
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keith.rogers said:
I have a very untrained, baritone voice, but I've got a few YouTube videos (links below) with 3 of the mics mentioned, all in similar, acoustic styles. Not all the same recording situations, though all at home, and some bleed into different acoustic guitar mics may contribute to differences, as well as mix decisions about reverb, but, in general somewhat comparable. (I have a template for these kinds of fooling around/experiments, and other than high-pass EQ, and some surgical tinkering for sibilance they should be very similar - didn't go try to find the mixes that went into these, if I even still have them. IOW, My $.02, YMMV, FWIW, etc...)

N.B. I suspect I posted all of these on this forum before.

YouTube links:
Miktek PM9 (Sixteen Tons, duo, AKG C214 on the acoustic)
Shure SM58 (Columbus Stockade Blues, duo, AT4051a on the acoustic)
Shure SM57 w/A2WS (Walk On Boy, solo, ATM450 on the acoustic)
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Thanks Keith, I will check them out. :D
 
I keep getting Walk On Boy instead of 16 Tons....

I think I like the vocals on the 57/with foam take a little better on vocals but the acoustic on the 58 track was better. my 2 cents....

good examples of the Shure mics.
 
CoolCat said:
I keep getting Walk On Boy instead of 16 Tons....

....
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Oops. Fixed. And, yes, vocals do vary - really not an A/B/C matchup, but as close as I can muster. The PM9 may be the least reliable since it was done where both guitars had LDCs on them, so likely a bit more bleed in those, too. (But, somewhere there's a video of Molly Tuttle using one, so probably not a clunker, either.)
 
Three of my most frequently used dynamic mics are the Miktek PM9, Sennheiser e935, and an EV ND967. To my ears the PM9 comes close to sounding condenser like.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Honestly, get the 57 and two other $100 mics. The 57 is a good mic for a lot of applications, especially micing amps, and having multiple mics gives you more options and more ability to experiment and find out what exactly you like about the different mics.
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I was going to answer this thread, but VHS already said everything IMO.
 
I have a question about the term "flat response", which apparently is referring to mics that deliver between something like 100-250 Mhz. What is the benefit of having a mic like that, is it to get the purest possible sound? This is part of my parsing info I have read about certain mics.
 
There's flat response, and there's "character". Mics are transducers, meaning they change one type of energy to another. Like speakers, the variations are often pretty significant. There are mics which have variations to give a specific sound, like boosting the highs, minimizing sibilance, giving presence.

Plus you can't always look at a graph to know how a mic sounds. You have be careful about two things that are rarely specified in any literature and are not consistent among manufacturers
1 How is the response curve measured (averaging can smooth things a lot)
2 What are the measurement conditions

I have a dozen different mics, and each has a characteristic sound. I have favorites, not necessarily the ones that are favored by the "elite" engineers, but they work for me.

For vocals, you generally are good with 60-15000, which is typical for many dynamic mics like the SM57. For cymbals that will miss a lot of the sparkle from the recording. Here are three examples of published curves. All are good mics, two are "industry standards". Which would you choose?


SM57.jpg
U87.jpgNT1.jpg
 
Thanks TalismanRich. I understand your post in general, but the charts - I'm not really sure how to read them. Interpreting the data I guess is what I mean. The one with the red line looks "consistent", and the top graph looks like it varies depending on dB level ?
 
It's not that it varies based on dB level. Its output vs frequency.

The way you measure a microphone is to measure the electrical output based on a constant sound pressure signal with varying frequency. You run a sweep from, say, 20Hz to 20kHz at a consistent volume and plot the electrical output. What the top graph says is that the signal output at 50Hz will be about 10dB lower than the response at 1000Hz and 7dB higher at about 6000Hz. Less bass, more mid-high frequency sound than the original signal.

Most electrical devices, like preamps and amps are flat +/- a couple of tenths of a dB. Mics might be +/-5 to 7 dB.
 
TalismanRich said:
It's not that it varies based on dB level. Its output vs frequency.

The way you measure a microphone is to measure the electrical output based on a constant sound pressure signal with varying frequency. You run a sweep from, say, 20Hz to 20kHz at a consistent volume and plot the electrical output. What the top graph says is that the signal output at 50Hz will be about 10dB lower than the response at 1000Hz and 7dB higher at about 6000Hz. Less bass, more mid-high frequency sound than the original signal.

Most electrical devices, like preamps and amps are flat +/- a couple of tenths of a dB. Mics might be +/-5 to 7 dB.
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Thanks again, TR. Very helpful information. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this.
 
Eric V said:
Thanks TalismanRich. I understand your post in general, but the charts - I'm not really sure how to read them. Interpreting the data I guess is what I mean. The one with the red line looks "consistent", and the top graph looks like it varies depending on dB level ?
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The left end of the scale is the lowest bass and the right end is the highest treble. Higher parts of the curve represent stronger signal and lower parts represent weaker signal. The response of the SM57 drops steadily but not drastically as you go below 200 Hz, and it has a strong response at and around 6 kHz.
 
If you google, you'll find the frequencies of each note on a piano keyboard that will place the response curves into context that makes sense. You will spot that even the top note of the piano is nowhere near the end of the chart. The harmonics are in that section - so the recording folk look at a dynamic mic that starts to tail off - note, not cut off, at say 15KHz and a condenser that goes on and on up to maybe 20KHz - but what is actually up there that people with bat like hearing can detect? Not a lot. My view is that 200-5KHz is a very critical area - 5-10KHz is the brightness, and above that the returns seem to reduce for your money.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
The left end of the scale is the lowest bass and the right end is the highest treble. Higher parts of the curve represent stronger signal and lower parts represent weaker signal. The response of the SM57 drops steadily but not drastically as you go below 200 Hz, and it has a strong response at and around 6 kHz.
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It might look something like the 1st of the three graphs that I posted....... 😉
 
rob aylestone said:
If you google, you'll find the frequencies of each note on a piano keyboard that will place the response curves into context that makes sense. You will spot that even the top note of the piano is nowhere near the end of the chart. The harmonics are in that section - so the recording folk look at a dynamic mic that starts to tail off - note, not cut off, at say 15KHz and a condenser that goes on and on up to maybe 20KHz - but what is actually up there that people with bat like hearing can detect? Not a lot. My view is that 200-5KHz is a very critical area - 5-10KHz is the brightness, and above that the returns seem to reduce for your money.
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Thank you Rob for explaining details on the subject, this is very helpful and I very much appreciate it.
 
and of course sometimes the tiny differences between mics actually sound like a twist of the EQ knob, or, as in my case, my monitors seem to hide some of the fine detail I think the mics capture. There are very few bad mics, far more that really just deserve the label, boring but capable, and another tiny group that are universally excellent. Price is frequently not that relevant.
 
rob aylestone said:
and of course sometimes the tiny differences between mics actually sound like a twist of the EQ knob, or, as in my case, my monitors seem to hide some of the fine detail I think the mics capture. There are very few bad mics, far more that really just deserve the label, boring but capable, and another tiny group that are universally excellent. Price is frequently not that relevant.
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Thank you, Rob. I will keep these points in mind going forward,
 
As at least 3 others here have attested the SM57 is a great starter mic. IMO the gold standard of entry level recording mics...I am certain 10's of 1000's of professional recordings for instruments and certainly 1000's of famous vocal recordings were ran through a simple sm57.. I have more expensive mics but I do love my sm57's and have done a lot of vocals via them. Every recording of vocals in my link below were done with the 57...except for one with the more expensive mic...good luck figuring out which one that is.. ;)
 
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