A bottom feeder mic shootout . . . right here . . . right now!

[Kelly Dueck]

I'll see what I can do

I'll try and set something up asap. I have relatives visiting from out of town until thursday so it may have to wait until the weekend.

Note also what Harvey said. It's hard to do a really fair comparison. I'll have to use a nylon pop filter to regulate my mic distance, of course, and I'll have to overdub the vocals to ensure my guitar mics don't pick up any vocals which would colour the overall vocal timbre. I won't touch a thing other than to put a different mic in the shockmount.

I'll record and mix dry. Also I'll likely post a .wav file which will be uncompressed and easy to import into cakewalk for closer scrutiny.

 

[Kelly Dueck]

SE5000 vs V67G in a full mix

Here are the clips of the SE5000 versus the V67G in a mix that I promised. I know I was going to mix them "dry" but I ony remembered after I had spent about 5 hours putting these clips together. Am I a sucker for punishment, or what? I'll post some of my opinions, for what ever they're worth, after others have had a chance to blast away.

Notes:

1. Both mics were positioned in exactly the same place using the same shock mount. I sang directly on-axis. (Yes, I know I'm a hack)
2. Distance to mic was regulated with a nylon pop filter -- 6" away from mic.
3. No EQ or compression was used on the vocal. Only a bit of reverb and delay (plugins in cakewalk) . . . hence, the vocals get a little buried in a couple of spots.
4. Acoustic guitar was recorded using a spaced pairof MXL603's. One positioned around the 12th fret and the other toward the end of the body about the same height as the bridge. Both 603's were about 8" from the guitar -- A Sigma Anniversary (Yes, I still know I'm a hack.)
5. All other instruments were Sonic implants soundfonts.
6. MP3's were encoded at 304 Kbps. The clips are around 2 Meg each.
7. Original files were recorded using an Aardvark Pro 24/96 at 16 bits and 44.1 KHz.
8. TAKE THIS COMPARISON WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. These clips will only give you a rough idea of what these mics "really" sound like. But it's a start, anyway. You can't really judge one as "better" than the other in this sort of context.
9. I have clips of the SCM1000 and the MXL2001 if you want to hear them. Let me know and I'll e-mail them to you directly. I don't want to abuse my ISP's personal website memory restrictions.


Kelly Dueck

 

[CyanJaguar]

hi kelly,

Thanks for taking so much time to do such a comparison.

It confirms what I was thinking. THe v67 sounds very good.

THe se5000 actually sounds very good too. I don't know if its that particular mic, but it seems I can hear some artifacts, a very slight graininess in the highs.

The se5000 does not have the midfrequency boost of the v67. THis may be a good thing in some situations and may be bad in some situations.

Now lets hear your thoughts

 

[Prism]

Wow... I actually wanted to comment on the guitar. I gotta get me a pair of 603s's!!! What kind of room did you record in?

Isaiah

 

[Tekker]

Thanx alot Kelly

Like I said before, on your voice I like the V67g the best, but I'm sure that the SE5000 would have it's place. It definitly does sound alot better in the song than it did by it's self (but I guess that's what really matters after all, right?). Have you tried the SE5000 on others voices too or just your own? If so, what type of voices do you think it works best on (the V67g just walked all over it, on your voice)?

Also, how do you like your Aardvark? I'm going to be buying the Direct Pro 24/96 online (very) soon and I just wanted to know what you thought of it.

Thanx again

-tkr

 

[Kelly Dueck]

My two cents-worth

Over the course of my tests I've found out one thing: The SE1000, SCM1000, V67, MXL2001 and 603s all sound different.

None of them sound "bad". They're all at least quite useable and in some cases very good.

The diference in my opinion is a good thing because it gives me more options in terms of getting the sound I want in a given situation. Why would I want to own 5 V67's just in different packaging?

In addition, these mics will sound different depending on the gear and room. I recorded the guitar and vocals in a 11 x 12 room with 9-ft ceilings with three acoustical foam baffles surrounding me at a distance of about 4 feet each. This effectively got rid of the flutter echo and weird ringing that are a fact of life in small room with parallel surfaces.

The mics all went into an aardvark pr 24/96 (which in my opinion is an awesome card and front end for the money -- clean, quiet and easy to install and compatible with all kinds of different software). If you ran them into a True Systems Precision 8 pre-amp that I got to try out last weekend they'll either sound better or maybe the super accurate pre-amp would reveal some problems that we didn't notice before? Who knows?

Bottom line. All of the mics I tested are useable and sound good for the money, IMHO. (I personally think the Nady SCM1000 is a particularly good value for the home recordist at $150 for a three-pattern mic.)

Kelly

 

[RussK]

Hi, my first post!
Just did a comparison of the alleged response curves of the SE5000 and an AKGC12vr and if either one is to be believed they are suspiciously similar(tongue way in cheek)

Kelly, you are awsome for attempting this shoot-out!
I have an SE5000 arriving next week and I'll be giving a spin vs. a AT4033 and an SM7. I do alot of voice overs and I'll never forget how rich people sound with the AKGsolid tube which now that I think about it I should also throw it up against.

regards to all
Russ

 

[darrin_h2000]

What archive did you dig this one up in. noones seen this for two months.

 

[Tekker]

Darrin,
You ever heard of the "search fuction"? You can find all kinds of old goodies that way......

Russ,
I'd like to hear the results of your shootout (and if you get a change to, throw in a Studio Projects C1 also).

-tkr