Help on Microphones for Piano

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trigalg693

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Hello all, I'm terribly sorry if this question has been answered before, but I have looked through pages and pages on the internet for many days, and I have maybe only a slightly better idea of what to get than I did when I started. There are just way too many brands and too many models for me to make sense out of anything! So I was wondering if you guys could help.

I'm looking to get a pair of condenser microphones, budget is 300-500 ish. I really don't want to go higher than 500. They will be for recording classical piano for competitions/audition CDs/etc. I will be looking to rent some kind of studio, or small auditorium/hall to do this, with a large, higher end piano (hopefully this won't be hard to find).

The single most important thing to me in the recording is clarity and accuracy. I don't care if the sound is "harsh" sounding, the nuances and balance of tone has to come through (I think low notes usually create problems since they don't pick up as well) In essence, I need to show off all the right notes, evenness, and the details in my playing :P

Regarding recording techniques, I know about how you can place the mics in...XY? pointed inside the lid, and that's about it. I think for a preamp/interface I'll get a tascam us122 mkII. I saw a pair of Audio Technica AT4041s on Ebay for pretty cheap, and the really flat looking frequency response on their website looks nice, but how good is it really? I've heard some recordings (uncompressed, before EQ, effects added) done with a pair of AT4040 and I don't know if it's just me but they seem to lose some bass. Any suggestions? Thanks so much!
 
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Piano recording is what I do - in fact I have a two-day session booked in London for this week.

You need a good pair of omni mics, as omnis have a full octave at the bottom end that is missing from directional mics.

Personally, my starting point is 20cm spacing about ear height (or slightly above) and about 2m from the piano.

Your budget is tight.

A pair of Rode NT55 - or a pair of NT5 plus the omni heads bought separately should do the trick. The Rode omnis are surprisingly good for the price.

Going up - the MBHO MBNM 410 should also be considered. £247 from Thomann and within your budget (but make sure you order a matched pair).

Quality wise MBHO mics, I would say, are up with Schoeps and Neumann in quality but are a lot less money.

The MBHO website is HERE.

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If your looking for a matched pair of omni microphones that won't break the bank to do this project goggle up and take a look at the Naiant microphones.

You can ask question on that sight and get expert advice on which of their products to purchase to accomplish this project.






:cool:
 
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but from 2m away is it important to have omnidirectional mics? It seems like at that distance from a piano the sound is more or less homogenized.
Also the NT55s are somewhat expensive :(
 
You'd think the sound is homogenized from a few feet away, but I've tried condensor mics in various positions that far off that just didn't pick up the range of the piano like a pair of omnis wound up getting. The new Naiant series mics are pretty low-noise even for quiet, finger-picked acoustic guitar, so I think you'd be fine on piano, and the X-Ms come out at $180 for a pair. Took about 2 weeks to get mine though, so wait-time might be an issue for you, not sure.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. The Naiants are priced a bit cheap, so I can't help but wonder if a pair in the price range I mentioned (300-500 USD) would be a good improvement. The concern I have with the NT5 is that the frequency response chart they give on their website looks like the bass drops off a lot (4 dB :O). Maybe it's just in my head, but some of the recordings I found on the internet seem to agree, the higher notes are much louder. Is this not a problem with the omni capsules?

Sorry if this is something I should've done more research on, but now I'm wondering what kind of money I should be looking to put into the audio interface (I just want a clean, simple unit that plugs into a computer) compared to the microphones.
 
Don't let the price fool you with the Naiant microphones!
They will work just fine for what you want to do.

And I don't think you'll get the same results with the NT5.






:cool:
 
I saw a video online where the sound from a grand piano was recorded using two AT2020 XLR's and it sounded very nice.
 
Oktava MK-012 might be a good starting point. 126dB on those mbnm 410's might be a bit low for large ensembles. i.e. Piano + 100 piece orchestra. Althoug piano by itself in a studio, just fine. Throw in a screaming crowd and NOT fine. Beyer MC930's, SM81's, MKH 8040's, and other common mentions.
 
@moresound thanks, but I think it's a bit strange that there would be no better options up to 2 times their price!
Any other opinions? On the Oktavas? I guess omnidirectional is the way to go, if you guys say so.
 
Well I guess to start ....... when you are to record the piano is the lid to be close, half stick, or full stick?






:cool:
 
Almost certainly full stick. I don't know what piano I'll use yet, but there's a lot of options, so that won't be the problem.
 
That helps to narrow it down. For if the lid was to be closed your options would be seriously limited.

Now if you look back to John Willetts post he was the first to suggest omni microphones for the reasons that he spoke of. And believe me, he should know what he is talking about, Just take a look at his signature and click on them.

Did you go to the Naiant site and post a question about what would be your best bet from their inventory?

I'm just trying to help you with a suggestion on a pair of omnis that will yield you the same results with a pair that would cost you 3 or 4 times as much money.

And Johns placements of the microphones are right on but ... you may have to tweeq them a little to get your taste of what you want in your recordings.

Also where in the world are you located? For in some countrys your only limited to just a few options unless you are willing to pay the BIG import tax.








:cool:
 
trigalg693 said:
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but from 2m away is it important to have omnidirectional mics? It seems like at that distance from a piano the sound is more or less homogenized.
Also the NT55s are somewhat expensive :(
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No - this is a great piano sound, I have been doing it like this for years with great success.

My mics are normally, MKH 20, MKH 8020, KM183-D or KM 131-D.

I have a 2-day recording gig starting tomorrow - will probably use the KM 131-D (ie: KM-D + AK 131-D).

But this is just the starting position - the actual position will depend on the piano, the room and the music.



trigalg693 said:
I can't help but wonder if a pair in the price range I mentioned (300-500 USD)
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You didn't say USD at the beginning and you don't say where you live, so I assumed GBP or possibly €uros.

With USD that really is a very low budget for mics. I would try the Rode NT5 and Omni capsules which are, I think, cheaper than the NT55. Talking to Tony Faulkner, he rates the Rode omnis very highly, despite their low price.



trigalg693 said:
Almost certainly full stick. I don't know what piano I'll use yet, but there's a lot of options, so that won't be the problem.
Click to expand...

Yup - full stick is how I record solo grand piano.



moresound said:
Now if you look back to John Willett's post he was the first to suggest omni microphones for the reasons that he spoke of. And believe me, he should know what he is talking about, Just take a look at his signature and click on them.
Click to expand...

Thanks - solo piano is my speciality and I have been doing it a long time.



moresound said:
And Johns placements of the microphones are right on but ... you may have to tweeq them a little to get your taste of what you want in your recordings.
Click to expand...

Yes - the suggestion was just my starting position - you have to listen and adjust the final position to fit the piano and room.


Adding a Jecklin or Schneider disk may also be a good idea, but you do need diffuse-field omnis for this.

With positioning it's a good idea to think about how the audience would sit when they listen to the instrument normally.


Oh - I can't comment on the Naint mics as I do not really know them.

I hope this helps.
 
Hi all, thanks so much for the help! I'm in California, if that says anything. I'll make an inquiry about the Naiants, and look into the Rode omnis.
 
Hi everyone, I apologize ahead of time if this is not the right place to put this.
I got the Rode NT45-O capsules and a pair of NT5 off ebay, along with a tascam us122 mkii.

I made this recording (part of Rach1 cadenza) on my own piano, which has a pretty harsh sound. I'd say the recording sounds pretty accurate, except these popping sounds are extremely frustrating. I set the latency to 1000ms, closed every single other application, disabled just about everything, and I still get the pops and clicks. Can anyone help? (or direct me to some place where I can get help?) I'm running latest drivers, on win7 64 bit. Strangely enough on a Macbook pro (which isn't here anymore unfortunately) there were no problems like this.

http://rapidshare.com/files/424316008/rach.wav
 
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The tascam 122 is not well liked because of driver issues. For pops and clicks you could try disabling any networking options while recording. Not that easy in windows, but should (if only in theory) be possible. And avoid draping cables across the computer or display. Lots of sources for noises and interference beyond just the location of the mics and the sounds around it. (i.e. turn off your cell phone). Shock mounts if you're not already using them might help with other structure born noises. You might also check that the device is set to the sampling rate that your application is trying to record to. Sometimes things get weird like that and help towards issues like that. Lots of RAM and other after market options could help towards minimizing issues.
 
Hey thanks a lot for the suggestions. The pops are definitely not noises picked up from the microphone or interference from the cables, since when I zoom in on the popping sound in Audacity (I suppose I should probably be using something else but...it's simple), what I see is a maybe 30 sample long segment of audio with these random spikes in it. I can repair them and it'll be unnoticable but the pops are very frequent and I don't want to have to correct thousands of these things.

I'll keep the sources of noise around the computer in mind. Perhaps part of the reason the Macbook Pro was fine is because its aluminum body gives pretty good shielding.
 
When I get them in linux, it's when there's an xrun type situation. Running the recording app with realtime priority, low latency kernel, and other things cures it. But without that, any sort of other activity like network traffic will trigger a pop. And from past experience with windows there's literally hundreds of other activity.

Not that I've used windows much in recent years. But some of that activity is very difficult to turn off. Stuff like anti virus and netbeui on the network side are very diligent about always doing something for no good reason. Or at least no useful reason for the task at hand.

If you don't need to multi-track stuff, a good field recorder could solve this issue for you permanently. As in no auto-updates to render your system useless. And/or interrupt what you were trying to do at the time.
 
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