Microphones for Recording Speakers

H

holyham

New member
Hopefully someone can help me out here. I am going to be demoing a LOT of different speakers pretty regularly. I have a blog where I put up the recordings for my readers so they can listen and get a feel for the speakers. I know it's not exact or anything, but you can still learn a lot about each speaker this way.

Anyway, up until this point, I've used multiple portable recorders in a setup where one is modified to only record the low end (zoom h1) and the mids and highs are recorded using another portable recorder. This works surprisingly well, but I would like to take it further.

There must be better options out there for something like this. The microphone needs to be placed a good distance away from the speakers. A good example would be if in the test setup, the left and right channel speakers are 6ft apart on center, the microphone will usually be 6ft back from them. This obviously gives almost ideal stereo imaging.

The more options the better. I upload multiple tracks so people can compare each speaker with each microphone. I don't want to spend an extravagant amount. I'd rather have more pretty good mic's than 2 top end mics if that makes sense.

If it helps, the rooms are treated acoustically for the most part. We demo in a lot of different setups ranging from the most ideal listening room, to the "average persons living room" type setup (very minimal wall treatment, bunch of furniture, open ended rooms...)

I appreciate any input you can provide.
 
If the purpose is to compare the speakers without the response/quality of the mic colouring things, I'd probably go with a measurement mic (or mics) rather than one designed to make "nice" recordings. Measurement mics are designed to give a very flat (boring) response rather than colouring the sound...their usual uses are things like Real Time Analysers to set up sound systems--or, indeed, measure the frequency response of speakers in anechoic chambers.

There are lots on the market...I can personally recommend ones from Earthworks and B&K if you need calibration. However, believe it or not the Behringer ECM8000 is a very useful mic for a very low price and would like be ideal for you.

Having said all that, I'm not sure that a recording of a speaker played through a different speaker or headphones is going to be a valid way of comparing them.
 
Indeed! You are also going to get very odd results with a mono mic attempting to record stereo speakers because this means both speakers will have cancellation effects. Stereo speakers work for two ears because they're separated.

What is the purpose of the recording? Scientific testing or subjective comparison. No way would I want to choose speakers remotely based on this test, as it's a flawed system. White noise and maybe pulse tests could reveal something useful in the performance, but as to how they sound? I doubt it.
 
mixsit said:
Won't you be plotting the room's errors and contribution as much as the speaker's?
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That was my thought - unless you're using one of those an-something dead rooms, you're going to be picking up a lot of room sound at that distance from the speakers.
 
mjbphotos said:
That was my thought - unless you're using one of those an-something dead rooms, you're going to be picking up a lot of room sound at that distance from the speakers.
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The REW's I've run on my room and SPTech speakers -very high quality and neutral btw at 18 or 20 inches or so you still easily see the room's imprint in there, from the upper bass on down. There's a function to window the later arivals out but if I recall that only work in the upper ranges (something about not working if the time span being big enough for the low end IIRC
 
Bobbsy said:
Having said all that, I'm not sure that a recording of a speaker played through a different speaker or headphones is going to be a valid way of comparing them.
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This is what I'm thinking too.

Even if you do the test with the highest quality gear in the most controlled environment, someone listening to it on YouTube is not going to isolate the impact of their own speakers and listening environment on the results.

For example, if the test reveals the speakers go down to 30hz, but your laptop speakers only go down to 120hz, where is the value?
 
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