Monitor and mic question

[Elementmetal]

Hi All

I use a black macbook 2ghz intel core duo with 2GB RAM + 80GB harddrive. Also have external 150GB harddrive (USB).
I run Logic Pro 8 and have recently ordered a Motu 8pre audio interface to record my bands next album.

Can anyone recommend and active monitors for me to purchase. Preferably a pair. I have a budget of around £100 - £200 UK pounds.

Also whilst on here does anyone recommend a particluar drum mic kit (8 piece) up to £250 in price. AND a mic for my guitar which can also be used for vocals - i'll leave price on this one blank.

Thanks in advance

Adam
Element
myspace.com/elementsound

 

[TyphoidHippo]

Hi All

I use a black macbook 2ghz intel...

w00t! BLACK macbooks are the BEST macbooks!

Just kidding... How many dollars is a pound these days? Like 100?

*kicks USA's ever-more-worthless currency*

 

[Elementmetal]

w00t! BLACK macbooks are the BEST macbooks!

Just kidding... How many dollars is a pound these days? Like 100?

*kicks USA's ever-more-worthless currency*

Hi, i think the exchange rate at minute is ROUGHLY US$1.5 - UK£1

 

[TyphoidHippo]

Hi, i think the exchange rate at minute is ROUGHLY US$1.5 - UK£1

ok, ok - not a fan of my crackhead jokes. (Nobody is this morning, lol)

So a pair of active monitors for about 300 bucks.... You're gonna have a really hard time with that, man, I'm sorry to tell you. There's a lot of people (myself included) who would say that the monitors are the most important piece of equipment involved in producing music. I don't think that one needs to invest an extraordinary amount of money to get a pair of monitors that will work - because you can learn to listen on any speakers that can hit all the frequencies fairly accurately, but for that amount, I don't think you can even get active monitors that will hit all the frequencies you need to hear. Maybe look on Ebay for some used Rokit 8s? Those run about $500 a pair new - so you might get lucky on Ebay and find them in your pricerange.

8-piece Drum mic kit for $375 - also tough, but a little more doable - You could do something like the Audix Fusion 7-piece kit paired with a Beta 52, e902, or other decent kick mic.

New this would cost about $550 for all 8 mics, but again, you could look on ebay. Those Audix mics are, in fact, very usable - the f14 that is included in the kit is marketed as a kick drum mic...but it actually works very well as a floor tom mic (NOT a kick drum mic). You get 3 f10s which work well for snare and rack toms, and also an f12 which can work for a third rack tom or first floor tom. The f15 condensers sound like no other small diaphragm condenser I have ever heard (this could be good or bad - read on). They don't have the harsh, brittle sound that other cheap SDC mics have had, in my experience. They are also not very accurate - they definitely color the sound (somehow...from what I've read, the SDC design is not supposed to do this, but the f15s definitely color the sound that they record). They are almost like... shimmery... or sparkly sounding (can't think of a better way to describe them, heh). I've used them for overheads and also for secondary mics on heavy, distorted guitars. Don't get me wrong, here - I have quite a few other microphones to choose from, but I really do use my f15s a lot (for whatever that's worth, heh...).

As for the guitar/vocal mic, you really need to set a price-range there...otherwise you're gonna get people telling you to buy all kinds of crazy-retarded boutique stuff.

 

[Elementmetal]

Cheers man

Thats absolutely great advice there. Thanks.
I can see that the rocket 8s brand new are around the £200 each. Are the rocket 5's any good, these are coming in around £120 each.

Vocal/guitar mic price wise. Probably looking at up to £150.

Thanks v much

 

[iqi616]

Rokit 5s are not at all bad - they have the same nice clean tweeter as the 6 and 8. Bass is going to be the weakest point because of the physics of small boxes but you can pay more for less.

In a shoot-out at the store they might not sound as bright as competitors but many competitors are hyped or simply distort.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

Hey, I totally forgot about the Karma pack until just now, ElementMetal -

They make a pack of 7 high SPL (145 db) little SDC mics that can be safely used on drums for like 80 dollars. They sound like... Other tiny SDC mics built with similar (very basic) circuits as these, lol, which is not a bad thing, by any means. They accurately capture sound sources within their (somewhat limited, but not really too bad at all) response range - certainly can't fault them for that, they're just not fancy mics that people will brag about or anything. You can build one yourself for about 10 dollars and 10 minutes with a soldering iron, I think, but it won't handle nearly the 145 db that these will, I don't beleive...and it won't have clips, cases, and an adorable little body like these do, either, lol... so the deal with 7 for $80 is quite a bargain, in my opinion. There was a gigantic thread on Gearslutz about the first version of these a year or two ago, where all these people were commenting about "wow, this is like... a real microphone for almost no money - sucks that it can't handle a drum SPL" and things of that nature. The new version was specifically designed to alleviate that common complaint.

The only way to buy them, as far as I know, is straight from the manufacturer - and I'm not sure how they handle international orders, but their website is http://www.karmamics.com/

The mic pack I am talking about is second from the bottom of this page: http://www.karmamics.com/products.html

Those combined with a decent kick mic will get you going for very, very cheap, and then you can use the money you saved to up your monitor budget.

I'm gonna go look for that thread, I'll post back if I find it.

edit: Here it is - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/81204-k-micro-aka-99-mic.html

The whole thread is about the first version, which was supposedly inferior to the one they sell now. As I understand the story, when Karma first started as a company they slapped together a cute little gimmick mic (the first version of the k-micro), and sold them for 99 cents at trade shows (alongside all the major mic manufacturers, lol) as a promotional thing to get people to check out their other mics. Then people started saying "Hey, we realize this was just a clever advertising tool, but these mics are fuckin cool and we'll pay more if you can cram a usable microphone in these", and apparently that's what the second version is.

Of particular interest are the posts by "Geoff_T" <==That guy was some kind of designer for Neve for like 14 years.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

oops - ten character limit

 

[Elementmetal]

Cheers for that typhoidhippo

Those cheap mics look great for the money.

Seeing as we're doing the recording in around March time, i've decided it gives me a bit longer to set money aside for the decent monitors etc.

Got my 8pre now (was delivered yesterday). Seems good. Cant wait to get going with it. Will buy the vocal/guitar mic later this week.

Is it better Dynamic for loud guitar cab mic'ing and condensor for the loud vocals then as rule of thumb or is there a decent mic that can be used for both?