Omni's used for overheads?

[kurtoxic]

How do omnidirectional mics work for overheads, i have a small room that is fairly well treated. Will omni's give a fairly good stereo image?

 

[Tim Brown]

They work well if you have a really good room, because you have to keep in mind that you're going to get the entire room in your stereo field rather than just the select area that a cardioid would pick up.

Personally, I don't like Omni's for home recording - I don't even own one! Why not? I've never recorded in a place where I could actually see it's use - generally I've always recorded in less than perfect rooms, so I try to keep as much of the room out of the mic as possible.

But lot's of people do record with them ,and I'm sure just as many of them prefer them.
What you need to do is find somebody locally with a pair of them and try them out yourself.




Tim

 

[mrface2112]

omnis work GREAT for overheads...........as long as your room sounds good.

i tend to prefer them as overheads as they tend to be a little more "natural" sounding to my ears than directional capsules. of course, it depends on what sort of sound i'm going for.

but if your room doesn't sound good.....don't bother.


cheers,
wade

 

[surfmaster]

heres a really rough mix of a band that i'm working on right now. i used two msh-1a's as overheads in the recorderman setup. this was recorded in their basement.

 

[mixsit]

'Only in good rooms..'

heres a really rough mix of a band that i'm working on right now. i used two msh-1a's as overheads in the recorderman setup. this was recorded in their basement.

Very nice, clean tight and controlled. So as to further sus out the 'only in good rooms theme, how much of that is the omni's vs close mics, and what was the room and drum treatment like ?

 

[surfmaster]

Very nice, clean tight and controlled. So as to further sus out the 'only in good rooms theme, how much of that is the omni's vs close mics, and what was the room and drum treatment like ?

in that mix, most of the drum sound is coming from the close dynamic mics, but they are all gated. the cymbals are pretty much all from the omnis, the exception being a fairly compressed ribbon mic pretty far back in the mix.

no real room treatment, as i remember there might have been some blankets on the walls. the drums were a pearl export series i believe and they were for sure not brand new.

edit: pics!

 

[eyema_believer]

I have a matched pair of sweet omni condensors I used to use for overheads. They really don't give you a nice stereo image, slightly better than mono only. I will still use one as a "geek mic" from time to time. What's a "geek mic"? Glad you asked! I run it in the room... and then I super over-compress the it, and sometimes add something like Antares Tube, or Magneto to it. It makes it sound like the drums are breathing fire! YAY!

~Shawn

 

[eyema_believer]

whups
I did it again.

 

[Zarathustra]

They have omni-directional hanging mics at school, and unless all the other microphones are off, they create awful effects like a weird, ugly reverb and a horrible piercing feedback. Of course, you're not working with the terrible setup of having hanging omnidirection microphones directly behind a speaker, right?

If you're careful about sound leaking into the omni's, you should be alright.