Recording grand piano: Why can't Yeti Blue beat my Samsung S21 mobile phone?

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leola74

New member
My daughter (age 10) is performing in a piano competition next month, and due to Covid they are asking for submission by video. I bought the Yeti Blue mic and I've been playing around with the best sound settings to prepare for making the recording. We have a Yamaha C3 grand, and the room has quite good acoustics. I found that I'm getting the best results by placing the mic about 1 meter behind and to the right of the piano, and using the cardioid setting, with the gain at about 10 o'clock. I'm also using a very good webcam (Logitech Brio), but using the Yeti for sound is better than using the webcam's built-in mic.

So far so good.

Now here is the strange thing. After spending hours optimizing the setup with the Yeti and the webcam, I did a small comparison using my mobile phone (Samsung S21) from about 1.5m away from the piano, and the sound is much clearer and more natural than using the Yeti. The Yeti sounds muffled and "dull" (see sample below). So my question is, can someone give me some hints where to place the Yeti and what settings (and recording software) to use?

I'm doing all this in Windows 10, using the app SplitCam (since for a while I was experimenting with using two camera angles). I've also tried using the Camera app in Windows, but the sound quality was even worse, I think, the piano sounded more metallic.

Below are the sound samples - the "best" Yeti setting I found, and the simple S21 recording:

Yeti Blue

Samsung S21
 
I have to disagree with you. The Yeti sounds better in clarity and overall tonal feel. The Samsung is less defined and a bit more muddy overall. The Yeti picks up the room sounds more than the phone so you might need to experiment more with position. The Yeti seemed to distort a bit due to volume or placement or both. In the end though........it's somewhat a matter of opinion. What are you listening to these clips on? Speakers...headphones?

Mick
 
Mickster said:
I have to disagree with you. The Yeti sounds better in clarity and overall tonal feel. The Samsung is less defined and a bit more muddy overall. The Yeti picks up the room sounds more than the phone so you might need to experiment more with position. The Yeti seemed to distort a bit due to volume or placement or both. In the end though........it's somewhat a matter of opinion. What are you listening to these clips on? Speakers...headphones?

Mick
Click to expand...
I'm listening with headphones, or on TV (with soundbar).

Do you have any recommendations for placement and other settings (gain, ...)?

What software would you recommend for recording? I'm just using the built-in Camera app in Windows
 
I listened on both headphones and computer speakers, and there's no way that the Samsung sounds better than the Yeti. The phone is primarily midrange, lacking both highs and lows.

Both have too much room sound which I wouldn't classify as having particularly good acoustics for recording. They both have a hollow sound that isn't flattering. I don't know what options you have to work on placement, but I would be looking at a close mic setup to reduce the room ambience some. Barring a very good sounding recording space, I would opt for a more immediate sound.

Try looking at this for ideas. Remember, you're not recording in a large hall, so room echo will be different.

 
I totally agree with the others - the yeti is better than the phone, but of course the phone has the usual auto level setting and a touch of compression - it's a phone. However, the yeti is recording exactly what happens with C3's with incorrect mic placement. In a hard walled home, they sound lovely, but the transients from the loud first section develop that nasty hard edge. Finding a good mic setup in a typical house is very difficult. They need bigger spaces for the sound to sort of coalesce. You will have trouble making it record nicely without at least two mics and perhaps a few pairs to choose from. The mic you have is struggling to capture the full sound. I suggest you try a little further away - perhaps in the cutout on the treble side about a foot up and away from the piano, tilting gently down, with the lid on full stick.. Behind the mic try to hang some duvets to cut down reflections from where the lid reflects direct sound. A couple of doubles draped on whatever you can find will warm up the harshness quite a bit. You're not doing anything wrong. The damn things just record this harshness which in the room is less obvious. Your mic is also not exactly a warm mic - they're known for clarity, and of course mono is also somewhat, er, less common? I'm assuming you have control over the gain? It could be worth recording even lower in level. You can always tweak that. You do need to eq and other features. Cheapest really popular DAW is reaper, and Audacity, being free is worth a look. Reaper, although I don't use it, is well respected. I've always found C3 Yamahas very unfriendly pianos to record in anything other than large spaces. A Yamaha sponsored German pianist showed me a trick with a single mic on a C3 for use on stages. A simple hand held dynamic UNDERNEATH the sound board. You put the XLR cable over the big strut near the pedal hangers, and then tape it back on itself with the mic head about 300mm below the timber work. With any piano other than a C3, this produces really weird murky and dull sound. On the C3 the German guy showed me, it worked amazingly well - totally at odds with every bit of internet advice - but on a Steinway it sounds simply dreadful! It could be worth experimenting with your mic and trying that position before you give up.

My recording colleague is a concert pianist, and has a C3 at home too - we never record it now, and we use a master keyboard and a VSTi plugin piano. It's better than his C3. Getting it to sound really nice we managed maybe twice? It is simply an unfriendly home piano, without loads of room treatment - then, they sound lovely. Hard walls and ceiling = trouble!
 
Some questions - what pattern do you have the Yeti set too? The Yeti track has too much gain - it's distorting. Where is each set? How close is the Sansung - how close is the Yeti? Now if you back down the Yeti you would get better results.
 
Papanate said:
Some questions - what pattern do you have the Yeti set too? The Yeti track has too much gain - it's distorting. Where is each set? How close is the Sansung - how close is the Yeti? Now if you back down the Yeti you would get better results.
Click to expand...
It's set to cardioid - i've tried all patterns, and this was the least bad.

The Yeti is placed about 1 meter behind and to the right of the piano (the side where the high notes are on the piano), at about the height of the keys

The Samsung was placed exactly where you see it in the video (camera and mic in same position, obviously). A bit more to the right and less far back than the Yeti
 
rob aylestone said:
I totally agree with the others - the yeti is better than the phone, but of course the phone has the usual auto level setting and a touch of compression - it's a phone. However, the yeti is recording exactly what happens with C3's with incorrect mic placement. In a hard walled home, they sound lovely, but the transients from the loud first section develop that nasty hard edge. Finding a good mic setup in a typical house is very difficult. They need bigger spaces for the sound to sort of coalesce. You will have trouble making it record nicely without at least two mics and perhaps a few pairs to choose from. The mic you have is struggling to capture the full sound. I suggest you try a little further away - perhaps in the cutout on the treble side about a foot up and away from the piano, tilting gently down, with the lid on full stick.. Behind the mic try to hang some duvets to cut down reflections from where the lid reflects direct sound. A couple of doubles draped on whatever you can find will warm up the harshness quite a bit. You're not doing anything wrong. The damn things just record this harshness which in the room is less obvious. Your mic is also not exactly a warm mic - they're known for clarity, and of course mono is also somewhat, er, less common? I'm assuming you have control over the gain? It could be worth recording even lower in level. You can always tweak that. You do need to eq and other features. Cheapest really popular DAW is reaper, and Audacity, being free is worth a look. Reaper, although I don't use it, is well respected. I've always found C3 Yamahas very unfriendly pianos to record in anything other than large spaces. A Yamaha sponsored German pianist showed me a trick with a single mic on a C3 for use on stages. A simple hand held dynamic UNDERNEATH the sound board. You put the XLR cable over the big strut near the pedal hangers, and then tape it back on itself with the mic head about 300mm below the timber work. With any piano other than a C3, this produces really weird murky and dull sound. On the C3 the German guy showed me, it worked amazingly well - totally at odds with every bit of internet advice - but on a Steinway it sounds simply dreadful! It could be worth experimenting with your mic and trying that position before you give up.

My recording colleague is a concert pianist, and has a C3 at home too - we never record it now, and we use a master keyboard and a VSTi plugin piano. It's better than his C3. Getting it to sound really nice we managed maybe twice? It is simply an unfriendly home piano, without loads of room treatment - then, they sound lovely. Hard walls and ceiling = trouble!
Click to expand...
That gives me a few things to try, thanks.
 
leola74 said:
It's set to cardioid - i've tried all patterns, and this was the least bad.

The Yeti is placed about 1 meter behind and to the right of the piano (the side where the high notes are on the piano), at about the height of the keys

The Samsung was placed exactly where you see it in the video (camera and mic in same position, obviously). A bit more to the right and less far back than the Yeti
Click to expand...

Well youve got the Yeti placed wrong IMO give it some Air - and place it more to the middle of the piano - you could also place it in the upper registry pointed slightly towards the bass.
 
It will sound horrid on a C3, try it and see - you'll hear a strange metallic, mechanical sound - they are in fairness not too bad double miked with a couple of decent condensers then merged and balanced afterwards but finding the special place takes ages. Very small movements do very strange things on this instrument. Trouble is, it sounds jazzy and close miked, not a nice piano in a space. This picture was the best example I could find of how we tried to record his piano. The stereo mic blended with the two close miked ones. You can see they're very close, but the distant mic got a bit of the 'space' but the clarity came from the two close mics. It's a long time ago, but here is an example of how C3 pianos sound in a room, with nice mics in the wrong place - this is pre-the photo.
C3 - flawed technique
recording from the session in the photo
In the first recording you can hear the same 'jangle' Leola is having.
.piano.png
 
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Rob, listening to those two recordings, both are better than either of the original posts. There's a huge difference in perspective, but I think either would be acceptable with the 2nd obviously being preferred. I don't know what criteria are needed for the competition. Is sound quality part of the judgment process? If so, then it would be somewhat unfair if a student was able spend the money to go to a real recording studio or a good performance hall. The unlucky student who can only afford to do a recording on their brother's phone would be at a huge disadvantage.

One thing I noticed when I looked at Leola's files is that the Yeti is encoded at 90kbps, which is WAY below what should be used. I don't know how the OP created the file, but that would be one of the first things I would change. The bare minimum would be 128k which is roughly equal to FM radio in frequency response. The Samsung was 150kbps. 192 or 256kbps would be better.
 
TalismanRich said:
I listened on both headphones and computer speakers, and there's no way that the Samsung sounds better than the Yeti. The phone is primarily midrange, lacking both highs and lows.

Both have too much room sound which I wouldn't classify as having particularly good acoustics for recording. They both have a hollow sound that isn't flattering. I don't know what options you have to work on placement, but I would be looking at a close mic setup to reduce the room ambience some. Barring a very good sounding recording space, I would opt for a more immediate sound.

Try looking at this for ideas. Remember, you're not recording in a large hall, so room echo will be different.

Click to expand...

man I dug the stereo from 30 CM away that was a pretty slick mix, sound and clarity...for me....
 
TalismanRich said:
Rob, listening to those two recordings, both are better than either of the original posts. There's a huge difference in perspective, but I think either would be acceptable with the 2nd obviously being preferred. I don't know what criteria are needed for the competition. Is sound quality part of the judgment process? If so, then it would be somewhat unfair if a student was able spend the money to go to a real recording studio or a good performance hall. The unlucky student who can only afford to do a recording on their brother's phone would be at a huge disadvantage.

One thing I noticed when I looked at Leola's files is that the Yeti is encoded at 90kbps, which is WAY below what should be used. I don't know how the OP created the file, but that would be one of the first things I would change. The bare minimum would be 128k which is roughly equal to FM radio in frequency response. The Samsung was 150kbps. 192 or 256kbps would be better.
Click to expand...
I've made several recordings with the Yeti using either the Windows built-in Camera app, or the free SplitCam app. Looking at the file properties, I notice that some have a bit rate as low as 44kbps, and others as high as 253 kbps. I didn't really change any settings in the app (I don't even think this is an option in those apps). How can I control the bit rate?
 
I don't use either of those apps, so I can't say how the audio settings are made or adjusted. You will absolutely hear the high frequencies go away as you go below 128K. 44K is absurdly low.

You might look under your Windows settings. There must be somewhere to make those adjustments.
 
I think that in the competition, sound quality is irrelevant - so hopefully she'll impress them like mad and do well, and if she doesn't, then try again next time because sometime in life, you discover some truly excellent people enter that you can never get near. That has happened to me so many times of the years, because I've always been adequate at everything I do. Usually good enough to get paid, but excellent at nothing! I mentioned my concert pianist friend who's now a colleague. He went through the grades, then through the Diplomas at famous conservatoires, and my piano playing is chalk and cheese, but it is now OK for me to play things for him. I know he probably thinks I'm hamfisted, but it doesn't matter because my ears are good. Fingers crossed she'll do well with somebody looking after her interests in this way.
 
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