Slate Virtual Microphone System

It would've been nice if they treated the essing in the speaking voice. Annoying stuff.
Antares had a VST that did a lot of this stuff 9 years ago.
Exact sound, Speciic mic - can't be if it's virtual.
 
This is far from the first mic modeller out there--most recently Line 6 even put such a feature on their digital radio mic system.

Obviously I haven't heard the Slate version but none of the previous ones have managed to be exactly like the mics they model. Even so, done well it can be useful. If you forget you're trying to sound like a U87 or whatever and just dial through to get the best combination for the voice or instrument you're recording, it's like having a much bigger box of mics and pre amps than you can afford.

Agree about the annoying sibilance on the speaking voice though.
 
Bobbsy said:
This is far from the first mic modeller out there--most recently Line 6 even put such a feature on their digital radio mic system.

Obviously I haven't heard the Slate version but none of the previous ones have managed to be exactly like the mics they model. Even so, done well it can be useful. If you forget you're trying to sound like a U87 or whatever and just dial through to get the best combination for the voice or instrument you're recording, it's like having a much bigger box of mics and pre amps than you can afford.

Agree about the annoying sibilance on the speaking voice though.
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I got a chance to try out the line 6 wireless modeler and thought to myself that I can get close to those settings with critical EQing and processing.
 
I have the Universal Audio Ocean Way plugin, which includes a mic modeler. I briefly tinkered with it, but haven't used it yet. It made very noticeable changes to the tracks I tried it on, and generally sounded pretty good.

But I have to say, I don't really get it - I mean, my tracks were actually made with a particular real live microphone, which has its own sonic/electro-acoustic properties and sends X amount of analog information to the preamp/converter, which then goes into the computer where it sits. It escapes me how the mic modeler could add any information to what's already there - it could certainly transform and/or remove bits of information, but I fail to see how this gets you to a track that is really similar to one recorded with one of the modeled mics. That said, I don't have experience with most of the mics that were modeled, and so I'm speculating. Anyway - cool effect if nothing else.

I think I do have at least one of the modeled mics (same make/model, that is, not the self-same microphone, of course) - if I get a lot of time on my hands, maybe I could experiment a little - have a reference track using the modeled mic, and some other tracks with other mics to which I would apply the model and see what happens.


moresound said:
I got a chance to try out the line 6 wireless modeler and thought to myself that I can get close to those settings with critical EQing and processing.
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Yeah - when you think about it, you have to wonder how much of these plugins are really just different user interfaces over the same transformation logic. Not that that's bad - the UI can make a big difference - it's just kind of interesting.
 
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The Anteres thing had some sort of inverse filter algorithm where you picked the model of mic that was used to record the track and it would "undo" its frequency response before applying the filter for whatever mic you wanted to model in its place.

I'm not familiar with the Line6 thing, but it sort of sounds like it and this Slate thing are expecting input from one or two specific mics (and preamps apparently) whose characteristics are already known and adjusted for at some point in the process. I see this as a severely limiting factor. You have to buy their special hardware in order to make the software work properly. The concept is interesting, but I just don't see it as particularly competitive in the current market. In a lot of ways it's lie the microphone equivalent of the Variax. How many people do you know who play one of those?
 
ashcat_lt said:
The Anteres thing had some sort of inverse filter algorithm where you picked the model of mic that was used to record the track and it would "undo" its frequency response before applying the filter for whatever mic you wanted to model in its place.

I'm not familiar with the Line6 thing, but it sort of sounds like it and this Slate thing are expecting input from one or two specific mics (and preamps apparently) whose characteristics are already known and adjusted for at some point in the process. I see this as a severely limiting factor. You have to buy their special hardware in order to make the software work properly. The concept is interesting, but I just don't see it as particularly competitive in the current market. In a lot of ways it's lie the microphone equivalent of the Variax. How many people do you know who play one of those?
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What do you think the price point is for everything, $1500? Anything more than that, you probably couldn't sell it.
 
I've got the Line-6s mentioned above and while the recreations of the different mics are very good, there's one flaw, and it's a biggie! The famous name mics certainly have a characteristic sound that the processor can emulate quite well, BUT, a microphone also has an individual response to where sound comes from. So there is a polar pattern, subtly different for every microphone, and apart from the polar pattern itself, which plots sound pressure against degrees, there is a tonal change as the sound source moves off axis. These microphones with their clever processing cannot change these characteristics at all - because the element itself would have to be changed. There's no way to emulate this phenomenon electronically unless they used some kind of sonar/radar/video camera to input where the sound source actually is, in real time. Great idea, but flawed.
 
rob aylestone said:
I've got the Line-6s mentioned above and while the recreations of the different mics are very good, there's one flaw, and it's a biggie! The famous name mics certainly have a characteristic sound that the processor can emulate quite well, BUT, a microphone also has an individual response to where sound comes from. So there is a polar pattern, subtly different for every microphone, and apart from the polar pattern itself, which plots sound pressure against degrees, there is a tonal change as the sound source moves off axis. These microphones with their clever processing cannot change these characteristics at all - because the element itself would have to be changed. There's no way to emulate this phenomenon electronically unless they used some kind of sonar/radar/video camera to input where the sound source actually is, in real time. Great idea, but flawed.
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That's a good point that hadn't occurred to me. Proximity effect likewise. I guess you could use software to "point and place" the virtual microphone, but how do you undo whatever the original mic had going on? I guess if the proprietary mics were omnidirectional...
 
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