Studio Projects and Neumann

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acorec said:
Dude, you are going waaay overboard defending the budget mics vs. Neumann. Get over it.
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Dude, relax. Why are you getting so excited about this? I'm just sick of guys here dissing budget gear. And if the comparison is fair it's fair.

This place is about HOME recording right? Most people can't afford high-end stuff, so get over yourself.
 
robgb said:
I'm just sick of guys here dissing budget gear. And if the comparison is fair it's fair.
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The comparison isn't fair - live and let live. Repsect those who have the ears and monitoring to hear the difference.

Oh yeah and budget gear is for losers.

:D
 
robgb said:
I'm just sick of guys here dissing budget gear. And if the comparison is fair it's fair.

This place is about HOME recording right? Most people can't afford high-end stuff, so get over yourself.
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No one's looking down on inexpensive gear, in general. We're only picking on the bad stuff. :D I mean you can buy as many Oktavas, Shures, Audio Technicas, or Electrovoices as you want, and chances are no one's going to snicker at that, because it's good stuff. And most of it happens to be cheap, too, but at least it's good and useful. If you insist on being a tightwad, at least spend your pennies on stuff that's cheap and good. And it's out there -- ya just gotta' look a little harder.
 
chessrock said:
You could try a different mic. :D

Main problem is that some of these Chinese dogs just don't sound very good and have distortion in the higher frequencies. EQ might or might not help that.
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Valid point, of course. You just need a de-distorter, as in de-esser ;-) Must be a "storter", I guess...

Anyway, I assume you got my point too: How to make best use of the equipment one already have -- in addition to selling all of it and buying something else.

I also happen to play piano, and I'm sometimes taken by surprise how some (obviously much better players than me) can make even a bad, out-of-tune piano sound much better than me playing a perfectly in-tune piano. I'm sure they know the real thing, and will be even better on a good piano... but a lot depends on the man, not only the machine. Same applies elsewhere, such as in photography, etc.

So I just thought, to put a little more constructive stuff into this thread, that maybe a few hints on "how to get the best out of your equipment" would be appreciated.

Feel free to add more hints...


-- Per.
 
If anyone's currently unemployed or independently wealthy with time to spare, I for one would really enjoy seeing/hearing some more of those *blind*
"guess which mic" tests that have appeared here occasionally. I especially like to see folks' opinions when they know which mics were tested but don't know which is which. Same instrument, different mic (budget or high-end), all brands concealed for a week. Such opinions, for me, are much more revealing and just plain interesting.

I wish I were independently wealthy.

J.
 
i think its best for any mic under $600 to not be compared with neumann anything. it is misleading but its only misleading for those who want a neumann but cant afford it. i've never heard a neumann in any studio I've been in. and actually i never looked to see what kind of mics they were but i remember what they looked like and none of them were neumanns. i also think alot of HOMErecording enthusiasts have shot themselves in the foot by asking for advice from pro studios. its stops being about how can i get a good sound and becomes what do i need to sound like you and your caliber thus leading to "that brand/mic is crap. get this brand/mic". with all this gear one-upmanship....has anyone done recordings lately?
 
baekgaard said:
So I just thought, to put a little more constructive stuff into this thread, that maybe a few hints on "how to get the best out of your equipment" would be appreciated.
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So I guess what you're asking, then, is how to work around and get the most out of a mic that has a funny high end response.

I guess the first way I'd work around it would be not to actually use it on anything that had a lot of high end content. You might find you like it a lot on kick drum or bass guitar, for example. I've tried some of the 797 and MXL condensers under the snare drum or pointed at the shell and have gotten mostly very good to excellent results. Sometimes they can sound pretty kickass on a clean fender / blues guitar amp, too.

Another way to work around it would be to experiment a lot with positioning. Like try every possible position known to man. Assume you're recording vocals: try singing in to it off-axis pointed at your chin. Try it off-axis pointing up at your nose or your forehead. :D Of all the infinitetly possible positionings, there's bound to be one oddball angle that gets you a good sound without getting all essy on you and distorting on consonants.

Now taking these guitar clips in question (the Kurt Foster samples posted earlier) ... I'd probably reach for a multiband compressor, and play with that for a while until I found the offending frequency range where the picking gets harsh, and I'd compress that region so as to soften the pick attack without totally killing the detail of the track.

Or you could just ebay the offending mic and pick up a GT-44 or a used Electrovoice RE-15 / 16 for $150 or so, add about 3-4 db's of EQ around 12 khz, and get really exceptional-sounding tracks with basically no effort at all. That's the workaround I'd recommend, but I guess that's not the one you were looking for.
 
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distortedrumble said:
with all this gear one-upmanship....has anyone done recordings lately?
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I just wrote a new song that was inspired by this thread... it's called "Anything is better than nothing". :)
 
I wrote the song on a Korg PXR4 using the little built-in mic... lol.
 
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you just had to use a cheap chinese built in mic didnt ya? lol
 
chessrock said:
No one's looking down on inexpensive gear, in general. We're only picking on the bad stuff. :D I mean you can buy as many Oktavas, Shures, Audio Technicas, or Electrovoices as you want, and chances are no one's going to snicker at that, because it's good stuff. And most of it happens to be cheap, too, but at least it's good and useful. If you insist on being a tightwad, at least spend your pennies on stuff that's cheap and good. And it's out there -- ya just gotta' look a little harder.
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Hey I don't disagree. But you can put the Studio Projects on the list as well. They're great mics.
 
krs said:
Repsect those who have the ears and monitoring to hear the difference.
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I respect my own ears, thanks. They've served me well -- and my hearing isn't based on the price or brand name of the gear, just the quality.
 
distortedrumble said:
you just had to use a cheap chinese built in mic didnt ya? lol
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I think it's Japanese... but, it sounds like a mini studio project type mic... lol. :D
 
Is that the little Pandora 4-track? They look like a lot of fun for use as a musical 'notepad' ... put the mp3 up and I'll tell you how expensive it sounds :D

I like how we've all grown up and learned how to agree to disagree around here ... I love you DJL!!! :confused:
 
DJL said:
I think it's Japanese... but, it sounds like a mini studio project type mic... lol. :D
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yeah but how close is it to a neumann!? :D
 
Absolutes...and your Relatives...

I believe in an ideal world, home studio types would like to have a Neumann sound on a SP or MXL budget. Realistically, though, home studio types, me being one, would be pleased with a budget mic that sonically comes close to a Neumann (or at least moves in that sonic direction). The comparison is valid where your expectation is "How close can I get to the Neumann type of sound without actually going there (meaning buying one)?"
As an absolute comparison, the two mics are in different leagues. From that view, the SP will never be a Neumann and so the comparison is invalid. From a relative perspective however, if the SP mic sounds "somewhat similar" or "somewhat close" to the Neumann, then the comparsion is perfectly valid for those of us who do not have the means or desire to invest in the real thing but still would like to try to sound similar or close to it.

Bob
 
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robgb said:
I respect my own ears, thanks. They've served me well -- and my hearing isn't based on the price or brand name of the gear, just the quality.
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Now that's it, isn't it? Since the "price or brand name" are NOT a factor, we can all go home now. Right? I mean, you can continue to use SP mics, and that poster over there can continue to use (fill in the blank), and I can continue to use the mics I enjoy. After all, price and brand name don't matter, just the quality.
 
The danger of the '"it sounds like a Neumann" isn't that it doesn't sound like a Neumann, it is similar. However if the only characteristic to be emulated is the frequency response, that's not the whole sound of the microphone.

Further, it does the home recordist a disservice to emulate a tone that is not only rather expensive to properly achieve, but once attained, requires a commensurate acoustic space.

How many home recordists have bought SP mics only to learn that their rooms sound terrible? How many of them should have tried a high quality dynamic instead--for which the price of admission is far lower than a Neumann?
 
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