The best mic

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MCI2424

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Why does a mic matter? If it all boils down to performance, then why all the interest in mics, pre-amps etc.? Should we just be discussing how to become better performers and discuss performance related issues?

Why does every thread that causes big disagreements always boil down to "it's the ears not the gear" or " It's all in the performance"?

If it IS all in the performance, and most can agree that equipment does'nt matter, can any decent mic that makes the recording person happy be bettered?


Is it me, or is it just friday?

It IS friday.
 
MCI2424 said:
...any decent mic that makes the recording person happy...
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This is a key difficulty. Picking out THE mic for a given situation that makes the recording person happy. If anything makes you happy, then I guess the mic doesn't matter.

And some of us don't have any hope to be better performers, so we have to focus on the other esoteric details that we can hope to have control over. ;)
 
MCI2424 said:
If it all boils down to performance, then why all the interest in mics, pre-amps etc.?
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By "it" you mean "a recording you're happy with", right?

"It" doesn't ALL boil down to performance. Personally I place a lot more on performance and mic placement and the recording process in general...

I can understand making an extreme statement just to take a definite stand, as to entice discussion... but, equipment matters, of course... how much it matters depends on you... but you must have had a point in your audio recording experiences where you took those steps from recording on your noisy boombox with it auto-compressor to recording with condensers on some digital harddisk...or whatever..

This is not to say of course that "low-fi" techniques/equipement have no place in your creative palette
 
my thoughts

I hear what MCI is saying... I also think it depends on what style of music the recorder is recording, to some extent... There are "engineers" who are after a sound that is familiar to them, say a "70s" sound, and thus they'll need certain gear... However, if you're living in the present, and you're making original music, the recorder will be fine with any combination of gear that they "choose", and that's where the ears become that much more important (IMO). Conversely, if the recorder wishes to sound like mtv, then they ask questions like "what's the best mic".
 
The performance, the room, the equipment

Hi,

The most important thing in making recordings is the performance. If the performance is crap equipment won't fix it.

The next most important thing is the sound in the room. It is possible to close mic everything and avoid problems with a bad room but the tracks will sound sterile compared to a good stereo recording made in a good room.

Then comes the equipment. On the "Joe Lee Swings On" CD there is a cut of "What's New" that has the fullest most wonderful sax tone you have ever heard. It was recorded on a cheapo cassette player set on the table at the club where Joe was playing. It must have been cheap tape too because I had to cut and paste over some dropouts.

Still that same rig would probably sound crappy on about everything. It just happened to be in the right place in the right room during a great performance.

Now recording engineers must have reliability. When you are billing your client by the hour for studio time you must get a good copy of the performance. They're not going to come back and pay more money and do all that work again because you didn't do your job. They're going somewhere else.

Only by using quality microphones appropriately in a good sounding room can an engineer have confidence that the tracks will sound good when the band does produce that inspired performance.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry
 
another thing that i believe is more important than the equipment and mic in particular is skill/experience/understanding of mixing. if you know how to eq/ properly use reverb/ compression and other software effects (which might be considered equipment by some) then you can make a recorded sound by a decent mic sound just about however you want it to. warm it up, add bass, subtract bass , change other characteristics, even fix problems with the room or performance if needed. a year ago i was thinking of upgrading to a 500 dollar mic that had a less bright and 'warmer' sound and fit my voice a little better. instead i spent the year learning more about eq and mixing and now i can get just about that sound i want with my 100 dollar mic. although it takes a little more hassle and i may eventually upgrade someday. however it does make me wonder why the pros spend so much money on mics . maybe it's because just because they're "pro" and they can. :)

but for people just learning like i was a year ago (and still am) i highly recommend just getting basic decent equipment and learning with that. it may get frustrating but in the end you'll probably save money and learn a lot more and how to get the sounds you want with what you have.
 
stevey j said:
however it does make me wonder why the pros spend so much money on mics . maybe it's because just because they're "pro" and they can. :)
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I too have had the thought that once you capture sound you can manipulate it to do whatever you want... but I think that, besides the fact that there are certain things you can't add or subtract in mixing, it's also a question of efficiency... you can waste a LOT of time recreate what you want artificially, instead of just getting it the way you want it from the start... I mean, in the extreme case, imagine drawing every wave with the pencil tool in pro tools.. haha, you could, and take years getting a song done..
 
The music is all performance, but the sound depends on the gear used (mics, pres, mic placement, instruments, etc.). A good recording is a combination of the two.
 
I've heard great guitar players play through shitty amps. And you know what? It still sounded like shit. Better than if I had played through them, but nothing I would want to record.

Obviously the performance is important, more so than any gear. But the instruments also matter almost, if not, just as much. If the amp sounds like shit then no gear is going to fix that.

The room is also important, but I would still put the musician/instrument before that.

So long as you're not recording on the shittiest gear in the world you'll probably be okay.
 
IronFlippy said:
The music is all performance, but the sound depends on the gear used (mics, pres, mic placement, instruments, etc.). A good recording is a combination of the two.
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Well said! To answer the OP's question more directly (or perhaps in a slightly different way), think of "quality" as a number from 1 to 100. I know, it's infinitely more involved than that, I'm just making an incredibly complicated thing a little more simple :p

If you get a 50/100 performance, then the best equipment run by the best engineer in the world won't make it sound like 100/100. Sure, things like knowing how to use eq/compression/effects/etc. can boost it just a little bit to sound maybe like 60/100, but you'll never get to 100.

Now, if you take a 100/100 performance, THEN you start running into situations where not having the best gear & the best ears will degrade the quality. But you're starting at 100, not 50. Take that best equipment & best engineer scenario, combine it with a 100/100 performance, and you will get pretty damn close to a 100/100 recording.

Get it?
 
Analogy:

Microphone = Camera
Performance = Person
Recording = Picture

A low quality Camera shooting a Picture of an ugly Person = Bad picture.
A high quality Camera shooting a Picture of an ugly Person = Not so bad picture.
A low quality Camera shooting a Picture of a beautiful Person = Not so bad picture.
A high quality Camera shooting a Picture of a beautiful Person = Good picture.

=

A low quality Microphone capturing audio of a crappy Performance = Bad recording.
A high quality Microphone capturing audio of a crappy Performance = Not so bad recording.
A low quality Microphone capturing audio of a good Performance = Not so bad recording.
A high quality Microphone capturing audio of a good Performance = Good recording.

Of course In the wrong hands the "best" Mic ever made recording a stellar performance can be complete crap.
Just like if in the wrong hands, the best camera in the world can take a horrid picture of a beautiful person.

Not to mention the Microphone is a tiny part of the "picture". Although I have found it one of the most important parts of a good recording.
 
tarnationsauce2 said:
Analogy:
A high quality Camera shooting a Picture of an ugly Person = Not so bad picture.
Click to expand...

But won't a high quality camera be able to show MORE ugliness? A low quality image of an ugly person is better than a high quality (more detailed) image of an ugly person... haha
 
haha that's what i was thinking. would you rather hear a clear recording of a horrible performance, or a crappy recording of a horrible performance? personally i wouldn't want to hear either equally as much and that alone proves that performance is more important than the equipment but then the equipment becomes more and more important as the performer gets better.
 
but then in a way the equipment becomes less important and fades out again once the performer gets decent enough equipment because if they're such a good performer than as long as the equipment is decent then they'll sound good.
 
a good photographer doesn't need the most expensive best camera, but he certainly can't work with a piece of crap camera. a good performer doesn't need the best expensive microphone in the world, but he certainly cant use a computer mic either. subpar equipment can bring down a good performer... but good equipment can't bring up a bad performer, just make his bad-ness more noticeable
 
time or money, performance and equipment matter

I agree with the camera analogies, yeah a great expensive camera cant save a crappy song or performance (here's where Opinion is a factor though) what is art? what is good? What is crappy?

Like many people,
many of my favorite songs are lo quality recordings with maybe even questionable performances, to me it's just how a song makes you feel . Mistakes hiss and all. If you listen closley, alot of times , it seems like the tracks in a song maybe werent even recorded all that well or even lack in performance, but in the context of the mix , and how it is all pieced together it sounds awesome.

Mixing and EQ is a big big factor it is just very time consuming . This is my weakest point, and I have many when it comes to recording.
If you have great equipment , it takes alot of the work out of it and it saves time. Time you could be using to make more music.

It all costs money but I think its worth it to spend more money where you think you need it most, depending on what style you are doing and depending on how much work you are willing to put in. Cheaper equipment seems to cost you more in time and learning . But that can be good as well.
Either way it costs . I have friends who are great performers but have terrible recordings, (you have to see em live or forget it) it goes the other way around as well , great recordings, terrible live.

It's like someone else said, its a combination of the two.
 
i definitely agree. some of my favorite albums are old and not recorded the best, or new and lo fi on purpose. if anything today people overproduce albums too often. i love listening to early black sabbathand have the feeling like it was recorded live in a garage or something. it makes the cd better.

i was just listening to some early beatles cds the other day and it sounds like a college student coul dhave recorded them on their computer at how simple everything was. but it was perfect for that catchy sound. certainly the technology of 40 years ago was worse than today, yet the music and sound still stands. how would early black sabbath albums sound if recorded with the technology of today? honestly i think it would sound worse. how would the old beatles albums sound? or the monkeys? or motown stuff? or 80's metal? or a lot of the music of the past. in the same way i wouldn't think modern music would sound as good if it used the technology of old because it's been done before and we need constant change. i think production has a lot more to do with a bands sound than most people realize.
 
and your comment about good sounding recordings sounding bad live. i think that's mostly a problem only recently and how everyone thinks they're a musician. and why there's so much crappy/mediocre music out there and it's so hard to find good modern music in my opinion. bands shouldn't be allowed to get a record deal or record music unless they're good live. just because you have access to instruments and recording equipment doesn't mean your'e good. i'm sick of technology correcting flaws in bands. soono we'llbe able to just have robots create music for us and then we won't have to do anything.
 
My friend and I did a mini vocal mic shootout with the following mics:

SM57
Beyer M88
Nueman 103
Nueman 193
Nueman 149
AKG 414 XLS
AT4047

We recorded the SM57 last, after our ears were used to all that detailed high end of the condensers. He did an absolute stellar performance on the SM57. Smoked all the other takes, BUT it left us with the feeling that we wished it had been recorded on one of the condensers instead, because although the performance was excellent, the SM57 simply did not "hear" certain nuances, and we were left wanting for intelligibility.
My 2 cents.
 
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