Vocal Mic Shootout?

[dgatwood]

Would folks be interested in participating in a vocal mic shootout in the SF Bay Area some Saturday in the next few months? The idea would be to record samples of several voices on a large number of mics, then post them all on a single web page to create the ultimate "What's the best mic for [range] [gender] [genre] vocals under [price]" buyer's guide. Thoughts?

In my collection, I have (in approximate order of the price I paid):

Shure 565SD (MCD)
Apex 435 (FET LDC)
Shure PG58 (MCD)
AT2020 (FET MDEC)
ADK Generis GT-2 (tube LDC)
ADK Hamburg (FET LDC)
CAD M9 (tube LDC)
Studio Projects B3 (FET LDC, x2)
Nady RSM-2 (Ribbon with switchable transformer mod, x2)
Karma K58 (tube LDC)

I'm looking for folks who have other mics to bring, and I'm also looking for other voice types. I'm a relatively high tenor.

If other folks would be interested in participating, watching, loaning mics, whatever... post here. Also, if you have suggestions on how best to set this up, post here.

Thoughts?

 

[Robert D]

I like the idea, but Gender x genre x range x number of mics = hundreds of takes. I think you need to throw in another variable, a couple of flavors of preamps, for this to have much value. So if you have a dozen mics, 4 genre', 3 ranges, 2 sexes (wait, this is San Francisco, better make it three or four sexes!), and 2 preamps.......... (6 carry the four, divide by transvestites, square root of ska...) that's 576 clips.

 

[dgatwood]

Two mikes per take. I'd love to be able to scrape up... say twenty different mics, so that's ten takes times four or five singers with different types of voices, three clips each in various styles of singing, and maybe a rap sample if somebody is into that, so 13-16 clips per mic times fifteen takes and you're approaching a couple hundred takes.

Even if you could keep it down to a minute a take, that's three hours of recording, not counting breaks. That's a lot of recording. I don't think a preamp shootout would be practical at the same time.... For that, you'd want a much narrower selection of mics to keep it remotely sane.

 

[hairylarry]

exponential

Hi,

Ahhhh ... the exponential explosion at work.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry