Bought another mic...AT 2050....

[Yamaha Man]

Found a decent mic at a decent price...the Audio Technica 2050.....it should work well on acoustic guitar and vocals. I bought it off of reverb.com and should get it Monday or Tuesday. The AT 4140's I bought do a fantastic job on acoustic guitar, and the 2050 should work well for my vocals...it should be a nice upgrade from the MXL V-69 I currently use....

[DukeX]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

Found a decent mic at a decent price...the Audio Technica 2050...it should be a nice upgrade from the MXL V-69 I currently use...

I think it is probably more of a step sideways. Nevertheless, it will have a different voicing and may indeed be a better match for your voice. I hope it works out well for you. And it's always good to have options.

[keith.rogers]

Never tried one. I look forward to hearing some recordings and even an A/B!

Me, I've discovered that, like instruments, we have a sound in our head of what something sounds like (especially ourselves ). So, as people say about playing, "the sound is in the fingers," we tend to create a sound that we want to hear, regardless of the piece of wood and wire we happen to have at hand. With mics, for me, anyway, it's just a matter of which mic lets me get the sound I'm going to get to eventually in the shortest path. I've got some mics that take a more time and some take less, but in the end, a good mic is going to let you get where you want to go... sooner or later, at least. That's tempered my mic buying quite a bit, though every so often I do let my eye (never my ear ) drift to that part of the toystore I'm browsing.

[Yamaha Man]

At this time it was the best mic could find at a price I can afford. I was gassing for a new mic, and ended up with this one.....either way it should be a nice addition to my mic collection.

[keith.rogers]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

At this time it was the best mic could find at a price I can afford. I was gassing for a new mic, and ended up with this one.....either way it should be a nice addition to my mic collection.

I should have added that I have 2 AT mics (both SDCs, acquired used) and I love those 2 mics. They were early acquisitions, and have been used a lot. One is pretty much permanently on a stand in my little music room.

Haven't tried their LDCs but that should be a nice mic. Record away!

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

Found a decent mic at a decent price...the Audio Technica 2050.....it should work well on acoustic guitar and vocals. I bought it off of reverb.com and should get it Monday or Tuesday. The AT 4140's I bought do a fantastic job on acoustic guitar, and the 2050 should work well for my vocals...it should be a nice upgrade from the MXL V-69 I currently use....

A little unsolicited advice... baby steps towards quality become expensive when you add them all up. In the long run, it's cheaper to figure out what you really want, save up and buy it, than to hop from one economic option to another slightly more expensive economic option, then to another, then another, and so on.

I don't remember how many years back it was, but at some point I realized that I had amassed a fair sized collection of gear, pretty much none of which left me feeling very stoked. I never sat down and figured the loss in dollars, but I know I took a bath when I finally decided that I needed a different strategy and sold all that stuff off.

Not telling you what to do, just letting you know the pit I fell into for some years.

[Yamaha Man]

Well with mics, it's very easy to run up your wish list to $1,000's of dollars very quickly....the AT 2050 seems to be an okay mic for the price. I got it for $145 plus shipping....it may not be the most impressive mic out there, but it should be okay for my needs.....when it gets here I'll do some A/B tests with my other mics to see how it stands up against them. My experience with AT mics has been mixed, I love the 4140's I have, but was not impressed with the 2020 I had. Hopefully the 2050 is a better mic than the 2020.

The sample recordings I heard off of you tube sounded pretty good to me. With mics, to get a 10% better quality sound you have to spend about 50% more money, so you have to look at the total bang for the buck. Ya an AKG 414 would be a better quality mic, but you are looking at a $600+ price tag,.....I'm trying to find a happy medium.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

Well with mics, it's very easy to run up your wish list to $1,000's of dollars very quickly....the AT 2050 seems to be an okay mic for the price. I got it for $145 plus shipping....it may not be the most impressive mic out there, but it should be okay for my needs.....when it gets here I'll do some A/B tests with my other mics to see how it stands up against them. My experience with AT mics has been mixed, I love the 4140's I have, but was not impressed with the 2020 I had. Hopefully the 2050 is a better mic than the 2020.

The sample recordings I heard off of you tube sounded pretty good to me. With mics, to get a 10% better quality sound you have to spend about 50% more money, so you have to look at the total bang for the buck. Ya an AKG 414 would be a better quality mic, but you are looking at a $600+ price tag,.....I'm trying to find a happy medium.

Yes the AT 2050 is said to be a pretty good value ... BUT I am going to second Jim's advice for going forward. Now it is certainly true that quality electronic tech gets better and less expensive as time passes . And that mic may be keeper no matter what you do going forward (time will tell).

Also I would consider that in microphones and pricing ( like most electronics ) that once you move above the "entry" level price wise and into the medium price range,,,, that the ratio of improvement per dollar spent goes down exponentially. BUT in reality that should no longer be a consideration. At that point the consideration (just like in buying a guitar) should be am I getting the sound I want ? Not what % improvement am I getting per dollar ?


IMO given the interest you are showing in what I call "serious home recording"... You have now reached a point that is perhaps time to pause and consider from here on out, not simply "trying to find a happy medium" but instead try to consider any future electronic purchases (and very particularly for a "vocal mic") with the same overall consideration that,,,,, say you bought your D 35 with ( I am assuming it was not simply "a happy medium" ) just something to think about for the future......

[gwlee7]

KevWind and jim1960 are correct in my experience. I am trying hard to make sure that I take my time and buy what I want once instead of buying something that was almost what I wanted several times. It is ultimately much less expensive. It is hard to be disciplined in this respect though.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by gwlee7

It is hard to be disciplined in this respect though.

It became easier for me to become more disciplined once I realized how much money I'd lost moving from cheap to a little less cheap. However, cheap now is a lot less expensive than cheap back in 2002 when I first got started. I recently came across the receipt for my first system ...and that didn't even include microphones because I had a couple of inexpensive ones already.

[Nama Ensou]

Originally Posted by jim1960

A little unsolicited advice... baby steps towards quality become expensive when you add them all up. In the long run, it's cheaper to figure out what you really want, save up and buy it, than to hop from one economic option to another slightly more expensive economic option, then to another, then another, and so on.

This has been my view ever since I was a teenager and the only way around it is if you buy at good used prices so that the possibility of reselling and getting your money back is good.

Other than that option, I completely agree on all points about buying what you want up front and not doing the step-up option.

[Yamaha Man]

I read that the 2050 sounds similar to the 2020,only difference being the patterns it's capable of. If that is the case and it sounds like my old 2020 then I will be disappointed in it. As my old 2020 was a very weak sounding mic, maybe something was wrong with it...??The 2050 sound samples I heard sounded just fine, so we'll see.


It's scheduled for delivery tomorrow.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

I read that the 2050 sounds similar to the 2020,only difference being the patterns it's capable of. If that is the case and it sounds like my old 2020 then I will be disappointed in it. As my old 2020 was a very weak sounding mic, maybe something was wrong with it...??The 2050 sound samples I heard sounded just fine, so we'll see.


It's scheduled for delivery tomorrow.

I haven't tried the 2050, but 2020's are fine as a basic mic. You should be able to get perfectly acceptable recordings out of 2020's. If you can't, I'd try to figure out why. I'd suggest the next step up would be the 4000 range. 4033's get lots of professional use, 4050s are really nice, and so on.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

I read that the 2050 sounds similar to the 2020,only difference being the patterns it's capable of. If that is the case and it sounds like my old 2020 then I will be disappointed in it. As my old 2020 was a very weak sounding mic, maybe something was wrong with it...??The 2050 sound samples I heard sounded just fine, so we'll see.


It's scheduled for delivery tomorrow.

Just to clarify when you say it sounded "weak" do you mean when A/B ed directly against your MXL recorded side by side on the same recording ? Because there are tons of variables not the least of which is your room and your other gear ....

[jim1960]

If the 2050 turns out to be not to your liking, I'd suggest renting a bit of time in a studio with a nice selection of microphones and trying a bunch out. The investment of a couple of hours of studio time could put you on the right track and save you a lot of time and money.