#1
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What Matters More, the Mic or the Room?
For all of us who are now having to contend with a worldwide shortage and delayed delivery of USB mics and webcams and such, some food for thought.
Except for the keyboard, this was entirely recorded and shot with cellphones. Point being that the room you're in matters more than the gear you use. And you can do pretty well with what you've already got. Also, please "view on Youtube" and take a look at the link at the bottom of the notes. These folks could really use your help. Thanks. Last edited by Brent Hahn; 05-21-2020 at 11:07 AM. |
#2
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In fact, you could argue that the better mic you have, the more important the room becomes. But yeah, having a good space and knowing how to use what you have trumps lots of expensive equipment.
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#3
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A cheap mic will give a poor recording, a noisy room will give a poor recording, both are important.
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#4
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A cheap mic or an expensive mic will make a nasty sounding recording in a nasty room and this will detract from the experience of the performance. We're doing multiscreen recordings of an acoustic country band I tech for and I'm telling them to hang duvets and position around furniture and curtains, then a decent camera phone will be fine.
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#5
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^^^ Things that become apparent when you learn by doing. ^^^
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#6
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The $98 SM57 is one of, if not the, most recorded mics ever. It's even on the lead vocal of some of the biggest recordings in popular music -U2 is often mentioned.. You can do a lot to almost any mic to at least get something interesting out of it. But it's really really hard to get a bad room out of a recording.
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#7
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Do we have to choose? I know most of us do have spending limits, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as either:
Nice collab by the way with make-do-recording…which I suspect was your point of the thread. Were the phones all fairly close to sources? Did anyone record directly to the input of the phone? And to paraphrase you "It was pretty well done…"
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Baby #1.1 Baby #1.2 Baby #02 Baby #03 Baby #04 Baby #05 Larry's songs... …Just because you've argued someone into silence doesn't mean you have convinced them… Last edited by ljguitar; 05-21-2020 at 07:20 PM. Reason: added a thought |
#8
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I think some people think there's no point in recording anything until Amazon finally gets around to delivering whatever they haven't delivered.
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Last edited by Brent Hahn; 05-22-2020 at 11:24 AM. Reason: first option, not second. duh. |
#9
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What Matters More, the Mic or the Room?
The reason the phone mics sound so bad is that they are omnidirectional. They pick up sound in all directions and that means there is a lot of room mixed in with the voice.
A cardio mic will do much better. A cardiod USB mic will blow away the built in phone mic at minimizing room reflections. The very best you can do is a high end cardiod dynamic mic with a quick falloff as the distance from the mic increases. My favorite mic in a room at home is the Shure SM7B. It is a high end dynamic mic with a great sound but a quick fall-off as you get further away from the mic. I use it for two things: minimizing the sound of a crappy room at home, and separating the sound of my voice from the guitar. It is a really low output mic, so you need some sort of external preamp to make it shine. I use a tiny phantom powered FetHead. A lot of podcasters use the SM7B for this exact reason. |
#10
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Here's another one that's just me. Same method, same phone. |
#11
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What Matters More, the Mic or the Room?
I see what you are saying now. Yes, that sounds great! Spectacular even! Great tune! Great arrangement! Great performance! Great recording!
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#12
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Thanks so much. I think reckless abandon counts for a lot. Although it gets a bit over-abandoned at one spot in the verse.
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#13
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I heard a live streaming session with just the built in phone mic, but it was outdoors so there was no lousy room acoustics either. Just a beautiful blend of crickets and music!
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#14
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With the acoustic in my atrium (stone floor, high ceiling, lots of windows, etc) there seems to be a lot of 'reflective' sounds that the noise gate tries to filter out. They're getting to the mic 'a little late', as it were, and are perceived as 'noise' instead of ambiance. With the electric, on the other hand, I'm overwhelming the room with sound so the noise gate circuit hasn't got a moment to make a decision when to cut in or out, so it takes a nap. This is all conjecture on my part, but it's based on observation. I don't take any chances now: I bought a Shure MV-88 and the software that runs it does a great job no matter what I throw at it. Regards, Howard Emerson
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#15
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Well one thing is constant---- tick tock, we sure as heck ain't gettin' no younger
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Enjoy the Journey.... Kev... KevWind at Soundcloud KevWind at YouYube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...EZxkPKyieOTgRD System : Studio system Avid Carbon interface , PT Ultimate 2023.12 -Mid 2020 iMac 27" 3.8GHz 8-core i7 10th Gen ,, Ventura 13.2.1 Mobile MBP M1 Pro , PT Ultimate 2023.12 Sonoma 14.4 |