Rode NT1a vs ADK A6

[ombudsman]

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

The UFX is pricey all right, but on the REAPER forum one of the posters sneered at the RME preamps. Whatever you think is expensive, someone else will consider too cheap, and vice versa of course.

I've done preamp comparisons a couple of times. There's a fairly extensive one at the Sound on Sound web site. When I listen to $150 preamps vs $1500 preamps operated in their linear range they sound the same to me, and the editor at SOS came to the same conclusion. Converters even more so.

Fran

As far as comparing preamps to each other within a similar basic type design - either transformerless clean preamps, or transformer in and out solid state "colored", I think that's largely true, especially on more forgiving sources.

However in my experience going from a clean modern preamp to a vintage console style preamp with in and out transformers is a night and day difference. I did everything with a Duet for a couple of years, and then one day I got a couple of channels made from old Quad Eight amp cards and vintage transformers. The first time I plugged a vocal mic in, enabled a channel, put up the headphones, and talked into the mic, I started laughing at how amazingly rich and "vintage" the sound was.

My collaborating vocalist at the time, who doesn't have the "ears" (ear training, really) that I have, had pretty much had the same reaction. That tells me that it's not that subjective; he can't tell the difference between most compressor settings and subtle EQ things or between many mics, but this was not a subtle difference.

Really old style tube preamps with little or no negative feedback are also obviously very different sounding, but those aren't too common.

Percussion and loud, close miked electric guitar and bass signals can reveal the limits of preamps which would otherwise not be apparent on quiet sources. Of course, it can sound good to be right at the limit.

As for acoustic guitar, I've only ever been completely unhappy with one mic I've tried; its a KEL HM-1, which is a fairly dark, low sensitivity mic designed to be used as a drum overhead placed closer than other overhead mics. (I love those for other things.)

I have a couple of old, low impedance ribbon mics that I wasn't able to use on acoustic guitar or bass, but that was because at that time I didn't have a good way to step up the impedance nor a preamp that could give me the gain it would have required without a stepup transformer. Now, that would be less of an issue as I have some preamps with 150 ohm input and unloaded secondaries, and a way to chain them together with an attenuator in between for up to 90 db. So I don't really fault those mics, they would probably sound fine when connected to the right stuff.

[Fran Guidry]

Looks like this thread is winding down, I want to say thanks to everyone who participated and mention a couple of things that I think these clips and the reactions to them illustrate.

First, it seems to me that the difference between the mics is not great enough to change the emotional impact of the recording. And as far as I'm concerned, the emotional impact is the whole point.

And second, these clips represent the real difference between the mics. So if we visit a site purporting to compare mics and we hear much greater differences than were obvious in these clips then we're hearing the differences in the setups and sources, not the differences in the mics themselves.

Fran

[Scott Whigham]

EDIT - upon re-read, my thoughts did not come out like they are in my head! I'll post when I have more time tomorrow.

[Scott Whigham]

Fran is right about the "emotional impact of the recording" for most people. I've certainly listened to really great records that sound "not so great" yet I didn't care. However, the question then becomes, "Can the choice of microphone make a great performance more compelling?" I think the answer is absolutely "Yes!" This test shows that very well. It also shows that there's no reason to wait until you have the greatest gear before you start recording. That being said, I've heard plenty of recordings of great performances that I turned it off/didn't buy/left because it sounded so bad. To me, there's a line somewhere and, once the sound is below that line, I tune out. I'm sure we are all that way. Fran has talked before about how using his expensive mics is a trigger to his brain that says, "Okay - now it's time to get serious." I get that. So there's more than one reason to have expensive mics, I guess.

To those who cannot pick out the Schoeps in that test[1] - on a good monitoring setup, it is clear and without question which take is the Schoeps. You don't even need a second listen to pick it out. Doug mentioned that listening to the tail end will help - I agree, but I think you can tell within the first 10-20 seconds that "One of these is not like the others". I don't think you need to have owned or even recorded with one to pick it out either - one of the takes stands out because of its clarity, accuracy, and lack of hype. That take would be the Schoeps. So if, on your first pass you didn't identify the Schoeps take then something could either be improved with your monitoring setup or there's something up with your ears... I don't think there can be any other explanation.

The reason I posted earlier about correlating the "People who picked out the Schoeps correctly" to "Those with a good monitoring setup" was because I expect some people will arrive at the wrong causation. For example, let's say that, in in the past week, 20 people participate. And let's say that the results are something like this:

Most of the people could not pick out the Schoeps correctly

The natural tendency then is for people to say, "This proves it: people can't tell the difference between high end mics and low end mics." This would be the wrong takeaway however.

A sample size of 20 people all listening on the same setup would represent "All things being equal". Each person gets one guess, and we could all review the results and feel comfortable in the trends we saw. There would be some who missed the Schoeps mic, sure, but mostly those would come down to age or hearing damage or "lacking in critical listening ability". They would be the outliers obviously, unless by some strange stroke of luck, the 20 participants were over-weighted with hearing damage, etc. (This is why sample size matters)

However, when you take 20 people with different monitoring environments, all things are not equal and thus using the same popularity-style voting algorithm to determine the "results" is just not going to work. The reality is that most people who vote are listening on computer speakers or consumer-grade headphones and, in such a voting system, their vote counts as much as someone listening on a pair of Barefoot M27s in a $500,000 studio room. If "Most of the people are listening on computer speakers, earbuds, or low end headphones" and "Most of the people could not pick out the Schoeps in the test", that's the correlation that matters most here. And that's my "point" here: take the time to recognize all of the important data points before you make your conclusion.

Thanks again (and again!) to Fran for taking the time. I had a lot of fun with this.

[1] One thing I need to make crystal clear first though is that, when I say "Pick out the Schoeps", that's exactly what I mean. I don't mean that you like one or another better/less/more - I mean that you can quickly and easily identify which take is the Schoeps vs. the others.

[rick-slo]

And there are younger and older ears

[Doug Young]

It's also worth considering who you expect to listen to your music and how they'll be listening. It shouldn't be an excuse to not do the best you can, but realistically, how many people will be listening in recording studio situations?

I had an interesting experience recently, when I visited a friend of a friend, who prided himself on his audiofile home theatre system. I don't know what it was, just that it cost a small fortune. He told me my CD was one of the best sounding recording's he'd heard and couldn't wait to show me how it sounded on his killer system. Great! I was ready. There were about 10 people in the room, all chatting and eating, and he grandly fired up my CD, at a playback level of about 50db. He sat back and smiled, and said "doesn't that sound great?" Hmm, I could sort of make out that there was something vaugely guitar-like playing underneath the conversation. I just said something like "I'm sure not used to hearing it like that" and he beamed :-) Even those with great systems may not be listening for the same level of nuance we think they are :-)

[Steve Berger]

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

Fran is right about the "emotional impact of the recording" for most people. I've certainly listened to really great records that sound "not so great" yet I didn't care. However, the question then becomes, "Can the choice of microphone make a great performance more compelling?" I think the answer is absolutely "Yes!" This test shows that very well. It also shows that there's no reason to wait until you have the greatest gear before you start recording. That being said, I've heard plenty of recordings of great performances that I turned it off/didn't buy/left because it sounded so bad. To me, there's a line somewhere and, once the sound is below that line, I tune out. I'm sure we are all that way. Fran has talked before about how using his expensive mics is a trigger to his brain that says, "Okay - now it's time to get serious." I get that. So there's more than one reason to have expensive mics, I guess.

To those who cannot pick out the Schoeps in that test[1] - on a good monitoring setup, it is clear and without question which take is the Schoeps. You don't even need a second listen to pick it out. Doug mentioned that listening to the tail end will help - I agree, but I think you can tell within the first 10-20 seconds that "One of these is not like the others". I don't think you need to have owned or even recorded with one to pick it out either - one of the takes stands out because of its clarity, accuracy, and lack of hype. That take would be the Schoeps. So if, on your first pass you didn't identify the Schoeps take then something could either be improved with your monitoring setup or there's something up with your ears... I don't think there can be any other explanation.

The reason I posted earlier about correlating the "People who picked out the Schoeps correctly" to "Those with a good monitoring setup" was because I expect some people will arrive at the wrong causation. For example, let's say that, in in the past week, 20 people participate. And let's say that the results are something like this:
The natural tendency then is for people to say, "This proves it: people can't tell the difference between high end mics and low end mics." This would be the wrong takeaway however.

A sample size of 20 people all listening on the same setup would represent "All things being equal". Each person gets one guess, and we could all review the results and feel comfortable in the trends we saw. There would be some who missed the Schoeps mic, sure, but mostly those would come down to age or hearing damage or "lacking in critical listening ability". They would be the outliers obviously, unless by some strange stroke of luck, the 20 participants were over-weighted with hearing damage, etc. (This is why sample size matters)

However, when you take 20 people with different monitoring environments, all things are not equal and thus using the same popularity-style voting algorithm to determine the "results" is just not going to work. The reality is that most people who vote are listening on computer speakers or consumer-grade headphones and, in such a voting system, their vote counts as much as someone listening on a pair of Barefoot M27s in a $500,000 studio room. If "Most of the people are listening on computer speakers, earbuds, or low end headphones" and "Most of the people could not pick out the Schoeps in the test", that's the correlation that matters most here. And that's my "point" here: take the time to recognize all of the important data points before you make your conclusion.

Thanks again (and again!) to Fran for taking the time. I had a lot of fun with this.

[1] One thing I need to make crystal clear first though is that, when I say "Pick out the Schoeps", that's exactly what I mean. I don't mean that you like one or another better/less/more - I mean that you can quickly and easily identify which take is the Schoeps vs. the others.

Hi Scott, I really enjoyed listening to your acoustic guitar composition"Polly". Curious as to what mic(s) / gear you used to record it. (Apologies for the hijack.)

[ombudsman]

Thanks for making and posting the clips Fran. I had a couple of thoughts on this post which I'll put with each quote for clarity.

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

First, it seems to me that the difference between the mics is not great enough to change the emotional impact of the recording. And as far as I'm concerned, the emotional impact is the whole point.

It's an interesting topic. From my perspective, emotional impact has little if anything to do with sound quality and fidelity, and to go further, I'm skeptical that we are interpreting actual emotion at all from instrumental music. I think a lot of what we get from sounds that we feel as emotion is in fact based on cultural constructs and expectations.

Leaving aside words and vocal inflections (which change everything), how do we parse emotion outside of cultural cues ? I don't think we can. In our culture, for example, we associate minor keys with sadness, and we associate noisy, old recordings with nostalgia and other values. So if anything, based on our culture, the objectively low audio quality of an old blues 78 makes us respond more emotionally, not less.

But that's not exactly because of the sounds themselves, and it doesn't actually make that format better able to convey emotion. We have a tradition of defining that sound as authentic, unpretentious, and intelligible, and also being something that is broadly acceptable to like as a matter of taste. That doesn't actually make it so, nor imbue those subjective qualities on everything that is old, nor take them away from anything new.

Other cultures use minor keys for happy music, and musicians today have all of the same emotions as people in the 20s and 30s. It's not like being able to hear something clearly is logically going to wipe out emotion.

I'm sure there are other viewpoints on that, but my main point is that you don't need the best gear for emotional impact, you might even be better off using a cassette recorder and tracking under a bridge in a rainstorm to the extent emotion is the purpose. (I personally don't accept that poor sound enhances emotion, but we're talking about audiences in general.)

Quality/character of sound to me is a concern that exists for other reasons of taste and in relation to specific cultural, stylistic, or market based references or standards.

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

And second, these clips represent the real difference between the mics. So if we visit a site purporting to compare mics and we hear much greater differences than were obvious in these clips then we're hearing the differences in the setups and sources, not the differences in the mics themselves.

I would argue that these things cannot be separated that cleanly. There is no such thing as the sound of a mic outside of a particular source. Mics can be easier to differentiate when the source is more wide ranging, louder, dynamic, or transient, compared to acoustic guitar. That doesn't limit those differences to being in the realm of the sources; the sound of the mic is the way the mic responds in all conditions it can be used, not just certain ones.

Naturally, other differences in the setups and rooms are factors as well, sometimes so much they disqualify the test. But the way the mic handles certain things has a lot to do with why people like or don't like the mic; whether it rounds off or passes big clean transients or loud lows or ultra highs, how much room it picks up as it is backed away from a source in a live sounding room, how tight the pattern is when there are sounds or reflections all around, the existence and size/shape of the presence peak, etc.

[KenW]

I remember hearing an interview with Johnny A, he was running down his equipment, and the final link in his chain was a 30th Anniversary Marshall combo. Which came as a bit of shock to many, because Johnny gets very clean Fender'y tones not typical of a Marshall, to which he replied, "It's a matter of getting the sounds that you need out of whatever you have on hand."

Rhetorical question: can the same be said for mic's and pre's/interfaces?

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

Fran is right about the "emotional impact of the recording" for most people. I've certainly listened to really great records that sound "not so great" yet I didn't care. However, the question then becomes, "Can the choice of microphone make a great performance more compelling?" I think the answer is absolutely "Yes!" This test shows that very well. It also shows that there's no reason to wait until you have the greatest gear before you start recording. That being said, I've heard plenty of recordings of great performances that I turned it off/didn't buy/left because it sounded so bad. To me, there's a line somewhere and, once the sound is below that line, I tune out. I'm sure we are all that way.

Scott, I can't figure out which side you're standing on here.

...
To those who cannot pick out the Schoeps in that test[1] - on a good monitoring setup, it is clear and without question which take is the Schoeps. You don't even need a second listen to pick it out.
... So if, on your first pass you didn't identify the Schoeps take then something could either be improved with your monitoring setup or there's something up with your ears... I don't think there can be any other explanation.

Your assertion is simply that and nothing more. It raises many more questions than it answers (what is a "good monitoring setup" for instance) and offers no evidence other than your anecdote. Since others with monitoring systems that I would classify as good did not immediately identify the mics, I'd say your assertion has been refuted.

It's one thing to state your experience and or opinion, it's quite another to make a statement of fact, as you did.

...
The natural tendency then is for people to say, "This proves it: people can't tell the difference between high end mics and low end mics." This would be the wrong takeaway however.
...

I'd say you missed the point of the comparison. My point was not whether the mics could be differentiated, even I could tell I was listening to different mics. But I have read countless posts saying basically "that mic is total garbage and you can't make a good recording with it" - it was my intention to demonstrate the real degree of difference one should expect between mics. Was one of those clips ruined by the use of a cheap mic, a dynamic mic, a bright mic?

Fran

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by ombudsman

... From my perspective, emotional impact has little if anything to do with sound quality and fidelity, ...

Quality/character of sound to me is a concern that exists for other reasons of taste and in relation to specific cultural, stylistic, or market based references or standards.

I probably should have worded my question a bit differently, I suppose. Did one of these mics spoil the enjoyment of the recording? Did one make the recording significantly more enjoyable?

...There is no such thing as the sound of a mic outside of a particular source. Mics can be easier to differentiate when the source is more wide ranging, louder, dynamic, or transient, compared to acoustic guitar. That doesn't limit those differences to being in the realm of the sources; the sound of the mic is the way the mic responds in all conditions it can be used, not just certain ones.

Naturally, other differences in the setups and rooms are factors as well, sometimes so much they disqualify the test. But the way the mic handles certain things has a lot to do with why people like or don't like the mic; ...

While a comparison on a single source might not expose the full range of strengths and weaknesses of any given mic, I'm darned sure that a comparison using different sources is simply bad information, and most comparisons I've seen fall into that category.

And this _is_ the Acoustic Guitar Forum <grin>.

Fran

[ombudsman]

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

I probably should have worded my question a bit differently, I suppose. Did one of these mics spoil the enjoyment of the recording? Did one make the recording significantly more enjoyable?

Well, it's nice guitar playing, it could have been recorded on a micro cassette answering machine and I would have still enjoyed it. But, point taken. For me one of them was not as good as the others but the rest were all fine, and the one wasn't so bad that it would not have been worth using if that's all that was available. (I actually like RE-16s a lot on some things.)

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

While a comparison on a single source might not expose the full range of strengths and weaknesses of any given mic, I'm darned sure that a comparison using different sources is simply bad information, and most comparisons I've seen fall into that category.

I agree, that sort of comparison is a complete waste.

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

And this _is_ the Acoustic Guitar Forum <grin>.

Sure, but I think the implicit context from where a discussion occurs is not the same for everybody, and is something that easily gets overlooked when these things are remembered and paraphrased later. "These things are pretty much just as good for most people for this purpose" can be totally sensible and true, and then it turns into "these things are all the same" later that night, particularly for the person that would prefer to believe that.

Just like "this more expensive thing has existential mojo and pseudoscientific benefits" going the other direction for the person that wants to believe their stuff is extra special and their buying habits wise.

[moon]

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

Since others with monitoring systems that I would classify as good did not immediately identify the mics, I'd say your assertion has been refuted.

Maybe not everyone could hear it but I agree with Scott that the Schoeps absolutely stands out as better than the rest.

It's actually quite hard to pin down what we mean by "audio quality", or how much it really matters. It would take a whole essay to go into that but the short version is that I feel that the test quite clearly showed "significant" differences between these mics. Even if not everybody could hear them, they do exist.

What does "significant" mean? I'd have to write up the essay to explain that. Sometimes audio quality (whatever that is...) matters and sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the context.

[Doug Young]

These things always come down to one persons molehill is another's mountain. I wish we had a maslos's hierarchy of recording. My view is (for the most part) if its down to the difference in these mics, everything else must be in great shape. What I usually hear in amateur recordings that need help is not cheap gear, but anything from bad mic placement, to bad acoustics, to the guitar being out of tune! People get the channels unbalanced, the levels clipping, mics out of phase, etc. I'd vote for getting all those things right, AND delivering a killer performance, and then it'd be time to start getting picky about what mics are being used. If you get all those things right, you could record to a zoom h2, far below the quality of any of these mics, and most people would love it.

I said "for the most part" because one of the mics in this test had enough self noise that it would bug me enough to say it got in the way of the performance, but then one of my "molehills" is to want a really nice decay to silence at the end.

[ombudsman]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

These things always come down to one persons molehill is another's mountain.

that's a good way of putting it

Originally Posted by Doug Young

My view is (for the most part) if its down to the difference in these mics, everything else must be in great shape. What I usually hear in amateur recordings that need help is not cheap gear, but anything from bad mic placement, to bad acoustics, to the guitar being out of tune! People get the channels unbalanced, the levels clipping, mics out of phase, etc. I'd vote for getting all those things right, AND delivering a killer performance, and then it'd be time to start getting picky about what mics are being used.

I agree, competence is the most important tool and it makes sense as a prerequisite for high end gear.

Then again, I made pretty much the same point recently in a discussion about what mics someone should buy, to no avail.

We're men and we like selecting and talking shop about tools. That's a basic need we have, in the land of disposable income. All the reasons we say we need something expensive are semi fictitious. So it's pointless to tell people that they should build up their skills first because actually using these things is often not really why they are being bought anyway.

You just can't tell anybody they don't need "the best", or that they are not yet in a position to appreciate some subtle difference, it comes across as an attack and we're too creative at finding some angle to argue the point ("buy once, buy right").

It doesn't matter if even many long time pros don't feel the need for "the best" or if it makes no sense considering the rest of the signal chain, or the signal; it's a matter of identity, nobody wants to believe they are deserving of anything less than the people they are comparing themselves to.