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Old 12-11-2008, 07:16 PM   #67
yep
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
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So, having partially dissected a very simple DI recording, let's talk about microphones next.

There is no best microphone. There is no best mic in any given price range. There are some bad mics, but for the most, there are a lot of different mics. And frequency response is not a very important part of what makes a mic a good one or a bad one (at least, not within the realm of reasonable choices for studio recording). If frequency response were the ultimate measure, you could just use an eq to make an SM57 sound like a C12 and save yourself $15,000 or so.

And before we go any further, let's just clarify that there are times when an SM57 is actually preferable to a C12. In other words, there is no best mic. Any more than there is a "best ingredient." Spanish saffron is not necessarily much better than Nestle chocolate chips if you're making cookies. White truffles are great for veal, but not so much for lemonade. Whether you're better off using caviar or strawberry syrup might depend on whether you're serving toast points or ice cream (I always go with strawberry syrup, myself).

So it is with mics. And well-equipped professional studios that have access to all kinds of mics in all kinds of price ranges use a lot of different ones for different applications. Ask a dozen rock stars which mic they recorded their last vocal track with and you might get a dozen answers, and that's not because they don't know about or have access to the other mics.

It is a pretty safe bet that any well-known mic that costs over, say, $500 will be a pretty good mic, otherwise nobody would be paying for them. But there are also good mics that are inexpensive, and a more expensive mic does not automatically make it a better one for any given application. In fact the humble SM57 is probably the most widely-used microphone in the world, in professional applications.

Even if you're rich, a home studio is unlikely to have the same range of mics available as a professional recording studio, anymore than a rich person's kitchen is going to be as well-stocked as a professional chef's commercial kitchen. But that does not mean that homemade food is necessarily worse than professionally-made food.

A professional chef has to be able to make dozens, maybe hundreds of different dishes on demand. Maybe thousands, when you count all the sides and sauces and garnishes. And she has to cook for hundreds of people every night, and every single meal that leaves the kitchen has to be top-quality, and there have to be choices to satisfy thousands of different palettes. A home cook just has to make dinner for themselves and their family or guests, and they only have to make one meal, and they only have to please themselves.

Similarly, a commercial recording studio might be cranking out a new album every week, made by an engineer who has never heard the band before, who might not even like the band. The band might have instrumentation or sonics that are completely different from anything the engineer has worked on in the last year. The band might be incompetent and bad-sounding. But the studio is still accountable for turning out top-quality product, quickly, day after day, making every band that walks in the door sound like rock stars. This is a categorically different task from recording your own material that you love and have worked on and can spend time on without a meter running.

So put out of your head any notion of trying to compete with commercial studios in terms of GEAR, and put into your head the notion that you can still compete in terms of SOUND (albeit in a more limited range). If your Aunt Minnie can make a great pot roast at home, you can make great recordings at home. All you need is ears.

So anyway, what makes a good microphone? Read on...
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