While those Sterling condenser microphones you have are a budget LDC, they ain't bad. You're just not using them correctly. Drum overheads absolutely don't need to be used in any kind of XY blah blah way. You stick one on the left side over the left cymbal floor Tom side. One over the cymbal hi hat snare drum side. Yes, approximately 3 feet apart. You know, like you see on television shows like Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live, etc.. The phase problems are really quite minimal in this style and configuration of use. However, as indicated, this microphone has no built-in capsule pad. And because of that, the capsule is overloading that probably single FET impedance converter in the body of the microphone. It's actually patterned more after the Neumann U 87. The differences that the 87 had a rear capsule allowing for cardioid, Omni, figure of 8 patterns. And the 87 had a capsule pad switch. One of the ways they tried to create the similarity with the 87 is with the thicker 6 mil mylar plastic film. 6 mil is what's in the 87. Most of the newer condenser microphones that are LDC's today, have 3 mil & even 1.5 mill thick mylar capsules. So these are darker sounding because of the increased thickness. The thinner capsules have a crispier almost exaggerated high-frequency response. AKG 414 are also popular overhead microphones and generally the ones you see most often for overheads when one wants LDC overheads.
Boswell is trying to describe here what actually happens when gain, levels & pads are utilized. It's almost like having a special equalizer because the tonality & perception of the microphones can change greatly. I just went through this with a client of mine who has NT 1's on his piano. He was amazed at the subtle but huge difference this made. It really changes your perception of what you're hearing. This is primarily the reason why I'm not really hot on the way Mackie has designed fool proofing into their preamps. Those preamps are actually not adjustable. When you change old-school style preamps, this changes the " negative feedback loop " gain structure of the preamp. These old-school designs, actually change the tonality. When you increased level you are actually reducing the amount of 180° out of phase " negative feedback " to the microphone preamp which varies gain. When you turned down the gain trim, it is actually increasing the amount of negative feedback bets 180° out of phase. This actually has the effect of literally causing the sound through that preamp to sound more " squeezed ". Where if you increase the gain, you aren't lowering the 180° out of phase negative feedback. This makes the preamps sound more open, less squeezed. In this situation, combined with the microphone pad switch, you can pad down the input to the preamp. This will force you to turn up the gain trim (reducing the negative feedback to the preamp input) producing a more open sound. Operational amplifiers operating at maximum gain also has other effects on the frequency response, head room, noise levels, distortion characteristics. So the old world style preamps offer a greater degree of tonal control. The Mackie is fixed at 20 DB gain while the buffer amplifier is being modified as described above but with less of a overall sonic difference. And that's how most modern, entry level devices designed for novices do better with. You have to be an engineer understanding these concepts to take proper advantage of them. This is why sometimes, it might take you 3 hours to get the sound of the drums, just right. That's because, you have to run through all of this craziness to get the tonality you seek. So it goes way beyond just microphone selection & placement. It all comes in to play together. Sort of like an auto race. It would be fun to have an auto race with just 1 car on the track as you know who would be the winner. With all the cars on the track it opens up all of these variables even if the cars are similarly configured. And only the more experienced drivers really know how to deal with such a large gaggle of cars around them. Of course that doesn't include the extremely enthusiastic younger drivers who are more likely to take more chances than their experienced counterparts. And what do you see when that goes on? Lots of spectacular crashes that people want to see. They don't necessarily want to hear it in your mixes.
Please don't just follow the speed limit. Learn how to drive instead. Some people always follow the speed limit but never actually learn how to drive. I don't care if they even have PhD's. Coming from Detroit and its automotive heyday, folks from Detroit generally know how to DRIVE. Where most other people only know to follow the speed limit as they drift along down the road in packs. That's because they really don't know how to drive. And you have to learn how to drive your audio to win. There are some exceptions such as the Neve 1073's. Those actually had fixed gain preamps like the Mackie, also. The biggest difference is, they come off the starting line already superior sounding to most anything else on the planet. And because of their mostly class A., transistorized nature, increased open loop gain structure in the subsequent buffer stages can be overdriven to create this incredibly fantastic sound. My later Neve 3115's modules actually have variable gain microphone preamps and so there are those folks that actually thinks that the preamps I have by Neve have the capability of sounding more or less aggressive if I want it to. So sometimes, I will switch on the pad on the microphone and gain up on the Neve to get a certain sound. And in other situations, you're not only dealing with the pad on the microphone, you're dealing with the pad on the preamp along with how much open loop gain you have set.
So actually I don't think there is anything wrong with your Sterling microphones but without a pad on the microphone, you are limited by the sound pressure level from the instruments plugged into the preamp. If the microphone has already been overloaded, it doesn't matter how good a preamp you have, the microphone is outputting overload distortion before it ever sees the preamp. And that sucks because I believe all condenser microphones, with the exception of tie tack microphones all should have switchable capsule pads. You don't need them if you're not going to record drums, most generally, extremely loud guitar amplifiers, screaming vocalists won't cut the mustard without a switchable capsule pad.
So, yeah, NT 55's and/or SHURE SM 81's, have switchable capsule pads making them appropriate for drum recording.My Neve preamps not only have variable gain capabilities but there are also input pads also built into the circuit when you are turning down your trim gain sensitivity. In this particular design, you don't necessarily have the ability to just push a button to select the pad. It's incorporated into the function of the gain control trim adjustment. So the different padding at different amplification settings along with the microphone pads give me a far greater variability in the sound that I capture, based upon the gain structure I have set up. This is all part of this confusing the issue called " GAIN STAGING ". Which many novices have trouble getting their head around with. So we might trade off a little extra noise to get a more open quality or a little less noise and receive a slightly more squeezed like quality. Neither is perfectly right and neither is perfectly wrong you just want your recordings to sound perfectly fabulous even if they're not perfect.
Gain staging 101 & a half
Mx. Remy Ann David
