If this was accurate and my media playback system is of any worth, the sm57 sounded the best of all of them. The AT was my least favourite and the others all sounded close enough. She sounded tried towards the end of these, and there is a slight annoying compression on this. I'm sure the gain setting for the Pro Tools converters could have been set better but overall, I thought it told us something. That an SM57 is a great vocal mic.

audiokid, post: 441976, member: 1 wrote: That an SM57 is a great vocal mic.

I agree...its the swiss army knife of mics. (y)

i think the whole exercise is an evil plot to make us listen to a song about jebuz 9 times. girlfriend can't carry a tune in a bucket and the drums sound like popcorn. horrid.

the 87 and the shure sounded best to me. the rest of them sounded like ass (just for you Sean).

Kurt Foster, post: 441982, member: 7836 wrote: i think the whole exercise is an evil plot to make us listen to a song about jebuz 5 times.

Yep...I got into it for all of 31 seconds before I bailed...

I'll take the word of my learned collegues above

Kurt Foster, post: 441982, member: 7836 wrote: the rest of them sounded like ass (just for you Sean).

plus all the processing and 'verb makes the whole thing moot imo. part of how a mic sounds is the dynamic range. the addition of compression completely changes the character of the mics out of the gate. impossible to make a real comparison. they all sound almost the same with the exception of the 87 and the 57.

pardon my ignorance but what the f&*# is "clip gaining"?

Kurt Foster, post: 441982, member: 7836 wrote: i think the whole exercise is an evil plot to make us listen to a song about jebuz 9 times. girlfriend can't carry a tune in a bucket and the drums sound like popcorn. horrid.

the 87 and the shure sounded best to me. the rest of them sounded like ass (just for you Sean).

Sean G, post: 441983, member: 49362 wrote: Yep...I got into it for all of 31 seconds before I bailed...

Brutal yet honest comment on the talent. In all due respect, I appreciate the commenting but hardly think it was worth criticizing this girl or drums because its obvious. If she or the drums where the focus of "fixing it in the mix", I would be using drum replacement tools and autotune lol, not ranting over how bad she was but (long live recording.org problem based mixing forums) how we could improve the situation. I could do magic on both her and the drums lol. Which is yet another interesting "mix" problem based discussion.

IMHO, for this particular study I would say you've put too much emphasis on the performance or styles of an artist making it hard to think past what the OP is about. I think this is a classic example of how we spend a pile of money on gear, even thinking old school tape or U87 for that matter makes the song lol. I simply heard way past the talent, Avid converters and the compression etc. I think this video showed how a cheap SM57 will get the job done (plain and simple). ;) The 57 cut right through and sounded really good on my playback system. Wow.

I cannot help but think, if I was doing an A/B in a studio together, I wouldn't even be discussing the talent of this particular exercise. I would expect others to be focused on how a cheap mic like a SM57/58 in unquestionably good enough to get the job done, especially if the mic is passing through a good preamp, which was why I posted this and felt it was useful for the community at large.:cool:
Even my cheaper RODE mics sound very good through top preamps. I do not hear the over the top harshness others claim or have in their mix when I put them through top pre's and converters.
I'm not saying all mics sound stellar through a top micpre... , but I don't get all unglued over the negative aspects of mics though a good vocal chain . Mic-pres matter most of all as do good converters and gain staging. Go cheap on the converters and micpres and you are sure to be investing in expensive mics that will sound like ASS lol.:D not to bypass, most likely hating a lot more about digital audio in general. Thus blaming the wrong things to why vocals sound so bad.

Kurt Foster, post: 441982, member: 7836 wrote: i think the whole exercise is an evil plot to make us listen to a song about jebuz 9 times.

Well, isn't this what most youtube video's are about. Who cares about a plot. The video is posted on RO for discussion on the cheap to expensive mics and maybe some objective thinking about what preamp we use.
Summery: Maybe a U87 isn't the most important part of the equation for those looking to improve their vocal chain . Those looking for a vocal chain on a budget, a good mic-pre/ converter and logical gain staging may be more important that many realize. Just saying.

They all sounded different.. 57 sounded great.. The AT's sounded a bit harsh.. Cool shootout.. Just goes to show you that a U87 isn't going to make you sound any better than a 57 if you struggle with a song.

i don't get why people are always so surprised when a SM 57 or 58 sound as good as many other mics. they were designed in the first place as a studio mic, hence the designation SM ......

Awesome, back on track.

I did an experiment a few years back and posted it but it was before we had audio uploads here. Damn shame. Anyway... The jest of it was how awesome the SM58 sounded through a high end preamp, then the same 58 through a converter preamp combo. It was night and day.
The SM58 was then compared to a RODE M1. Both sound really good. I now have 7 RODE M1's in the locker. These classic 58's are idea for recording in bad rooms including live work. This thing cut through in a very positive way. Wow . It was inspired by Remy.

Chris Perra, post: 441993, member: 48232 wrote: They all sounded different.. 57 sounded great.. The AT's sounded a bit harsh.. Cool shootout.. Just goes to show you that a U87 isn't going to make you sound any better than a 57 if you struggle with a song.

+1
Awesome response. (y)

I think the reason the SM-57 stands up to more expensive mics comes down to the Unidyne III capsule design.

Nearly 60 years of continuous production and the fact it is found in the two most popular mics on the planet in the '57 & '58 is testament to the capsules designer, Ernie Seeler.

The SM-57 design came from a time when things where made with quality in mind and built to last...not like todays' standards where obseletion is a key factor in design.

It has a frequency response that accurately replicates what goes into it.

Kurt Foster, post: 441984, member: 7836 wrote: pardon my ignorance but what the f&*# is "clip gaining"?

i got it. did a search.

I think we're all experienced enough at our craft by now - or should be - to be able to listen past what may ( or may not be) be a dicey performance; able to hear and discern sonic fidelity without criticizing the music or the performances.
I don't see much point - or value added to the topic at hand - in criticizing the performance of a song in a video that is intended to show comparisons between mics and preamps.

Probably none of us would agree on the mixing style used, be it to our liking or not. Some might loathe it, others might find it fairly pleasant. Some like digital verb, others don't and prefer signal to be bone-dry.
Some like compression, and others don't. For me, in my own world of music recording and mixing, these are tools that are commonly used, so I don't have a problem listening to these various examples with those things applied.

Ask 5 different engineers what they think, and you're likely to get 15 different answers... ;)

Anyway... IMO.

DonnyThompson, post: 442051, member: 46114 wrote: I think we're all experienced enough at our craft by now - or should be - to be able to listen past what may ( or may not be) be a dicey performance; able to hear and discern sonic fidelity without criticizing the music or the performances.
I don't see much point - or value added to the topic at hand - in criticizing the performance of a song in a video that is intended to show comparisons between mics and preamps.

Spot on.

I could do a comparison with a screaming baby lol. Humbly speaking, I rarely get confused or put off over the source.

In fact, this is another reason why I join comparisons together in one timeline with no more than 2 secs of each example, volumes matched, no gaps between each take and in a syncopated rhythm.
From my experience, the human mind looses the ability to be objective fast so its important for me to reduce distracting setbacks, thus focusing on sonic details. Its easy to A/B/C/D most anything then.

I found this singer to be better than the average singer as well. With some coaching and a nice mix, I think she would do a lot better as well. I really do not understand the negativity or insults.
I certainly wouldn't kick her out of my studio. I'd be happy to work with her. :D

To evaluate mics correctly, I'm alot more disturb by the reverb and compressor than the performance.. MAN My mic shootout performance was horrible !!! But it was a simple chain : mic - preamp converter

I Wonder if we like the sm57 compared to condensers so much because the dynamic response is different. After all they are not the same technology

pcrecord, post: 442068, member: 46460 wrote: I Wonder if we like the sm57 compared to condensers so much because the dynamic response is different.

Good point.
The cleaner mids is what I like the best about the 57. The condensers all sounded compressed and less forward. Could be how her voice fit the mic freq pattern well with it.

I've told the story here in the past, of having a female singer on a session once, started out with a Neumann U89, no go, moved to a 414EB, nope, finally out of curiosity I put her on a '57. Bingo. Instant tone for her on that song.

;)

IMO the '57 is more forgiving...the better the condenser the more imperfections are highlighted with vocals.

I haven't been here for a few months - so thought I'd pop in. I watched that video and a bunch of others in the last week while thinking about various mics.

Anyways - yes, I agree 57's/58's can sound amazingly good for vocals, with the right vocalist and the right song.

What I've noticed is that different mics bring out aspects that could be related to the mood of the song. Sinatra did a lot with the U87 because it comes across as very intimate, but it doesn't have the presence that a lot of the more modern mics do. They also had the voice a lot louder in those days compared to a lot of popular songs now, so that intimacy could come across.

The 57's/58's can really punch through a mix but don't strike me as an 'intimate' mic by any means - great for punchy tunes, but otherwise really do sound a bit thin when the vocal is more up front and you want the singer sounding like they are standing in front of you, rather than shouting from across the room.

BTW I wound up with a Rode NT1. Under the budget I'd set myself and figured if it didn't work very well in my home studio there's a return policy at the store. The samples I heard online (and I must have gone through 30 or 40 different tests and shootouts, the NT1 sounds way better to me than a Neumann 102 or 103. Has some of the Neumann warmth but still has a bit of presence. I was recording a song and did my own shootout between my NT1a (kind of similar but way more pronounced in the highs / presence range), and my AT 3035 - which is way warmer than the NT1a.

I may start saving up my nickles (no more pennies in Canada) for a Rode K2 or something along those lines.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the SM57 does well in shootouts, after all, it's innards are essentially the same as on the Shure SM7b (Unidyne III), which is/was the mic of choice for Michael Jackson, John Mayer, Billy Idol, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many more. The SM7b obviously has a different housing and has added switches, each of which adds to the cost as well as versatility. The Unidyne III capsule seems best suited to loud and dynamic sources, and not so well suited to voiceover and such. BTW, Michael Jackson's mic pre (at least on Thriller) was the Mic-PreEminence by Studio Technologies, which is 'clean and uncolored' compared to most others. It's also a favorite for upgrades by Jim Williams, who claims it's one of the best 'bang-for-the-buck' preamps available.

DonnyThompson, post: 442051, member: 46114 wrote: I don't see much point - or value added to the topic at hand - in criticizing the performance of a song in a video that is intended to show comparisons between mics and preamps.

Nice to see at least a few people get it.

I saw little diff between any of the mics frankly, and I feel I have a pretty good ear. Diff in mics generally is IMO overblown, and often WAY overblown. But these companies sucker people in and laugh all the way to the bank. Oh well, confidence matters a lot in performing, so if having a pricey mic helps someone along, whether it really sounds better or not, whatever works I guess.