Recording Vocals - Microphone choices
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In the videos I have been producing, we've listened to a number of microphones and how they respond to voice and instruments, but for completeness, we'd not heard them on voices. I'd been working on a little job where I'm creating a stage track for a person I've worked with for years and I always send him the stems, and a guide vocal. He then replaces that with his voice, and does another of just the track which he uses live with a real voice and the tracks. I thought it an opportunity to put out an array of mics and record my vocals on the different mics.
The usual culprits are there, plus two new ones - the Oktava MK-319 and EV RE-320.
Chris suggested I also make the clips available for direct download - 48K .wav format.
What to listen for:
Spill from the headphones - they leaked, and I didn't notice until I'd done, but I guess spill also has a 'tone' - the SM7B was the one that on voice, rather than speech, I didn't really like. The 87 and 319 shared something but were different. The 414 seemed a little more breathy? The Re320 was actually brighter than I expected
Comments
You've given me another idea…
You've given me another idea now - how about if I do a test with all the options available to me?
I could use the SM7B and the 414 maybe - as two alternative mics, and then connect them via the Tascam rack interface I have, the old Lexicon Omega, two different zoom recorders and a Midas M32, which gets nice comments for preamps? In fairness, I'm a bit of a preamp sceptic - and my view so far is that out of all the ones I use, and the Presonus at the other studio, they all sound very close - but the same mics, same location into all of these could be interesting as a little test?
I'm a believer in how some preamps impact the sound
paulears wrote:
You've given me another idea now - how about if I do a test with all the options available to me?
I could use the SM7B and the 414 maybe - as two alternative mics, and then connect them via the Tascam rack interface I have, the old Lexicon Omega, two different zoom recorders and a Midas M32, which gets nice comments for preamps? In fairness, I'm a bit of a preamp sceptic - and my view so far is that out of all the ones I use, and the Presonus at the other studio, they all sound very close - but the same mics, same location into all of these could be interesting as a little test?
Sounds like a great idea! I'm a believer in how some preamps impact the sound. Low-fi SS, not do much but big rail transformers vs transformer-less... they can have a pretty big sound in comparison to say something like Behringer built-in pre. Huge difference there.
What micpre did your use?
👍🏼 awesome post
I agree, they all did a good job here.
I wonder how much the preamp plays a part in the similarities here? That would be interesting to talk about. What micpre did your use?
Being said, I think I narrow my favourites down to the EV Re320 and Neumann TDM 103. They both had a sweeter mid and top end to me.