Stop Spending as Little As You Can! Start Buying as MUCH as You Can Afford!

So I bitch a lot about setting budgets, but it doesn’t seem to be sinking in. I’m still routinely asked for what a person’s “cheapest” options are for getting a job done. How little can someone spend to, say, record really competitive auditions? How little can someone spend to get a “good” computer? Etc. Etc.

I’m REALLY tired of this question. Every time you ask someone like me that question you’re basically asking me to validate your desire to buy crap. Plain and simple. You want to buy something crappy, and want me to say it’ll be ok. You want to off-load the risk, thereby making it easier to convince yourself that it’s going to be ok, and when it’s (often) not ok, now you’ll have someone to blame...

Me.

I can’t tell you the number of frustrated responses I face when I refuse to support someone’s lowest dollar denominator line of questioning. The lengths people will reach to try and circumvent my refusal to answer would be funny if they weren’t so damn sad. “But if you WERE going to buy a really cheap piece of gear...”

Why wont I just help?
Two reasons.

First, it’s my reputation. Over YEARS of working in this field, I’ve built up a certain amount of “capital”. My reputation means something to people, and that means my opinion is valuable. Any content, repair, purchasing, writing, editing, or producing question asked usually involves some degree of risk, and my knowledge is seen as an asset to arriving at a solution. The more often I am wrong, without the ability to properly correct my mistakes, the less valuable my currency becomes.
By validating someone’s purchase, I may as well have recommended it in the first place. I refuse to have people walking around complaining about the gear I’ve “endorsed”, so I refuse to write up any kind of “booth in a box”, “recommended list” or other one size fits all solution.

Second, and more importantly for you, the “cheaper” solution often costs more in the long run.

Take USB mics. They take the place of interface and mic. You have NO flexibility for fine tuning the sound to your environment. To improve the quality of your recordings, you have to change that environment. So, for that uber-convenient “I Just Plug It In and It Works” $100 mic, how much time are you going to spend troubleshooting echo, room noise, etc? How much money are you willing to throw at room treatments (and so help me if I hear one more person say they’ll just throw a blanket over their head...)?
Maybe in your room you don’t need a condenser, and you’ll sound fantastic on a dynamic? Maybe the electrical sucks in your building and that dynamic is a no-go so you need a shotgun?  
Surprise! Asking “How little can I spend?” Is almost ALWAYS a sure fire way to end up spending more than you need to, and wasting more time than you should, over the course of your career.

Let’s talk tech for a second.
The question of computer shopping has come up again recently from a couple family members and friends.
“What’s a good computer? I don’t want to spend a lot...”
First off, no system is JUST the brand. You can not compare a “Dell” and a “Mac”. That is nonsense, and no amount of marketing should ever convince you otherwise. You HAVE to sort by priorities, what the computer will be used for, and prices within different levels or tiers of systems. We would never directly compare a Ford Fiesta and a Bugatti Veyron as serious options for the same consumer.

[Quick tangent, I keep encountering this mindset that one brand (often Apple) is somehow objectively better than another. This is most often encountered by someone who ran a dirt cheap computer into the ground over years, comparing that old system to a REALLY pricey new system. Last time I personally encountered someone saying “Mac was better!”, they had recently gotten rid of a four year old, originally priced at $400 Dell, and replaced it with a brand new $2500 iMac...]

Now why shouldn’t you just buy the cheapest machine a company has to offer? Well having worked retail, those really aren’t “real” systems. They’re usually designed to get someone in the door so they can be upsold. Should you buy that system, you’re almost guaranteed a horrible, slow, buggy experience. As software becomes more and more demanding, the hardware will have a harder time keeping up. The components used will certainly be chosen for cost, will probably not be very rugged, and will be more likely to wear out sooner.
Things like processors and power supplies are critical. Under powered processors need to work at maximum for longer periods of time to accomplish tasks. This wastes electricity and produces extra heat. Running hot will reduce the lifespan of any tech.
Same with a cheap PSU. A power supply delivers a certain amount of electricity to the guts of your computer, but it has to pull MORE current from the wall to do so. The closer it gets to running at maximum, the less efficient it becomes. Older units could sometimes be as low as 50% efficiency, which means for every watt used by your computer a watt is wasted. The less efficient your PSU is, the higher your electricity bill will be, and the more heat will be belched into your home as waste.

So that’s the problem with lowest dollar denominator thinking. It feels good in the moment, like you’re getting a deal, like you’re “saving”, but usually it’s hurting you in the long run.

What’s the alternative?

I like to call it the “How much can I buy for...” method of gear acquisition. There’s one simple trick to it.

YOU HAVE TO SET A BUDGET FIRST!

See if you set that budget, then you can make informed purchasing decisions based on getting the most bang for your buck. You can make better choices about where to scimp on one area, to support buying a higher quality piece somewhere else. It should also help prevent you from drastically over-buying in one area, as it should force you to sit down and consider your entire chain or system, unlike those people who put $800 video cards into their $700 desktops, or people who put U87’s in their closets (but yours probably sounds great in there, no really, it’s those OTHER people’s mics in closets who don’t sound as good).

Come to me with a budget, even a low one, LIKE ANY SANE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER WOULD, and we can chat. We can explore some options, and come up with a purchasing solution.

Ask me again what’s the least you can spend, and I can’t promise I’ll be able to refrain from punching you in the face...

Super Cheap Condenser or Mid Range Dynamic? MXL 990 vs SM57

I've gotten this question a couple times now:
Should you use a cheap condenser or an established dynamic mic for voice over?

It's a tricky question to answer.
There are pros and cons to each approach, and largely I think it still comes down to budget and experience. This seems a little bit cop out, as ideally we would make audio decisions with our ears alone, but there are several "bang for buck" points that need to be addressed.



Since this question is so tricky to answer, I thought I'd throw down some equipment to see if it helps. I recorded myself on a Marshal MXL 990 and a Shure SM57. The MXL is largely known as one of the cheapest budget condenser mics you can find, often retailing for just under $60. The SM57 is the gold standard of studio dynamic mics, and retails for about $100.
I recorded myself on each, plugged directly into my FW410 at matched gain. I was about 7 inches from the 990, and about 1 inch from the SM57. No editing was done other than to Normalize volume (second batch of recordings), and to mix down to 320Kbps MP3. These are really raw and noisey! Yay!



Which one sounds "better"? Let's take a listen!
Here's my (awful) reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 17 (Mrs. Audio Guy picked it out for me, woot).

SM57 Raw Output:

MXL990 Raw Output:


OK, so the SM57 is audible, but I can't hear it as well as the 990. To get a better listen at whats going on, let's boost both samples and match the output volume (peak normalized to 90%).

SM57 Normalized:

MXL990 Normalized:


Alright that's better. I think the 990 is a little bright, maybe even a tad harsh, but it definitely sounds clearer and more present than the SM57. Where the SM57 succeeds is in lower noise, higher tolerance for peaking, and a richer tone for vocals, but out of the box (and plugged directly into a Soundcard without any other gear) I'd have to say I'd prefer the sound of the budget condenser.

Would you really use a mic this way though? Well. not really. The SM57 really needs to be driven by a dedicated preamp, so since we're comparing budget gear, I dug up my old Behringer T1953, which at $150, is about as budget as you can get. Plugging the SM57 into this gives us a nice little 20dB gain boost.



SM57 on Preamp:


Now listening to that, I'd much rather use the 57. The tube adds a ton of hiss (which after listening back I should've tried a little harder to clean out...), but I sound richer and fuller.

So what can we conclude?

It all comes down to budget and experience.

*To use a budget condenser, you need a soundcard with Phantom Power (at least $150), to use a dynamic you should really drive the mic with a dedicated preamp (at least $150) into a decent sound card (at least $50).
M-Audio FireWire 410 4-In / 10-Out FireWire Mobile Recording Interface

*Out of the box the condenser will have a slightly lower learning curve (plugging directly into soundcard) and give you slightly clearer recordings, but will sound brighter (or harsher) and thinner. The dynamic will have a slightly steeper learning curve (mic into preamp into soundcard), but will be more tolerant of peaking or clipping, more directional (wont pic up as much room noise), and will probably sound richer.

So I know that's a cop out, but it really will come down to which one you sound better on, versus how much you're able to spend to get there. Hope that helps, and comments/questions always welcome!