While this isn't my favorite mic in my collection, it is one of my most interesting mics from a design stand point.
Do you have a pic of your fave mic? Send it my way!
Showing posts with label solaris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solaris. Show all posts
Monday, January 10, 2011
Up close and personal with my M-Audio Solaris...
Happy Monday!
While this isn't my favorite mic in my collection, it is one of my most interesting mics from a design stand point.
Do you have a pic of your fave mic? Send it my way!
While this isn't my favorite mic in my collection, it is one of my most interesting mics from a design stand point.
Do you have a pic of your fave mic? Send it my way!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
SomeAudioGuy Microphone Shoot Out!
I do quite a bit of business teaching people how to record themselves. Working in voiceover, this is becoming more and more necessary. Not that VO artists need to be full on recording engineers, but having a basic understanding of how to make their voices sound presentable is becoming more important.
At work we recently worked on a promo job where the budget was so low, that to pay for union talent they had to be able to record themselves, and send the audio back as quickly as possible. They didn't care about whisper rooms or ISDN, just a decent clean recording and a good performance. The job would've covered 30+ national promos.
Not a bad incentive to invest in some recording equipment!
My favorite setup to recommend is an external soundcard and condenser microphone. For newbies I tend to start low, say a USB MobilePre and MXL 770 (I can't say I'm a big fan of USB mics, as they don't give you anywhere to go, say you want to upgrade the mic or soundcard, you're starting from scratch all over again, not to mention adding a mixer, preamps, or monitors). Good flexibility, good sound, and all starting at under $300 (including stands and cables).
So, why not use a more expensive mic?
I get this question quite a bit. Every VO actor seems to have dreams of recording at home on a U87 or some vintage ribbon mic, and expensive mics are great, but an expensive mic wont make something sound "good-er". You get an expensive mic because it has a particular character that you are wanting to use. Personally I prefer the sound of an AKG 414 to the U87 FOR MOST PEOPLE. This is of course totally subjective as no one's really going to sound "bad" on either of these, but the Neumann will run you two to three times as much. Will you sound two to three times better?
AKG C 414 B-XL II Condenser Microphone
It's all about bang for buck. For a newbie at recording, who wont understand about monitors, mixing, preamps (where mics really start to shine), and sound proofing/isolation it makes little sense to spend more than a couple hundred bucks to start experimenting. This kit can get really expensive really fast.
So all that being said, I've setup a little experiment. I've taken 3 of my favorite mics (and one beater) set them up under the same conditions, and two at a time, recorded the same piece of text (the first paragraph of 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas, one of my favorite plays). All mics were connected directly to my Firewire 4-10, with gain set at half for each. Mic diaphragms were set approximately 10 inches from my face. After recording I punched each track through Sound Forge 9 and boosted the volume about 300% (exactly the same for each), then mixed each down to an mp3 @ 320kbps.
The mics we'll be hearing are:
*The M-Audio Aries @ $120 - Hand held condenser mic I got for free with my soundcard.
*The M-Audio Solaris @ $300 - This was the first multi-pattern condenser I've ever purchased, and it's served me very well for years.
*The Neumann KM184 @ $700 - I inherited this mic, before I was serious about recording, from an internet news "broadcast" station I worked at briefly in college. None of us knew about phantom power, so this mic "never worked". Years later I figured it out, and this has been a great utility and over head mic.
* The Sennheiser MKH 416 @ $1400 - This is THE L.A. mic. Originally used for outdoor broadcast, it also found a home in studios thanks in part to it's laser like focus.
With introductions out of the way, let's take a listen! While listening try to keep your headphones or speakers set to the same level. Each clip is about 40 seconds long.
M-Audio Aries:
M-Audio Solaris:
Neumann KM184:
Sennheiser MKH 416:
Wow! The Aries sounds not great at all! To be fair it is meant to replace dynamic mics like the sm57 (which I originally planned on using but sounded even worse), and even though it's phantom powered, the Aries really is meant to be passed through a preamp just like the Dynamic mics it competes against.
The Senny 416 sounds great. This thing is meant to be attached to video equipment or thrown on a boom, run off batteries, and get ONE person's voice even in noisy environments. Little wonder it handily beats the living crap out of the budget "studio" mics, and at twice the price of the Neumann, it had better.
But here's where a little know-how comes in. What if we normalized the volume of the Neumann and the Solaris to match the volume of the 416? Would the Senny still sound that much better?
Let's see!
Solaris NORMALIZED:
Neumann NORMALIZED:
OK! That's much better. The Solaris comes in a little brighter. The Neumann made my voice a little muddy, but now we're much closer in terms of "quality".
Now can we really say the Senny is twice as good as the Neumann? FOUR times better than the Solaris? Or if you're just starting out do you just boost the volume after the fact with a budget mic?
Thin voice? Movie trailer voice? No one mic is going to be the best. Matching a mic to a voice is as personal as the right pair of shoes/jeans/etc. Dumping a ton of cash on a "good" mic is kind of useless unless you've got the time, money, know-how, and effort to put into the surrounding kit as well.
Let me know what you think! Comments always appreciated!
Hopefully I'll be able to do more of these as time goes on.
At work we recently worked on a promo job where the budget was so low, that to pay for union talent they had to be able to record themselves, and send the audio back as quickly as possible. They didn't care about whisper rooms or ISDN, just a decent clean recording and a good performance. The job would've covered 30+ national promos.
Not a bad incentive to invest in some recording equipment!
My favorite setup to recommend is an external soundcard and condenser microphone. For newbies I tend to start low, say a USB MobilePre and MXL 770 (I can't say I'm a big fan of USB mics, as they don't give you anywhere to go, say you want to upgrade the mic or soundcard, you're starting from scratch all over again, not to mention adding a mixer, preamps, or monitors). Good flexibility, good sound, and all starting at under $300 (including stands and cables).
So, why not use a more expensive mic?
I get this question quite a bit. Every VO actor seems to have dreams of recording at home on a U87 or some vintage ribbon mic, and expensive mics are great, but an expensive mic wont make something sound "good-er". You get an expensive mic because it has a particular character that you are wanting to use. Personally I prefer the sound of an AKG 414 to the U87 FOR MOST PEOPLE. This is of course totally subjective as no one's really going to sound "bad" on either of these, but the Neumann will run you two to three times as much. Will you sound two to three times better?
AKG C 414 B-XL II Condenser Microphone
It's all about bang for buck. For a newbie at recording, who wont understand about monitors, mixing, preamps (where mics really start to shine), and sound proofing/isolation it makes little sense to spend more than a couple hundred bucks to start experimenting. This kit can get really expensive really fast.
So all that being said, I've setup a little experiment. I've taken 3 of my favorite mics (and one beater) set them up under the same conditions, and two at a time, recorded the same piece of text (the first paragraph of 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas, one of my favorite plays). All mics were connected directly to my Firewire 4-10, with gain set at half for each. Mic diaphragms were set approximately 10 inches from my face. After recording I punched each track through Sound Forge 9 and boosted the volume about 300% (exactly the same for each), then mixed each down to an mp3 @ 320kbps.
The mics we'll be hearing are:
*The M-Audio Aries @ $120 - Hand held condenser mic I got for free with my soundcard.
*The M-Audio Solaris @ $300 - This was the first multi-pattern condenser I've ever purchased, and it's served me very well for years.
*The Neumann KM184 @ $700 - I inherited this mic, before I was serious about recording, from an internet news "broadcast" station I worked at briefly in college. None of us knew about phantom power, so this mic "never worked". Years later I figured it out, and this has been a great utility and over head mic.
* The Sennheiser MKH 416 @ $1400 - This is THE L.A. mic. Originally used for outdoor broadcast, it also found a home in studios thanks in part to it's laser like focus.
With introductions out of the way, let's take a listen! While listening try to keep your headphones or speakers set to the same level. Each clip is about 40 seconds long.
M-Audio Aries:
M-Audio Solaris:
Neumann KM184:
Sennheiser MKH 416:
Wow! The Aries sounds not great at all! To be fair it is meant to replace dynamic mics like the sm57 (which I originally planned on using but sounded even worse), and even though it's phantom powered, the Aries really is meant to be passed through a preamp just like the Dynamic mics it competes against.
The Senny 416 sounds great. This thing is meant to be attached to video equipment or thrown on a boom, run off batteries, and get ONE person's voice even in noisy environments. Little wonder it handily beats the living crap out of the budget "studio" mics, and at twice the price of the Neumann, it had better.
But here's where a little know-how comes in. What if we normalized the volume of the Neumann and the Solaris to match the volume of the 416? Would the Senny still sound that much better?
Let's see!
Solaris NORMALIZED:
Neumann NORMALIZED:
OK! That's much better. The Solaris comes in a little brighter. The Neumann made my voice a little muddy, but now we're much closer in terms of "quality".
Now can we really say the Senny is twice as good as the Neumann? FOUR times better than the Solaris? Or if you're just starting out do you just boost the volume after the fact with a budget mic?
Thin voice? Movie trailer voice? No one mic is going to be the best. Matching a mic to a voice is as personal as the right pair of shoes/jeans/etc. Dumping a ton of cash on a "good" mic is kind of useless unless you've got the time, money, know-how, and effort to put into the surrounding kit as well.
Let me know what you think! Comments always appreciated!
Hopefully I'll be able to do more of these as time goes on.
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