10 Responses to “Shootout at Legacy Recording”

1. Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum Says:
   February 26th, 2009 at 4:50 am

   Slau:
   What a great podcast idea! Incredibly valuable information there!
   I was wondering what you think of the EV RE20 as an announcer or voiceover mic?
   I also bugged you on twitter about all this, just thought I’d catch you either here or there…
   I’m also expecting to receive an Alesis ProTrack:
   http://www.alesis.com/protrack
   ,,, any day now and was wondering what your take on portable recorders is.
   Thanks 10^6!
   Rich

2. Slau Says:
   February 26th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

   Hey Rich,

   Glad to know that I’ve provided food, err… audio for thought. I’ve used the RE-20 for recording upright acoustic bass where it has gotten a special reputation. I thought it sounded nice but I’ve shot it out against a Heil PR40 and I thought the Heil sounded better. BTW, that shootout was featured on PSN (I believe it was episode 58).

   As far as portable recorders go, I think they’re great as long as you’re using external converters. Thing is, for most applications, even the on-board converters are at least decent. It depends on what you’re recording. If you’re doing a serious acoustic source like a classical ensemble, well, maybe it’s worth putting it through something like an Apogee AD16X, especially if it’s going to be released and distributed. You’d probably want to go with the highest quality you can get for something like that. As far as the little 2 and 4-track portable recorders go, I love ‘em. I’ve used an Edirol R-09 since they first came out. Still kicking.

3. David P. Says:
   February 26th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

   I was worried that you might have stopped producing podcasts, but you had to do a lot of work testing all those microphones. I could definitely hear the difference between the best and worst, but it’s sure hard to tell much difference between some of them unless one has golden ears.

   Since each microphone has different frequency response profiles, which makes them “brighter” or “warmer”, what is your opinion about tweaking the response with equalization? Obviously, a crappy microphone with poor response probably can’t be salvaged with equalization; but can a reasonably good quality mic be tweaked to sound similar to a more expensive mic?

4. Slau Says:
   February 26th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

   Hey David,

   The differences are even harder to hear in an mp3 format, of course. Unfortunately, the innertube’s bandwidth for most people isn’t up to WAV files yet but… some day.

   Regarding EQ on mics, of course, to a degree, it’s possible to boost and cut a little here and there to brighten up a dull mic and tame a shrill mic. I’m always a fan of changing mics or at least changing the mic position rather than reaching for the EQ knob unless, of course, we’re just talking about adding a little sparkle to a ribbon mic or something. Most of today’s condensers sound pretty good on most sources. It’s amazing what you can do with just a couple of mid-priced offerings

5. Chris Harrington Says:
   February 27th, 2009 at 4:28 am

   Nice work Keep them coming! Just out of curiosity, is there any way you can do a podcast explaining how a studio “Works?” meaning how it’s laid out, what equipment does what, things like that? I’m very new at this kind of thing, (Although I’ve been playing music for a long time,) and would appreciate some “help” in this field.
   Thanks!

6. Slau Says:
   February 27th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

   Hey Chris,

   Thanks for the message. I’m still trying to find a balance between being too basic and getting ahead of people. There are a couple of excellent podcasts like Inside Home Recording:
   http://www.insidehomerecording.com and
   Sine Language:
   http://www.audio2u.com
   that address subjects for people setting up home studios, understanding signal flow, etc. Check ‘em out. They also take listener questions and answer them on their respective shows.

   THTH

7. SWB Says:
   March 23rd, 2009 at 4:16 am

   I think all this proves is that a) there is no arguing for taste, b) MP3′s suck and c) it matters what output device (speakers, headphones, etc) you couple the input device (microphone) to.

   I am not convinced that any of the 11 microphones tested sound any better than a 200 (or so) dollar Shure or even an MXL 990 (90 bucks, roughly). It seems to tell me that you can get a decent sounding recording out of a 200 mic and have close to the same results with a 10K mic. You are going to have different results using different recording equipment and that was not taken into consideration. A 50 dollar mic might sound great on a 100K recording console while a 100K mic may sound like crap on a 50 dollar MP3 recorder…

8. Slau Says:
   March 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm

   Thanks for the comment, SWB. Yeah, the point of the episode was to illustrate that, all things being equal, a really expensive mic doesn’t necessarily sound all that much better than an affordable mic. Naturally, other links in the chain will influence the sound but, as is usually the case in a shootout, variables are kept to an absolute minimum. Thus, the same exact mic pre and monitoring equipment are used. Of course, the other variable not mentioned here is the obvious, “your mileage may vary” depending upon your knowloedge and experience. As I believe I mentioned in the podcast, one needs to know what they’re doing in order to make any microphone sound good.

   Although I understand what you’re saying about cheap mics sounding good through great gear and great mics sounding crappy through crappy gear, I don’t agree with what you seem to be implying. mp3 is quite a popular delivery format these days and things sometimes sound pretty bad when compressed to one-tenth the original file size but does that mean we shouldn’t use great gear because it’ll sound bad anyway? I think not and I think you’d agree that we all try to get the best out of what we have.

   I enjoy doing shootouts like this because, when they are truly double-blind tests, they reveal things that we normally don’t consider when we know what we’re listening to. It is really too bad that you’re not hearing the stuff in a full 24-bit environment when you hear the podcast. Bandwidth still prevents me from providing that. However, no matter what the resolution, whatever you hear from any podcast or studio will never sound like the results you might achieve in your own studio — different pres, different room, different source, not to mention different person making the mic placement choices. My goal was only to provide a bit of perspective to some folks that might otherwise have never held a U47 or a C-800G and offer at least some point of reference.

   Again, thanks for the comment, I really do appreciate the feedback and I hope you find something that might interest you in the future.

   Cheers!

9. Sydney Says:
   April 22nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm

   Does anyone else hear a strange resonant freq. on the Apex samples? Something like a dog whistle whenever that mic is featured?

10. The Big List of Microphone Shootouts Says:
    March 11th, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    [...] Sessions With Slau | Vocal Mic Shootout @ Legacy Recording [...]

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