In search of a studio mic that doesn't capture the sound of the room

[dimme3]

I'm in search for a condenser mic to record hiphop (in your face) vocals.
but my room has bad acoustics, so i need a mic that doesn't capture my room sound too much (i hate the reverb sound of my room).
Is it best to go with a dynamic mic or condenser (if yes, which one?)
or i read about the AT2020 that it might by good to record vocals in close proximity?

Does someone have any suggestions?

thank you

[drmmrboy]

Any good mic that you like, and a couple of packing blankets.

Build yourself a box or tent. If you don't like that, try hanging the blankets in a corner. Have the vocalist's back to the corner facing out.

[Ethan Winer]

> i need a mic that doesn't capture my room sound too much <

You'll do a lot better treating a small area of your room to get rid of the echoes and ambience. Even a couple of moving blankets hanging on the walls will help, and for less money than a new microphone. If you're really serious about getting a good clean vocal sound, consider proper acoustic panels. The photo below shows one solution.

--Ethan

[DeepSpace]

As regards the mic selection, one thing to consider would be using a cardoid or hypercardoid design. That will reduce the off-axis sensitivity and cut down on room sound.

The other thing as part of that would be to have the mic as close to the performer as possible. This makes the direct sound of the performer louder (more prominent) than the room sound.

A condenser which offers cardoid response (eg KM184/KM185 or U87 etc) would be fine for this purpose, but you'll need a good pop filter to get in close.

[dimme3]

would this help alot ? --> http://www.seelectronics.com/images/RF_Pop_Up5.jpg

cheers

[drmmrboy]

Originally Posted by dimme3

would this help alot ? --> http://www.seelectronics.com/images/RF_Pop_Up5.jpg

cheers

That may help, but a lot of the reflections getting into the mic are (usually) going to be coming from behind the singer..





In Ethan's picture, if I really wanted to kill the reflections, I would pull the mic out a hair, and have the vocalist stand between the mic and the panels, facing out of the corner toward the camera.

[tomdarude]

...and again..


try a Shure SM-7 ...maybe even handheld!

great for agressive rock or hiphop vocals...put up some additional blankets

sometimes a good dynamic mic & a decent pre are the better solution for recording vox at home!

cheers tom

[anahata]

I got my first EV RE20 recently, and it's remarkably un-poppable right up against the mouth so that's one approach that leaves the room sound too far down in level to matter.

Another approach is to use a hypercardioid so the mic's less sensitive to room sound, but then you have to have it a bit further away as hypers have lots of proximity effect and are likely to be more pop sensitive.

Really, Ethan's right, of course. Do something about the room. For vocals only you don't need expensive bass trapping, just hang some thick cloth around the place and experiment with positions (of absorbers, mic and vocalist) for best results.

[dimme3]

i second this.. I'm gonna check out this mic.
This mic doesn't capture the room ambience eh?
Or would the Shure SM57 be better?


thanks

Originally Posted by tomdarude

...and again..


try a Shure SM-7 ...maybe even handheld!

great for agressive rock or hiphop vocals...put up some additional blankets

sometimes a good dynamic mic & a decent pre are the better solution for recording vox at home!

cheers tom

[Grasshopper]

just got an sm7 yesterday. wayyyy less room sound than my Neumann. wayyy better frequency response and not near as much proximity effect when compared with a 57/58. love it. for the kind of work I do (mostly heavy rock) I should have picked this up a long time ago... I have a feeling that my M147 will be out of work soon. I need to check out the RE-20. thanks slutz!

[tINY]

If you are dead set on solving a room problem by buying an expensive mic (instead of spending $50-300 on acoustic treatment), then maybe you should look into the RE20 and put it up really close or getting a shotgun mic and using it about 2 feet away......

Studio mics usually pick up a good amount of the studio acoustics because they are ment to be used in a studio - where the acoustics are good.



-tINY

[phelbin]

I've done a lot of hip hop vocals using an SM7. It doesn't work for everyone's voice, but it really shines for most. It sounds best a few inches away, and you have to have a good preamp with a lot of headroom...it takes a lot of gain. But overall, it's a great mic for hip-hop vocals, rock vocals, spoken word, electric guitar, and some around here even use it on snare.

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Originally Posted by tINY

If you are dead set on solving a room problem by buying an expensive mic (instead of spending $50-300 on acoustic treatment), then maybe you should look into the RE20 and put it up really close or getting a shotgun mic and using it about 2 feet away......

Studio mics usually pick up a good amount of the studio acoustics because they are ment to be used in a studio - where the acoustics are good.



-tINY

I'm surprised to see this shotgun recommendation because I understand that they roll off low end/focus on high end. Has anyone on this forum ever used a shotgun on vox and had good results? Just asking for acedemic purposes...

[dimme3]

Originally Posted by phelbin

I've done a lot of hip hop vocals using an SM7. It doesn't work for everyone's voice, but it really shines for most. It sounds best a few inches away, and you have to have a good preamp with a lot of headroom...it takes a lot of gain. But overall, it's a great mic for hip-hop vocals, rock vocals, spoken word, electric guitar, and some around here even use it on snare.

I have a MOTU 828 MKII, will those preamps be good enough for the SM7?

[Glenn Kuras]

I agree with Ethan that some panels would do you wonders. Sorry I don't have some kind of advertisement to PASTE (ok I am picking on buddy Ethan ha ha ha) to show..

You could DYI some panels with 2 or 4 inch OC 703. The nice thing is you can also use them for other things that you record or better yet use them in your control room when you mix.

Glenn

[username]

Sm7's are nice mics.. word on the street (and I havent the experience to confirm or deny this) seems to be that they're are fairly dependant on having a good preamp to sound great..

one mic I have used alot that is supposed to sound very similar to an sm7 (but be much less pre-amp dependant) is the beyer soundstar mkII. Realy nice mic, especialy for male rock vocals!.. I've used it a couple of times in terrible rooms recording vocals.. and they came out quite well. you can also usualy pick them up realy cheap (when you can track them down)..

RE20 might also be the ticket..
next to no proximity response on these.. so you can basucaly sing touching it (you being closer to the mic increases the direct sound vs rooms sound ratio)

don't neglect your accoustics though.. a few Pannels from GIK or Ethan will go a long way
I'd sujest spending some time over at http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/u...=0;DaysPrune=0
to find out what bad accoustics are.. what good accoustics are.. and how to cheaply get there from where you are now


or you could put some details of your room up (a drawing I suppose :p)and we could sujest the best way to impove it or possibly even the best place in the room to do it in or something..

[dimme3]

Originally Posted by username

Sm7's are nice mics.. word on the street (and I havent the experience to confirm or deny this) seems to be that they're are fairly dependant on having a good preamp to sound great..

one mic I have used alot that is supposed to sound very similar to an sm7 (but be much less pre-amp dependant) is the beyer soundstar mkII. Realy nice mic, especialy for male rock vocals!.. I've used it a couple of times in terrible rooms recording vocals.. and they came out quite well. you can also usualy pick them up realy cheap (when you can track them down)..

RE20 might also be the ticket..
next to no proximity response on these.. so you can basucaly sing touching it (you being closer to the mic increases the direct sound vs rooms sound ratio)

don't neglect your accoustics though.. a few Pannels from GIK or Ethan will go a long way
I'd sujest spending some time over at http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/u...=0;DaysPrune=0
to find out what bad accoustics are.. what good accoustics are.. and how to cheaply get there from where you are now


or you could put some details of your room up (a drawing I suppose :p)and we could sujest the best way to impove it or possibly even the best place in the room to do it in or something..

thanks for the reply
Well thing is, in about a year i'm moving to another house (were i'm gonna settle) and then i'm gonna treat my room to the fullest. so in a year or so i'll post a drawing of the room in the hope you guys can help me out with acoustics..e

but at this moment i need a good vocal mic to capture straight in your face vocals and without my ASS sounding room ambience..

I would buy an SM7B with a good preamp..
Or maybe an EV-20... does this one also need lots of gain like the SM7b?

which one will capture most room ambience? SM7B or EV-20 ?

thank you for contributing through my quest for my first mic

[warhead]

Originally Posted by Psyko/Acoustics

Has anyone on this forum ever used a shotgun on vox and had good results? Just asking for acedemic purposes...

Steven Tyler, he's in a band called Aerosmith.

War

[Bob Olhsson]

The Beyer M-88 does an amazing job of ducking room ambiance.

[tINY]

You can sing with your lips touching the RE20 - then it will pick up less room.

The RE20 has a stiffer output than the SM7 - You won't need as much gain on the pre-amp.



-tINY

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Originally Posted by warhead

Steven Tyler, he's in a band called Aerosmith.

War

uhhhh, didn't they cover a song by RUN-DMC?


I once asked someone (who runs a very respectable CDN Remote service) why shotguns aren't used very often for studio work and he told me it's because of their frequency response.

At that time I had some notions of using 'em for distant miking on drums. May still try it someday.

[tgrokz]

about the AT2020, i have it and have done rap like vocals. the vocal track was ment to sound like it would in a rap song. it worked great! its not perfect, but with a little boost in the lower mids , you can get a solid sound. i got it free, and im sooo glad i did. for a $100 condensor, you can not go wrong with this.

[jslevin]

In my experience, a lot of times a cardioid mic will actually create worse room problems than an omni. Cardioid mics almost by definition have variant frequency response from different off-axis points. Many times that means that a funky-sounding room gets even funkier. An omni at least will have more even frequency response, allowing the natural tones of the source and its reflections to find their proper spot.

Another guerilla tactic might be to use a figure-8 pattern, put the singer in the best-sounding part of the room facing the second-best-sounding part of the room. Now you're going to null out a good part of the bad part of the room, but you're still doing to be working with a more even frequency response than with a cardioid.

The bottom-line issue, as others have implied, is that few condensers are going to sound good consistently in an eat-the-mic configuration. I faced this same problem some 10 years ago in my home studio and was steered towards the SM7 and RE20. Not only did they do the trick, but I still have those mics in my full-on commercial studio now, and they've gotten an enormous amount of use over the years.

I haven't had any coffee yet, so the above might be totally wrong.

JSL

[dimme3]

Originally Posted by jslevin

In my experience, a lot of times a cardioid mic will actually create worse room problems than an omni. Cardioid mics almost by definition have variant frequency response from different off-axis points. Many times that means that a funky-sounding room gets even funkier. An omni at least will have more even frequency response, allowing the natural tones of the source and its reflections to find their proper spot.

Another guerilla tactic might be to use a figure-8 pattern, put the singer in the best-sounding part of the room facing the second-best-sounding part of the room. Now you're going to null out a good part of the bad part of the room, but you're still doing to be working with a more even frequency response than with a cardioid.

The bottom-line issue, as others have implied, is that few condensers are going to sound good consistently in an eat-the-mic configuration. I faced this same problem some 10 years ago in my home studio and was steered towards the SM7 and RE20. Not only did they do the trick, but I still have those mics in my full-on commercial studio now, and they've gotten an enormous amount of use over the years.

I haven't had any coffee yet, so the above might be totally wrong.

JSL

Ok, so The SM7 & RE20 did the trick for you? BUT
you just say cardiod mics make room problems worse? (and sm7 & RE20 is cardiod)

i'm confused

[tINY]

When he gets his cup of joe down, he will realize that the frequency skewed off axis response will also be attenuated.

But, a bad room is a bad room and you will still have issues. No matter what you do. But, at least with the RE20 you can get right up to it. That will make the room effectively quieter in the recording.

...Or you could just get a few acoustic panels that you can take down and use again in your new digs.....



-tINY

[jslevin]

Originally Posted by dimme3

Ok, so The SM7 & RE20 did the trick for you? BUT
you just say cardiod mics make room problems worse? (and sm7 & RE20 is cardiod)

I wouldn't say they make things worse, I'd say that they don't necessarily help you deal with the situation. Your first instinct might be that the more directional a mic is, the less the room is an issue. Because of off-axis response problems, however, that isn't necessarily the case.

That said, as tINY writes, you can get right up in the face of a dynamic, and specifically in an SM7 and especially the RE20, so from a pure signal-to-funky-room-ratio standpoint the problem is reduced. The vast majority of dynamic mics are cardioid.

tINY, I didn't quite understand what you meant, but I'll expand on the figure-8 part of my comments. Because polar patterns are always represented as flat drawings on a piece of paper (or an icon on a mic), it's easy to forget that they are three-dimensional, not planar.

It's helpful to try to visualize the three-dimensional pattern, and also to think of each pattern in terms of what it's rejecting (the nulls) rather than what it's capturing. To give the simplistic version, a cardioid mic has only one null area, directly to the rear of the mic. That means it is picking up substantial signal not just in front, but also on each side, and ALSO on the top and bottom.

Contrast this with the figure-8, which has sort of a donut-shaped null ringed vertically all around the microphone -- left and right and ALSO top and bottom. In the three dimensions, the figure-8 pickup pattern is rather like two ballons facing opposite directions. This is in contrast to cardioid, which does not reject side-facing sources yet is likely to color their sound with uneven response.

If you can visualize the patterns in three dimensions, it should start to become obvious that figure-8 is likelier to do a better job of funky-room rejection than the cardioid -- in addition to tending to have a flatter off-axis frequency response in general.

So to get back to the original question, while I think the SM7 and RE20 will be easier for you to deal with in your situation, if you wanted to stick with a condenser, you might find it instructive to experiment with a figure-8 mic. A used AT4050 would be a great place to start.

JSL

[DeeDrive]

FIX YOUR ROOM!! Don't even waste time trying to band-aid the situation by using workarounds. You might get slightly better sounds by getting new mics or trying new placements or whatever, but there is a much easier solution.

Find a supplier that sells Owens Corning 703, buy 5 2x4' 2" thick panels, cover them in fabric and hang them around your room where you'll be recording vocals. These panels cost about $10 each, and they will make a WORLD of difference. I can't even begin to explain how much better your recordings will be just by doing this simple SIMPLE thing.

After you hear the difference, you might not even care about getting a new mic.

[Reza]

I was in exactly the same situation. Here's one path you could go down:

1) Send your Motu MkII to Black Lion Audio. They upgrade your converters, your clock and your pres - this will vastly improve you front end.

2) Buy an SM7B. Being a dynamic mic it takes the room out of the equation. It's a great option for the vocals you described!!! A nice preamp is key, but the upgraded MOTU pre's can get you through while you save for something high-end.

3) Although the SM7B takes the room out of tracking vocals, some acoustic treatment is still vital in getting good results - because it determines what you hear back and how well you can mix your tracks. As others have suggested, the DIY approach is the way to go. Just do searches for all the info. This can be done really cheaply.

4) I'm not sure what studio monitors (speakers) you're running, but if they're sub-paar this should be high on your priority list.

So - get your Motu upgraded and buy an SM7B. Do a cheap DIY acoustic treatment workover on your room. Then save for a good pair of studio monitors and then for a high-end preamp. Another thing you'd want outboard for your vocal chain is a compressor. The RNC is a great option - or you could buy a 3630 and get the Black Lion Audio mod for it while you get your Motu done. (don't even consider a 3630 without this mod though).

Anyway, there's a million options, but the above rant makes sense to me.

Cheers - Rez

[jslevin]

Heh-Heh-Heh ...

"I'm having trouble mic'ing things in my bad-sounding room."

"Have you tried upgrading your converters?"

Only on GearSlutz ...

DeeDrive has offered the best advice so far. God forbid anyone should actually learn something about acoustics or how to use a microphone properly. No, just buy the latest magic box and sprinkle some fairy dust around.

JSL

[norton]

Ethan's right, as usual... You need something to stop the first reflections if you want to get the "room" out of your recordings.

We've got something that we think is pretty cool. It tests out well, is affordable and super flexible. www.modtrap.com

But an SM7 is pretty damn awesome too. Hope you find what you're looking for.

zack