RE-20 - Male live vocal mic!

[M4-10]

Ever wonder why you can never understand vocals at live shows? Well it's probably related to ridiculous stage and FOH volume, bad rooms, and kick-centred mixing.

But I also have to put the blame on the proximity effect and low-mids on the vocal channel. Directional microphones are a necessity of live music, as is getting far more intimate with the mic than would ever be required in the studio. Which means we get unintelligible sludge when a male vocalist is singing in the mid or low end of his range.

Having identified the problem, my brain pointed me to what might be considered the world's greatest dynamic microphone if it weren't for the holy SM7B. That's right: the RE-20. Due to advanced scientry, it has no proximity effect! And it has a high pass filter!

More testing is required, but I just did a show last night and all signs point to yes. Whereas the mid-band EQ on my mixer's vocal channels almost always live with a cut as low as it will go, last night I left the EQ flat (except for the 80 Hz HPF). Intelligible vocals! Good sound!

Hopefully I will follow up with more experiences. If you have an RE-20 in the studio, take it out for dinner and a show!

[hbphotoav]

... and it's oh, so attractive. I can almost imagine Roger Daltrey swinging one on the mic cord.

Then again... maybe I can't... and if he did, he'd probably develop tendonitis and a hernia.

Sometimes "looks" and "cool" and "Bono doesn't use one of those" mean more in a live show to the artiste than great sound without EQ means to us sound dudes.

And then there's the fact that you can buy approximately 4.3 new SM58s for the cost of one RE-20...