matthew mcglynn

I think I just have a lot more mics than you do. ;-) Add the AKG C1000S to my list. To be fair, I didn't realize how disappointed I was in them until I heard other mics.

It happens to each of us eventually. You've done your research, you've comparison shopped, you finally put your money down on the microphone you've been eyeing for days or weeks or months... only to be completely underwhelmed by it once you plug it in. For me, it was the Electro-Voice 635a http://cdn.recordinghacks.com/images/mics/00368/00368_172.jpg IIRC there had been a glowing review in Tape Op. There was a great quote online from one of my DIY/mic heroes, Scott Dorsey: "You should be ashamed of yourself for not owning any EV 635As. They cost less than SM57s and are just as versatile." The mics were available for cheap on Ebay, so I bought a pair. And... I never really found a use for them. I tried them as room mics, on overheads, as a close snare mic. None of those ever gave me a sound I liked. I still have the pair. I have a soft spot for old dynamic mics. I just wish I had a killer application for them. I'll have to try one again if I ever make that podcast I've been thinking about for 10 years. What's your most disappointing mic? (BTW, I'm not at all suggesting that the 635a is a bad mic... just that I never found a use for it that I loved.)

CAD is a neat company with an interesting history. They used to make their own large-diaphragm capsules in Ohio. Their Equitek circuit is pretty impressive too. Their entry-level mics are less interesting; the GXL series mics that I've seen are just standard China designs. I have not tried the D82, but if that's your first ribbon I can easily imagine that it adds a very different sound to your collection! The KSM8 is a really cool mic, too. I got to see a little bit of the R&D behind that mic. A lot of engineering went into it, and the result is predictably great. That's a mic only Shure could have made.

Mike's answer neatly captures the design philosophy behind non-linear gain controls. The question of why the Clarett has unusably low gain until you're at 80% of the knob's travel range remains open. I would be inclined to share your concern that the preamp is broken. I've used any number of inexpensive preamps/interfaces from M-Audio, Focusrite, Presonus, and Mackie, and for vocal use with mics such as you list, I rarely have to go past 50% gain to get a strong signal. I'm not familiar with the software audio routing config for this device. You might wish to review that to see if there is anything there that could affect gain staging. I scanned the reviews at Amazon and didn't see any mention of the situation you describe. If this unit was supposed to behave that way, I sort of think someone would have mentioned it. If it were mine, I'd look into a return or exchange, or at least get a second unit for comparison. Did you try calling the company's tech support?

That statement is true on its face, but the value of that truth is diminished by the reality of the marketplate: namely that it is pretty difficult to get a truly mediocre preamp these days. IMO, it's not hard at all to get a _mic_ that sounds bad on most sources, which is why I always counsel people to spend more on the transducer than the amp. In contrast, consumer-grade preamps are pretty damn transparent, so long as you don't crank the gain up to 11. Here's a fun thought experiment: If you could have a $500 mic and a $100 preamp, or a $100 mic and a $500 pre, which would you take? I'd take the expensive mic in a heartbeat and not feel like my session was held back. YMMV. (Maybe you own some truly awful cheap pre's that I don't know about...? ;-)

Everything Mike said is true, in my experience. I can add that I've seen mics whose circuits are changed to account for acoustic EQ effects of the grille. Great microphones are truly the result of great design, where the capsule and circuit and enclosure all work together to create the desired sound. My personal sense is that the microphone would have to be as big as a football to give you enough space to have even a miniature version of a quadratic residue diffusor ( ) inside the grille. Sure, you could print something smaller, but would it be effective at a frequency you can actually hear? Regarding the piece hovering over the capsule, I think you'd be better off with a piece of metal mesh, so as to minimize the reflection rather than scatter it back into the capsule. That is, let the sound escape rather than trying to control how it bounces. Al those reasons explain why I have not already done the very experiment you propose. I've considered it. We've sketched capsule mounts with grooves in them. We've covered the deck plate with various foam layers and arbitrarily sized chunks. We haven't found anything that is both practical to make, and effective. There are other factors that are easier to control that often have a bigger effect. YMMV, though, so if you get some results, please share. On a related note, I hired a drywall guy a couple years ago when I was building my studio. He told me that a former client had asked him to put a really thick coating of mud on the walls, with a lot of variation in depth, in order to act like a full room-sized diffusor. It seemed like a really cool idea. But in practice, drywall mud that varies in depth more than about 1/4'' is going to look awful, be a nightmare to paint and to keep clean, and possibly won't be structurally sound (e.g. big chunks might cleave off if you knock into the wall). And its effective diffusion frequency is about 28kHz -- quite a bit higher than useful.

Mike, I think we're all there already. Thanks for that vision. Beats the heck out of imagining some sweaty drummer's chest. (The waitress option wins points for being miked in stereo, too.

The first time I saw PZMs in use, they were taped to Manhasset music stands, one mic per stand, being used as drum "overheads" at 10:00 and 2:00 around a drum kit. Kind of a cool idea. I didn't get to hear them, but I believe they were used on the record. I've tried taping them to a 10' wide glass mirror in the room adjacent to a home studio. I think that mic mic mostly heard the rattling of toiletries rather than the drums in the next room. I've tried taping a PZM to a long wooden board in an effort to extend its LF response within a drum room. I didn't use that track either. Where do you put your PZM mics? http://cdn.recordinghacks.com/images/mpn/201909/pzm2.jpg

... which is why I'm always astounded that some people want to hear audio samples before they buy a mic... as if anything I record would be predictive of someone else's results with a different signal chain, different artists, different room acoustics, etc. But I guess that is a question for another thread. One thing worth noting about Mark's experience is that some of the tonal difference could be attributed to capsule variation. I do not have insider information on Rode's tolerances or QC processes, but I would not be surprised if any two HF2 capsules different by a couple dB at any given point in the frequency response. That is in no way a criticism of Rode. Just as an example, the Neumann U87 costs $3200, yet IIRC allows for a 4dB variance on a frequency sweep -- that is, plus or minus 2dB from the target curve. That's just the nature of capsule manufacturing. Anyway, Mark, thanks for sharing your insights, and for listening closely to the mics you have available!

One more thoughts about custom-fit earplugs: If you open your mouth (to breathe, talk, or sing), the shape of your ear canal changes subtly, and you'll feel the fit of the earplug changing. Maybe you'd get used to that. I never did.

I'm sure that's true for many people, but my question wasn't about marketing. It was about the actual sound of tube mics. Presumably there are some people here who, in their minds, associate certain sonic characteristics with tube mics -- whether that's right or wrong or accurate or not from a circuit design perspective.

Why do people love tube mics? What is that special "tube sound" ? I'm taking a poll. I'd love to collect opinions from people with engineering experience. WHat do you hear when you plug in a tube mic that you typically don't hear from a solid-state mic? Options include, but are not limited to: - harmonic content or "richness"? - softened transients? - rolled-off top end? Penalties apply for anybody who says tube mics sound "warm," because until someone designs a device that measures the sonic temperature of a signal, that word has no meaning. :-) By the way, I'm not implying that solid-state mics can't have softened transients or a smooth top end or rich even-order harmonics, because clearly they can. But there are generalizations to be made, and I think most people do have a baseline impression/expectation of what tube mics ought to sound like. That's what I'm interested in hearing from you.

I would try the triple-flanged "HEAROS High Fidelity Musician Ear Plugs" first. They cost about $10. I bet they're plenty quiet enough for your rehearsals (and if not, tell the guitarists to turn down! I used to use custom-fit earplugs with removable filters. I found that they were so quiet that I felt removed from the music. It was hard for me to feel the energy of the band, because the band sounded two-dimensional, far away, and lifeless. Playing drums has always been really visceral to me. The custom fit earplugs killed that feeling. YMMV. BTW, I've also tried the electronic ones that run a limiter on ambient sound over a certain SPL. The idea of those was that they attenuate more during the song, but let you converse in normal voices between songs -- without removing the earplugs. Those were not comfortable enough to talk with them in, and they distorted really badly every time I hit my snare drum. So much for high-tech DSP. The huge attenuation numbers look good on paper but might be too much of a good thing. Those Hearos are my daily driver now.

Mike, don't stop at the still image. It's worth watching. I've seen it several times. It's gloriously bad in so many ways that it transcends its demo-video intent and becomes surreal entertainment.

This reminds me of when the video of then-12-year-old Tony Royster Jr circulated the web in 2004 or whenever it was. It wasn't self-promotion; he was so mind-blowingly great that he was on TV. I think this is the video. (The original is low quality, probably a VHS transfer!) This is simultaneously inspirational and depressing as hell. ;-) [video:youtube]