General Microphones Thread

Inspired by @bixby's profile post ranting about how lots of YouTubers seem to EQ their videos to be bombastically bassy (though I've been meaning to make this thread for a while).

Some time last year I made a decision to take improving my vocals a bit more seriously. I'm still far from being able to perform live without making a complete butt of myself, but honestly the work of practising voices and breath control and adding subtle "colours" to my singing's been fun even though I'm a LONG ways off from being where I want to.

That said, I've actually gotten into microphones lately, and while I was and remain greatly ignorant overall, a lot on what I've learned on SBAF's translated fairly well to this end of the audio chain. It makes sense really; headphones and microphones are the same thing at their core, just optimised in different ways.

I started out with an Audio Technica ATR2500 that I got for very cheap off a friend before moving on to a Rode PodMic and an Arturia Minifuse 2 interface (fun thing, I didn't actually use my own money for those since my dad was also wanting to start recording his singing-- I just borrowed both indefinitely, hah) because I figured that a dynamic mic would make more sense for my recording space, which is in essence largely untreated and stuck in the middle of a fairly raucous suburb.

The Rode mic was amazingly coloured, but in a way that worked for me IMO, only it sucked for singing-- something about how the diaphragm acted on sustained notes made it a nonstarter. I eventually pinched pennies and sold off some stuff I wasn't using to get an sE V7, which is a relatively new, very well-regarded handheld dynamic mic that leans neutral with a bit of extra air. An SM58 would have been easier to source, but I'd gotten to try one before and it was a bit too muddy for me, and I just think the V7 resolves a lot more information.

I've been meaning to maybe share my impressions of the mic in more detail, though that may be useless since I fully lack context relative to many others. That said, I figured since content's a bit slow lately maybe we could all start talking microphones for vocals or instruments, share some tips and tricks? I've got popcorn ready for when @Psalmanazar goes off at me for not having a dedicated pre to use with my mic (sarcasm).

Bit of shameless self-promotion, here's a thing I did with the abovementioned sE V7 mic using Audacity and some free plugins. Video editing was by a friend, original comic was by a random internet person whose work I like:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cun28VmAUGI/

 

The apogee dsp mic seems pretty good.
I haven’t tried it but solving many problems in one package seems great. I am still searching for a preamp for my mic.

but I am pretty interested in some flavors like the griffon microphones. Like the fuzz or germanium.

 

Rode mics suck.

SE is Chinese shit but we’ll refrain from too much hate speech that since there are a few decent Chinese mics; they’re just not mass produced and well marketed. You will not find them on AliExpress. SE are obviously run by people who worked for a western company or hired a marketing agency. The best Chinese mics are handmade by Chinese boomers who have 1995 era web pages and don’t have close to modern western mic noise specs and headroom despite sounding quite good so in the real world, I can’t recommend anyone buy them except for spoken word audio and no I will not tell you what they are so you can spam them to a million wannabe anime voice actors.

The SE have obvious low end distortion common to Chinese mics and etched top. That’s not helping the mouth noises being picked up either. Your setup has a lot of noise too so you voice sounds like it’s coming off a tape, is picking up a very noise hvac system, your interface is a noisy piece of shit, or however you processed your voice is distorted. Nobody cares about any extra detail it picks up because they either don’t want it or a bad mic makes that detail sound like shit.

The Shure SM 57 and 58 are drab sounding but lack that distortion. They have distortion though from the crappy transformers in them. That’s why Steve Albini says the Beyerdynamic M201 is the SM57 if it was a real mic but the Beyer is three times the price.

The muddiness is from the proximity effect. If you don’t want muddy vocals from the proximity effect on a cardioid pickup pattern mic, improve your room and get an Omni pattern mic. Electrovoice make omni pattern dynamic microphones like the RE20. You can always get an omni condenser too but you will have to pay almost 1000 usd for a good multipattern LDC.

 

Hah, there's an industry pro in the one mics Discord I hang out at nowadays who's been saying how the Rode NT1 has so much variability that it's nowhere near being deploying at scale. The new version sounds terrible to me too, but hey it's more expensive so must be good, eh?

For a time when finances allow I'm actually considering eventually getting an RE20 (and not just because I'm a Kurt Cobain fan, lmao). The Variable-D technology is a curious thing to me, and it could be something fun to experiment with those vented shafts.

Yeah I kinda got that impression from sE mics, especially with how it resolves upper midrange information (I don't know why more people don't point that out in reviews, near everyone just calls the V7 "neutral"), but for the price point it's honestly shockingly good to me. Also no worries, I'd likewise hate for a hidden gem to go mainstream and possibly be compromised in quality.

I was about to bring the M201TG up! That one does seem to have great control throughout based on samples I've heard (never gotten my face next to one before), though yeah the fact that it's much more expensive than the Shure mics makes it somewhat of a nonstarter. Speaking of, have you tried that mod where you get rid of the transformer in the SM57/58? Not sure I have enough context to glean necessary information from others who've talked about it online.

Large dynamic condensers like the K47 capsule that I recall @Soliloqueen was developing (and is currently selling I believe? Hope it's going well!) do have that "classic" sound that I can see lots of people chasing, but seems to me that small diaphragms do tend to be more useful for when you want "accuracy"? Guess that explains measurement mics.

 

Don’t trust things you read on the internet. Use your ears. That SE might be cool on like… a snare if it doesn’t overload but on vocals? It might need a lot of limiting and de-essing. Limiting can cause noticeable distortion on male voices because the time constants of the gain modulation to catch high frequency events are usually faster than the low frequency parts of the waveform and the most common analog (1176 variants along with broadcast and speaker processors) and digital (Waves, Fabfilter etc) limiters are very distorted. Heavy de-essing can easily make sibilants into a lisp or a voice very dull no matter what you use to do it.

If you want a classic sound, Sennheiser has fixed the Neumann U87ai internal amp to be more like the original. There’s also the cheaper Austrian Audio OC818 which is a successor to the AKG C414. The TLMs except for the expensive TLM 170 are a bad joke and even TLM 70 has been made worse. There’s also Gefell and Beyerdynamic LDCs but they are much harder to find. Both Neumann and AKG stye classic LDC sounds are tuned for studio environments and to be processed extensively. No clone mics are comparable for detail, headroom, and capsule quality! You could say almost that modern Harman AKG with production moved away from Austria I a clone because Austrian Audio were former AKG employees. Do not believe what you read online. Neumann and AKG LDCs not perfectly neutral and the modern ones are brighter than the older ones, where the brightness could be more appreciated to tape instead of digital but the brightness still helps them survive necessary processing that can reduce clarity without high frequency shelf boosts that can frequently bring out or make obvious previously unheard artifacts and thus require more processing.

 

I'd like to buy a single mic that would be good for both a guitar cab and an acoustic guitar, and occasionally vocals, but they will never be the focus. This is for amateur recording of my own multitrack projects, mostly for my own enjoyment, but I'd still like it to sound nice. Budget is $750ish used is fine, cheaper is better if it still sounds good. I imagine you get what you pay for, but I don't really know where the price brackets are for mics. I've spent hundreds of hours playing in pro studios, though mostly not guitar, and somehow I can't manage to remember the name of a single mic that I liked. Any help/suggestions are appreciated.

 

Used Sennheiser MD 441 U is a good candidate.
MD 431, less money, uses the same capsule but polar pattern is somewhat different as is internal shock mount. While touted as a vocal mic it also sounds good on instruments and cabinets.
MD 421 is a standard for cabinets and drums. I've never used it on acoustic guitar.