Topic: Another "which mics for me" thread (sorry)

[themicah]

And now for the follow-up from my virginal posting, the similarly titled Another "which hd recorder" thread (sorry)...

As I said in the previous thread, my wife is a (mostly classical) singer.  After a fair amount of research on these boards, we went ahead and picked up a refurbished iRiver iHP-120 off eBay (couldn't find a 140) a couple months ago, and she's been very happy with it.  It's lightyears beyond her old handheld cassette recorder, and the cheap little external mic it came with is shockingly decent (er, not terrible?) for both her vocal rehearsals and for a few recitals we've recorded by simply turning the thing on somewhere in the room and hitting "record."  Like someone said in the other thread, the built-in mic on the iRiver is all but useless, but last night I recorded a choral concert with the external mic, and it wasn't bad at all. 

That said, I know we can do MUCH much better than the $2 plastic mic the thing came with.  So it's upgrade time.

I've poked through a bunch of the threads here, and read a lot elsewhere, and I think these are our parameters:

• Budget ~$100-200 with some upward flexibility if necessary
• Can't be too big (we live in a small apartment in Manhattan, and don't have much storage space)
• Main applications:
  
  • Vocal and choral concerts and recitals
    
    • Often in very acoustically "wet" rooms like synagogue sanctuaries and churches
    • Often a cappella
    • Sometimes accompanied by piano or organ, sometimes other acoustic instruments
      
  • Quiet at-home recordings for rehearsal and teaching purposes
  • Maybe the occasional club performance of a friend's rock band

First off, I'm very torn between omnis and cards.  At first I thought the ambience omnis provide might be really nice (especially after reading this article).   But given that the music we plan to record is often quiet relative to the whispering and page-turning of the crowd, and in echo-prone spaces, I'm starting to think directional mics (maybe "wide" cardiods?) might make more sense.  I like the idea of the Studio Projects C4s with their changeable capsules so I could experiment, but I'm afraid they might be a bit big for what we actually want (and they're a bit out of our price range, especially when we start to add mic stands and other accessories to the mix).

So what do y'all think?  For our purposes, do we go cardiod or omni?

So the mic lines I'm most interested in are:

• Audio Technica AT822
  
  • The big advantage here seems to be simplicity.  We'd have one mic with internal battery power, and the switchable bass roll-off seems like a very nice feature.
  • My concerns are that this one might be a challenge to use in situations where a stand is impractical.  How big is this thing anyway?  I also wonder about the "warmth" of the sound.
• Audio Technica Pro 24
  
  • The big advantage here seems to be price and size.  It looks like it would be fine for at-home solo vocal recording.  But how good would this be for ambient recordings in choral concert situations?  Also, would we need external power, or is the iRiver capable of accepting it directly?
• Giant Squid (either omnis or cards)
  
  • I love how small and how cheap these are, and how you can get them with battery boxes.
    
  • My concern is that the fidelity would be mediocre, and that I am forced to choose "locked in" sensitivity and bass roll-off.  In our case we'd probably go with regular high sensitivity and flat response, but that might not work so great for recording rock shows, right?
• Core Sound (low-end omnis or cards, possibly the mid-range ones)
  
  • The review I linked above makes these sound really good.  But they made the mid-priced ones sound much better than the "low-cost" models, and the mid-priced ones are considerably more expensive than the low-cost models.
• Sounds Professionals (so many choices here...)
  
  • Not really sure where to start.  They sell so many different kinds of mics that I'm afraid some of them are probably crap and don't really know which would work best for us

So, now that I've bullet pointed y'all to death, any thoughts?  I've been very impressed with the level of knowledge on this site, and would definitely appreciate any opinions.

[RebelRebel]

I record classical and choral stuff too. Much prefer omnis. I use cardiods as spot mics, but 90% of the time my main pair is omnis. That would be my advice. Those and a jecklin disc make great recordings. The C-4s are a touch on the warm side, not really ideal for precision recording.

I would go with the SP line(or AT) and grab the omni caps.

Teddy

[divamum]

Hi -

I'm a classical singer - if you want to PM me, I'm happy to send you clips of various things on different gear which may give you some ideas (my rigs are in my signature, and I also have some comp clips using my JB3 rig side-by-side with a friend's DPA setup). 

[noahbickart]

For a simgle close-miked vocalist of any persuasion, you might want to check out the industry standard Shure SM-57 or SM-58. Given that they are dynamic microphones, with a simple transformer you could run right into that recorder. They last forever and sound good. ~$80.

-Noah

[themicah]

To revive an old thread...

We finally went ahead and bought a BMC3 set from Sound Professionals with the high sensitivity option.  Their tech support people were very helpful on the phone with figuring out what to get.  It's not a high end pair of mics, but it's a great value for a starter set with which we can experiment.

I paid a mirror shop around the corner a few dollars to cut me a 9" circle of 1/4" plexiglass, I drilled holes for a mic stand attachment and a horizontal bar to which I can clip the mics, covered it with a sleeve of polar fleece (cut from an old pullover) and now have a nifty homemade Jecklin disk.  Total cost for mics + extension cable + Jecklin disc + mic stand (extendable up to 8 feet tall) = $140.

Running this directly into our iRiver iHP-120 with Rockbox isn't going to yield any audiophile reference recordings.  But my wife is very pleased with her ability to hear herself when she records herself practicing at home, and I did one live recording of a recital last week that came out quite well (although the stand was placed slightly off-center so the balance is slightly off).

I'll try to post photos of the Jecklin disk and clips of the recordings when I get a chance.  But in the meantime I wanted to share what we've accomplished with the help of the friendly folks on this board.

Thanks, all!