Gear / Technical Help > Microphones & Setup

recommend shotgun mics for loud music recording. (heavy metal, etc)

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JesseDavis95688:
hey! so ive been recording bands for a long time and used a few different mics but settled on sony ms 908c's a while back, and some old vintage realistic "videomics" but i need to update my audio gear. im looking for a reasonably priced shotgun mic that will give me a better signal from the rear of a room to the stage. just trying to eliminate side chatter and get a cleaner sound from the instruments and vocals. any recommendations welcome. thank you..

Gutbucket:
Welcome to taperssection!

Other than the specific choice of microphones others will chime in with (preferably supercardioid/hypercardioid over shotgun).. Point the microphones directly at the PA speakers.  Ideally, adjust the spacing between the microphones based upon whatever angle you end up with between them (less angle = more spacing).  Get the mics up higher to minimize sensitivity to the chatter that is occurring nearby.  Most importantly, figure out a way to get the microphones closer to the PA and stage if you can.

DSatz:
Any mike placed near the back of a performance space will pick up sound from all angles. There may be somewhat more sound arriving from the front hemisphere, but usually not much more. You can test this with a cardioid--point it toward the back of the room, then toward the front. Is the level of sound pickup substantially greater when it's pointed toward the front? Almost never (actually, not even once ever in my experience).

So you're in a basically diffuse sound field, and even what's arriving directly on-axis will include a lot of reflected sound energy. This calls for a microphone whose "all-angle" (integrated) response is (a) smooth and (b) parallel to its on-axis response.

Unfortunately, at midrange frequencies and higher, shotgun mikes are far from behaving that way. Whenever the sound is reflected throughout the performance space and reaches the microphone from all angles simultaneously, their response becomes wildly uneven--I'm talking peaks and valleys of 6 to 10 dB depending on the angle of arrival. That's why film and video sound people work hard to keep the talent directly on axis at all times when using shotgun mikes, and they never use them at any substantial distance in reverberant spaces. High-quality, small-diaphragm supercardioids would be a far better choice.

jcable77:
Im selling a pair of AKG 568eb's in the yard sale. Cant beat em for the price IMO.

Gutbucket:
And welcome to a long-running reoccurring discussion here at taperssection. The jist of which is this:

Shotgun microphones (meaning those which utilize an interference tube in their design - making them physically longer than more-compact non-shotgun designs) are neither designed for, nor are appropriate for your intended application.  BUT, many tapers use them anyway and have made decent recordings with them regardless.

An acoustically better choice, very much likely to produce better results, will be to use supercardioid/hypercardioid pattern microphones instead that are not a "shotgun" interference-tube design, and are designed to work more appropriately in this kind of situation. 

The more fundamental solution in terms of acoustics is to move closer if at all possible, regardless of what microphones you are using.

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