Topic: General mic info

[poniverus]

so i just recently purchased the Tascam DR-2d and was thinking about which mics would be best. A friend was trying to tell me i'd be fine with the internal mics but that doesn't make sense because I always see tapers recording with external mics. ANY info would be greatly appreciated!!

[achalsey]

Just read through board first.  Start with the stickies.  If you're actually interested, treat it like homework you want to do.  Read, read, read.  All the info is already here, you just have to pick a place to start and go from there.  Once you get the basics down, then ask the more confusing questions.

here's one of many basic explanations

http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/Mic-University/The-Essentials.aspx

[poniverus]

Thanks for the link, been reading up a lot and I just have one question. I noticed some people have 2 mics. Are 2 necessary? Or does this depend on the type of mics?

[gkatz]

Thanks for the link, been reading up a lot and I just have one question. I noticed some people have 2 mics. Are 2 necessary? Or does this depend on the type of mics?

people use two mics to produce a stereo recording. there is such a thing as a stereo microphone, it has two capsules inside. A recorder like the DR2d has two internal mics for the same reason = stereo. once you build up a mic collection 4, 6, 8 channel recording can also be used to produce a final stereo track.

[Belexes]

Most of us here use 2 mics > pre-amp > deck.  I started out a long time ago with a single clip-on mic, but that wasn't giving me the best results.

[DSatz]

You can use a "single-point stereo" microphone, but most of the inexpensive ones are designed primarily for business recording (office meetings, etc.) and have poor characteristics for music pickup, no matter what the marketing brochures may say. Mostly they emphasize the range of frequencies that make speech easier to understand--but recorded music usually sounds best when you don't mess with the frequencies very much. And nearly all low-cost stereo microphones cover too wide an angle for the distance that most people have to record music from. That makes music recordings muddy sounding (too much room pickup), and the performers all sound as if they're standing in the center of the stage.

In most cases it's easier to control those factors with separate left and right microphones. Professional-quality stereo microphones exist, but they tend to be extremely expensive and they aren't very flexible solutions.

--best regards