And another mic test, just for fun

[Sam Inglis]

I've been working with a singer who has an interesting voice. I've tried a lot of mics on him and have only liked a couple. I'd be curious to see whether everyone else agrees.

In this folder you should find six versions of the same chorus labelled A through to F. A, B and C are one take. D, E and F are another take recorded at a later session. The phrasing is a little different between the takes, and there is a little level variation, so it's not a scientific comparison I'm afraid.

In each case I have EQ'ed the low end and the low midrange in order to tame a bit of boominess where needed, but there's no EQ above 500Hz or thereabouts. The vocals are also bypassing the mix bus EQ so there's just a tape emulation on the mix bus that might be changing the timbre.

I put up the mic I liked the most from the first session again in the second, so one of A, B and C is the same as one of D, E and F. Otherwise they are all different.

[Drew Stephenson]

I'll have to wait a day or so until this cold has finally gone because my ears are mush at the moment - not sure I could tell you difference between two singers let alone two mics!

[Sam Inglis]

Any takers? I thought you'd be queueing up to listen to something that doesn't involve my singing for once.

[Drew Stephenson]

Er, I must confess I completely forgot about this thread.

Will get on it tomorrow.

[James Perrett]

I had a listen a few days ago and I felt that the first mic in both sets was brighter than the others but I didn't really have enough reference points to say anything further. I'd be interested to know which was which though.

[Arpangel]

If we have to try hard to hear any differences, maybe we should just have one mic, in our studios, it would save a lot of faffing around.
You ought to see me when I’m recording something here "ooo, maybe I’ll use the 201, no, I think a ribbon might be better, no, I know, I'll use the MKH.
The reality is that I could have used any of them and been happy.

[Wonks]

If we have to try hard to hear any differences, maybe we should just have one mic, in our studios, it would save a lot of faffing around.
You ought to see me when I’m recording something here "ooo, maybe I’ll use the 201, no, I think a ribbon might be better, no, I know, I'll use the MKH.
The reality is that I could have used any of them and been happy.

That’s what happens when you’ve got frequency limited hearing. It’s why I don’t bother commenting on recordings any more. You simply can’t tell what it sounds like to someone with better hearing.

[Drew Stephenson]

If we have to try hard to hear any differences, maybe we should just have one mic, in our studios, it would save a lot of faffing around.
You ought to see me when I’m recording something here "ooo, maybe I’ll use the 201, no, I think a ribbon might be better, no, I know, I'll use the MKH.
The reality is that I could have used any of them and been happy.

Hence we have a priority list that reads something like:
Material
Performance
Room
Mic position
Mic type
Anything else...

With, I think, a bit of an allowance for lead vocals because for most listeners these are the single most important bit of song.
But even then, silk purses and sows ears and all that.

[Arpangel]

If we have to try hard to hear any differences, maybe we should just have one mic, in our studios, it would save a lot of faffing around.
You ought to see me when I’m recording something here "ooo, maybe I’ll use the 201, no, I think a ribbon might be better, no, I know, I'll use the MKH.
The reality is that I could have used any of them and been happy.

That’s what happens when you’ve got frequency limited hearing. It’s why I don’t bother commenting on recordings any more. You simply can’t tell what it sounds like to someone with better hearing.

Oh dear, a plus point then, one of the very few, about getting old.

[James Perrett]

Hence we have a priority list that reads something like:
...

After having had the chance to work with some talented artists over the last few years my list goes

Performance
Anything else...

The old phrase "I could listen to them singing the phone book" has much more than a grain of truth in it.

[Drew Stephenson]

My guess is that B and F are the same mic.
I'm thinking C might be a ribbon.
My initial preference was for A, because I liked the clarity of it but I do wonder if it might get a bit over-bright for a whole track. It seems to handle the esses a bit better than D but that might be the difference in performance.
I like the extra weight from F but I think I'm sticking to A for the extra openness.
I suspect a bit of EQ could make them all but indistinguishable from each other though.

I await my traditional ritual humiliation with the results.

[Drew Stephenson]

After having had the chance to work with some talented artists over the last few years my list goes

Performance
Anything else...

The old phrase "I could listen to them singing the phone book" has much more than a grain of truth in it.

I fully get that (though personally I find the lyrics need to resonate with my in some way) but does that list change for you with instrumental music? Just out of curiosity and accepting that there are no rules!

[Tomás Mulcahy]

This is fun!

Here is my guess- A B and D are the same, sounds a bit metallic and shouty. C E and F is warm but a bit too muted, so perhaps it is the better mic being more reflective of the performance which I feel is a little too much on the safe side. Interesting how hard it is to tell which mic is which, I found it quite hard to separate emotion from timbre.

That’s what happens when you’ve got frequency limited hearing. It’s why I don’t bother commenting on recordings any more. You simply can’t tell what it sounds like to someone with better hearing.

I would think it depends on what the frequency limit is? For the human voice, it's 8kHz to 12kHz roughly. All the important stuff is in the 1 to 5k range. If you are middle aged with average HF loss, then you can still definitely hear what needs to be heard and make valid comments.

Listening to music with a HPF at 10k is instructive. There is measurably as well as audibly very little information there. I am not saying it is an unimportant band, but it is over-rated.

[James Perrett]

After having had the chance to work with some talented artists over the last few years my list goes

Performance
Anything else...

The old phrase "I could listen to them singing the phone book" has much more than a grain of truth in it.

I fully get that (though personally I find the lyrics need to resonate with my in some way) but does that list change for you with instrumental music? Just out of curiosity and accepting that there are no rules!

I had a discussion on the importance of lyrics with Tegan (my collaborator in the Cutting Room) yesterday. She listens more carefully to lyrics than I do, but then words are her thing. I tend to not concentrate so much on the lyrics although I'll fairly quickly dismiss things that sound obviously trite and cliched. I guess that, as a drummer, I will take more notice of the timing and feel of a piece. Tegan doesn't think consciously about timing and feel so much but it is interesting that she responds best to music that has a good groove.

I think my list of priorities applies equally well to any music where conveying emotion is important. There are some riffs that just sound right however you do them and I'll often listen to something relatively simple and wonder why it sounds so good? I'm very much of the school of thought that says "why play many notes when just one in the right place will say just as much?"

I was sent a link to an Andertons video yesterday which kind of illustrates this point. They're a bunch of good pub rock musicians doing a cover who seem to have found themselves in Real World Studios without any idea of what it takes to create a great performance. The second guitarist in particular just ruins the song with his solo - but I guess the teenage wannabe guitarists that they are trying to attract to the shop will lap it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5OXO1j8kgo

Given the right producer and a willingness to be more adventurous I suspect they could have come up with a real performance - but this isn't it.

[Aled Hughes]

I was sent a link to an Andertons video yesterday which kind of illustrates this point. They're a bunch of good pub rock musicians doing a cover who seem to have found themselves in Real World Studios without any idea of what it takes to create a great performance. The second guitarist in particular just ruins the song with his solo - but I guess the teenage wannabe guitarists that they are trying to attract to the shop will lap it up.

Hmm, the a quick look at the 'second guitarist''s credits suggests he's much more than a "good pub rock musician"

Tom Jones
Lionel Richie
Peter Gabriel
Lulu
Beverley Knight
Paloma Faith
Ronan Keating

among many others. The rest of them are also touring/session pros with impressive credits as well, apart from Mr Anderton himself I guess.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

I think James is right, this performance was not "it". but it wasn't the solo that was the problem. I would've considered transposing the song about a third higher to get the singer in her sweet spot. I would imagine when the vocal is great, everything else will follow. A band that can self-produce is rare, because it requires always questioning everything, and standing back and observing yourself. Very difficult!

[Aled Hughes]

I think James is right, this performance was not "it". but it wasn't the solo that was the problem. I would've considered transposing the song about a third higher to get the singer in her sweet spot. I would imagine when the vocal is great, everything else will follow. A band that can self-produce is rare, because it requires always questioning everything, and standing back and observing yourself. Very difficult!

I’m not claiming it’s a life-changing performance, but I think it’s a bit harsh to dismiss them as pub rock musicians.

[Hugh Robjohns]

A spokesman for the Campaign for Real Medium Wave Radio and the Bring Back Cassette Recorders lobby today said:

Listening to music with a HPF at 10k is instructive. There is measurably as well as audibly very little information there. I am not saying it is an unimportant band, but it is over-rated.

[Sam Inglis]

Hence we have a priority list that reads something like:
Material
Performance
Room
Mic position
Mic type
Anything else...

With, I think, a bit of an allowance for lead vocals because for most listeners these are the single most important bit of song.
But even then, silk purses and sows ears and all that.

It's interesting, because I am quite often in the school of thought that says mic choice is over-rated, and that most decent mics will do an acceptable job on most sources if you can find the right place to put them. But occasionally you put a mic up on a singer and think 'Eww!', and that's what happened here. He's just one of those singers who sounds terrible on 'normal' studio mics.

In this case, mic B was a U87 and to me it sounds pretty bad on his voice -- there's an unpleasant hard, boxy quality to the midrange and the sibilance is distracting. Mics C and E are both ribbon mics. I think they could be made to work at a pinch, but would need a fair bit more EQ (I'm already cutting quite a bit of low end from both) and would still sound quite flat and unexciting.

Which leaves the moving-coil mics...

I had been looking out for a Sennheiser MD441 for years, and managed to buy one just before this session. I instantly felt like it was exactly the right mic for his voice: smooth and rich, yet also well defined and not tubby like the ribbon mics. That's mic A, and it's also mic F. And having discovered that the 441 worked well on him, I thought I'd try out another high-quality dynamic mic in the second session. So mic D is an Electro-voice RE20. I'm surprised at how much brighter it sounds than the 441, but I think it works well too. Not sure which of them I will use at the mix.

So in summary:
A: Sennheiser MD441
B: Neumann U87
C: Cloud 44
D: Electro-voice RE20
E: Beyer M160
F: Sennheiser MD441

[James Perrett]

Hmm, the a quick look at the 'second guitarist''s credits suggests he's much more than a "good pub rock musician"

I'm surprised as I didn't think that he gave a particularly great performance on that video. There are thousands of others who could do the same thing in much the same way. When you've wangled your way into Real World, what is the point of doing the same kind of thing that everyone else is doing? When someone tries to convince me that a musical performance is special, I don't want to hear something that I can hear in thousands of other places. (Am I starting to sound like Tony here? )

I think James is right, this performance was not "it". but it wasn't the solo that was the problem. I would've considered transposing the song about a third higher to get the singer in her sweet spot. I would imagine when the vocal is great, everything else will follow. A band that can self-produce is rare, because it requires always questioning everything, and standing back and observing yourself. Very difficult!

Again, there are thousands of good workmanlike singers around like that. While she has played quite a bit in venues around this area, I've not seen her live so I don't know what she can really do, but she has no individuality in this video. Tomás is right - a stronger and more interesting vocal would have really made this work better.

Or, to bring this back on track, would it have sounded better if they had been able to use the most appropriate mics from Real World's collection rather than trying to use everything from the same manufacturer?

[James Perrett]

It is interesting to see the results Sam. I would never have thought that A and F were the same mic - even after re-listening knowing which was which. I think this shows how much the performance can change things.

[Sam Inglis]

TBF I think I used a much more coloured preamp on the first session.

[Sam Spoons]

I was sent a link to an Andertons video yesterday which kind of illustrates this point. They're a bunch of good pub rock musicians doing a cover who seem to have found themselves in Real World Studios without any idea of what it takes to create a great performance. The second guitarist in particular just ruins the song with his solo - but I guess the teenage wannabe guitarists that they are trying to attract to the shop will lap it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5OXO1j8kgo

Given the right producer and a willingness to be more adventurous I suspect they could have come up with a real performance - but this isn't it.

I was just thinking about Drew's list and considering that performance should come before material when I came upon James' post and the 'Andertones' YT link so I gave it a listen. My thoughts were "nice enough but bland" so I listened to John Meyer's version and had exactly the same feeling so I conclude that (sometimes, at least) material is more important than performance. Certainly in this case the song is just bland and ordinary to my ears.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

A spokesman for the Campaign for Real Medium Wave Radio and the Bring Back Cassette Recorders lobby today said:

Listening to music with a HPF at 10k is instructive. There is measurably as well as audibly very little information there. I am not saying it is an unimportant band, but it is over-rated.

Misses the point, but it’s funny to be fair- especially the BBC style editing… perhaps I should sue

[Tomás Mulcahy]

It is interesting to see the results Sam. I would never have thought that A and F were the same mic - even after re-listening knowing which was which. I think this shows how much the performance can change things.

Same here.

But it was fun all the same. When it still worked, audio test kitchen was a fantastic resource. They did such a good job of controlling for the performance. I have the 3D audio mic test CD where they had pro male and female session singers perform identically as best they could- it’s good but not as good as audio test kitchen.