Yesterday I spent an hour at Woodstock Studios in Melbourne. It was part of my singing lessons and we went into the studio to do some vocal recording of a track just for fun. I recorded a vocal take with two different mics. I also have another recording that I did at home in a little home vocal booth I build when recording vocals. All different mics ranging from about $400 to about $5000. The home recording was just done through my Edirol UA25-EX. So pretty cheap stuff. The studio I think was run through an LA-2A and then just into the Pro Tools Gear. Any compression I imagine should be pretty darn small. It wasn't my choice, that was the engineer. I won't reveal the mics just yet, but it'll come.

Processing is completely dry. Nothing done on them. I have the versions in the mix, which I think is most important, but also have it alone if you want to hear that too. You should be able to download the files too if you want to A/B them with SONAR.

Please keep in mind that the performances were a bit different. They were not all done next to each other and the home one was done on another day. Not the perfect Shootout I know, but I found it useful. So try to ignore that as much as you can and listen to how each one sits in the mix and compliments my voice or makes it sound worse.

http://soundcloud.com/mattlyonsmusic/sets/studio-vs-home-shootout

I personally have one mic which I think I like best raw, but in the context of the mix, I think I prefer another one, so curious if anyone has any thoughts on that too!

:)

UPDATE!!!


I have added one more mic from home to this. I felt I had better get all of my mics into this (actually I am leaving out one - but that's cause I really hate it - it's Behringer...)

Number 2 is quite clearly the best of the first three, so I'm interested to see what you think of it VS number 4. Mic numbers have not changed, I simply added mic 4.

I'll reveal in about 12 hours from now what everything was. I'm curious to see what you think of Mic 4. I can't actually quite decide between it and mic 2. Both sound very similar to me.

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Hey Matt, I remember that song! :) Personally, I like mic 2 the best in both examples. It has more sound size to me. I'm usually not one that goes for "warmer" but though that has the warmth, the size of the sound is bigger than the others to my ears. Like...there is more sound happening if that makes sense? :)

-Danny

Hi Matt,

 After listening to all 6 examples I do not think you were singing loud enough to really push any of those circuits into any character there might be to appreciate.

 Blast away into all three next time and it will be a lot easier to hear and decide what the differences are.

 I agree with Danny that the mic 2 example seems sweet.

 It seems, to me, like that was your best performance of the 3 and so I prefer it regardless of what it was sent through.



best regards,
mike

mike_mccue


It seems, to me, like that was your best performance of the 3 and so I prefer it regardless of what it was sent through. 

+1 on the performance! This is what can make any mic sound better than another. You can have a bad performance using a great mic rig and it can ruin it. Have a great performance on a mediocre mic rig, and you can fool people into thinking it was better than it was. Performance is first and foremost in my opinion with any instrument in any aspect of recording. As Mike mentioned about the performance, I have the same opinion. I could care less what you were sent through...that performance was enough to win me over. :)
 
-Danny 

Raw 3 seemed the cleanest, clearest.  It doesn't have the bass growl of 2, which may be useful (or not).

@

Interesting! I agree about the performance thing. In once instance I thought, nah, don't like this mic cause it sounds harsh and this other one sounds better, but then in another section my opinion completely switched around! I was singing harsh, it wasn't the mic being harsh.

Any ideas on which was the one that I did at home?? One of these performances was made with less than $1000 of gear, and the other two through many many thousands and thousands of dollars (including the room and everything etc).

I'll wait for a few more responses first then give you all the answers. I'll give you one little extra bit of gameplay - guess which mic is the $7000 Nuemann.

I'm not hearing a drastic difference in any of the three.  I liked mic. 2 the most also. I thought  mic.1  was slightly more brittle than the others but not a night and day difference.  I agree with Mike M. about pushing the circuits.  I've heard hundred dollar pres. and converters sound fine at low levels but break up early in a harsh way when pushed slightly.  High dollar gear usually has more headroom and sometimes comes alive when pushed hard.
 As far as matching the tracks to the gear my guess would be mic. 1 is the home studio setup and mic. 2 is $7000 Nuemann  and Mic. 3 is somewhere in between.
 Oh and nice job on the vocals, by the way.