Why your studio mic is the least of your problems

When we built our first home studio back in the late 1980s the choice of large capsule capacitor mic's was small and prices were high. The two mic's that most owners aspired to owning were the Neumann U87 (then around £1000) and the AKG 414 (£700). This was a lot of money back then and meant that many had to make do with an AKG C1000 or even a humble SM57 or SM58.

There was also less information available about other mic's (no internet in the 1980's!), but even had we known about Telefunken and Royer we still wouldn't have been able to afford them.

However, towards the end of the 1980's a few more affordable models emerged including those from Oktavia, Rode and MicroTech Gefell (we bought their UM70, which over 25 years later is still our preferred FET mic for many lead vocal sessions). We remember the UM70 cost us around £400. Today the current version of the mic is around £1200 and the U87 is over £2000.

Today the choice of affordable mic's is astonishing, and you no longer need to spend anything like this to acquire a great sounding mic. We couldn't begin to list the available models. The internet has made it possible for us to find, audition and buy models from small "boutique" companies all around the world including the US and Eastern block.

In fact it has become increasingly hard to justify buying an expensive mic when the differences between models can often be negated with careful positioning, choice of environment and of course matching to a source sound.

Our affordable mic's - A Neumann M147 (eBay bargain), MicroTech Gefell UM70 (£400 new in 1989), and an SE Electronics  Z5600a (£350 new in 2006)

In the last year we have auditioned a number of +£2000 mic's and passed on all of them. Not because they weren't good mic's but simply because they weren't obviously "better" than the affordable models we bought.

A few years ago we attended the launch of SE Electronic's SE4400a at Air Lyndhurst studios in London. This mic was compared with almost all the top mic's from the studios mic cabinet in a live recording session and despite it's £450 price tag nearly everyone agreed it was a fantastic sounding mic that out-performed most of the other's. Needless to say we bought a pair.

How wonderful to live in a time when high-quality studio gear is so affordable. With a mic such as the 4400a, an affordable interface, a MacMini and a copy of Logic you have all the tools you need to make a recording as good as any professional production. Of the course the real problem now is that we don't have any excuses not to!

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Upgrade to an old MacPro

The new MacPro is a thing of beauty and proves that Apple can still innovate. When it was launched 18 months or so ago, Phil Schiller made us all laugh with his "can't innovate my arse" line (see https://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2013/).

The new MacPro

But for home project studio owners, upgrading to one presents several problems.

1. It's the most expensive MacPro in our memory at £2,400 for the base model.
2. You cannot install your old eSATA drives into it. You have to buy a Thunderbolt expansion chassis. Yes, it's expensive too.
3. You may not be able to use your old audio interface if it connects viaFireWire.
4. You'll need a Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis if you need to use a PCIe card with it such as the Universal Audio UAD. Expensive? Don't get us started!

Despite these issues, today eBay returned 14,438 results when we searched "Mac Pro", and only a handful are the new model. It's a buyers market with many low prices. Clearly owners are trying to offload old machines before upgrading.

MacPro's selling on eBay

So what does this mean for us? Clearly there has never been a better time to switch from a PC or upgrade from an iMac and take advantage of Logic Pro X on a multi-core MacPro.

Anything from a mid 2010 model (5.1) onwards will work well (there are 281 on eBay today). Our 2010 MacPro has 2 x quad core Xenon processors, 26Gb of RAM, 4 eSATA internal HD's and barely shows 20% CPU usage on an average mix session. Adding RAM and HDs is not expensive and the only downside is that Apple may not support the model for new versions of OSX for much longer. At present, although we haven't installed it, Yosemite is supported.

A 2010 MacPro

If you can get one for under £600, we'd call that a bargain. eBay shows many models with high prices but we're pretty sure they won't sell. Hold out and you'll get the right one at the right price.

Therefore, we can't see a good reason to upgrade to the new MacPro yet, unless you are a video editor using Final Cut Pro X.

So, upgrading to old technology isn't always about buying old valve compressors. Embrace a vintage MacPro instead!

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Do you need a ribbon microphone?

There has been a great deal of renewed interest in ribbon microphones lately, which has resulted in many manufactures (Rode, SE Electronics, Audio Technica etc) joining the race to release new models.

So why would you want to buy one, after all, aren't they old technology inferior to modern mic's?

Artur Fisher's superb RM-5. A hand made ribbon mic from Latvia.

We are currently preparing 2 videos on ribbon mic's, but whilst you're waiting for them to be published, here's some food for thought.

1. Before the 1950s, all microphones were ribbons, but the invention of the capacitor (condenser) microphone, with its superior bandwidth made them largely obsolete. However, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley and Billie Holiday all made classic recordings with ribbon mic's.

2. They are mechanically simple, you can even make your own, or buy a kit to make one.

3. Despite huge price differences, many ribbon microphones sound incredibly similar, perhaps because they basic mechanical design of the ribbon motor is the same.

4. They have a pronounced bass lift proximity character which means they often cannot be used close to a source, but are ideal to thicken thin sounds.

5. Almost all have a figure of eight polar pattern, which means unless you are recording in a dead space, you hear a lot of room ambience, especially as because of the proximity effect, you may not be able to place the mic close to the source.

6. They are capable of a smooth or flat frequency response up to 15kHz, over which their sensitivity drops dramatically. They can therefore sound duller than a capacitor mic, so it is perhaps unsurprising that many engineers favour them for mic'ing sources without hi-frequency content such as brass and guitar combos and cabs.

A popular ribbon mic'ing application

Like all mic's, ribbons have their own unique character, so rather than thinking of them as an replacement for other mic's, you may want to add one to an existing collection of dynamic and capacitor mice. Choice and experimentation is always good.

However, for most applications, unless you have an acoustically controlled space,  you will want to achieve a dry sound, which means a recording booth or non-reflective room environment will be essential. Without them you find a ribbon microphone almost unusable.

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FairFax