This is a subject I've been interested in myself for a year or so. Recording perfection is like the search for Atlantis, the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth: You keep searching and spending more money but you never really get there. But it's fun, and you can get fairly good results without great gear and technological genius. Though at some point it becomes a question of whether you want to be a picker or a recording engineer.
Some pro from first Mandolin Symposium told me to get an AKG C1000S for live and recording. I did and was fairly disappointed. Though I have to say, low these few years later, I've started to used them again when I run out of mics for live recording applications (shows with sound reinforcement that are recorded onto an Alesis HD24) and they work pretty darned good on mandolins and Martins. I tried some Behringer LDs that seemed, for the price, too good to be true. That proved to be the case. I bought a pair of Rode NT5 SD condensers. They are fabulous mics for the money. ($500/pair-ish) I mainly use them XY front center for live recording, or even in the basement "studio". Any of the condensers sound pretty good even 5, 6 feet away. I've tried some of the esoteric placements, as with Tater and model numbers, I'm happy with what gives me good signal to mix. Rode makes good, affordable LD condensors. I have an NT1-A that I like. I recently got a pair of Audio-Technica AT2035s that really work good and didn't cost as much as a used Harley. They work well singly or left-right in a live setting. Any of the aforementioned LDs would also work fine, I think, for a Monroe-stye live bob-and-weave blue grass show, though I'd use two, if I had the 'em. I've heard great things about the Shures mentioned above. As long as you fly above the cheapest junk, you can do pretty good for a C-note or two, without getting anywhere near the realm of mics that cost as much as cars. If I were going to spend $5 or $10K, it would be on a mandolin, not a mic. Of course, either way I'd be a dead man if my wife found out (so I'd be sneaky about it, like always). If you're recording at home, a good preamp will help a lot. I have an MPA Gold 2-channel pre that was cheap ($300-ish) but warms things up nicely. (I'm going into the computer via a Mackie 1620, which has decent Onyx pres, or a Mackie Onyx 400 A/D converter.) I so have a PreSonus Eureka channel strip that is pretty sweet. On the other hand, I have a cheap Edirol 24bit MP3 recorder, and it sounds pretty good when I import it into Logic. It may be blasphemy, but I almost always add a small bit of reverb to something I record in the basement. (Though my kitchen is a nice live room and doesn't need it.) So that's situational for me. I often add some compression during the mix to things, though not necessarily to the mandolin. Though I'll often adjust the EQ slightly. With live stuff, I often will use some plug-in noise gate and what have you. I have a friend who plays trad Irish flute, and he refuses to edit or do anything whatsoever to his recordings. My grandpa used to say, "Give a little boy a hammer, and suddenly he will find things that need to be hammered." That's my opinion about all the junk you have to play with in Logic or ProTools or whatever. And now you know my life story. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Taterbugmando" group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugmando@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
