On 26/05/08 14:57:51, schoappied wrote:
> 1. Which mic do you recommend?
There are two factors in chosing a mic.
The first one is the quality. My advice would be to stay away from the
very cheap end of the market. The difference between the tat made to
go with karaoke machines and a professional product (like the Sure SM58
already mentioned) is big. From there on the law of diminishing
returns applys - for example using prices from one UK supplier you
could get good recordings with the SM58 at £68.99 ($131) or splash
out £1679.00 for a Neumann U87Ai ($3912). You should probably be able
to hear the difference but I'd bet it will be less noticable than the
difference between the SM58 and the cheap tat.
The second one is colouration. Some mics have pretty flat frequency
responses and others don't. Among the better ones that don't this will
be deliberate and suits the microphone to a particular source. The
SM58 is an example of one where the frequency response is deliberately
not flat and is generally reckoned to be good for vocals.
The colouration issue is such that those in pro studios keep a
selection of mics for recording singers and try them out to see which
one best compliments the singers voice. This is one reason someone
over the internet could never tell you best mic for recording your
voice.
The other thing worth thinking about is what the connection
requirements are for the mic. The output level of mics is too low to
go into the line in on a sound card and the mic in on a consumer-grade
(e.g. onboard) soundcard is designed for a kind of electret microphone
not often used in recording. A dynamic mic like the SM57 will normally
have a balanced output but can be used on an unbalanced input with the
necessary lead. A condenser mic will usually require phantom power so
you would need a mic pre-amp or mixer with this facility.
> 2. Do I need a mixer?
You may be able to get a sound card with built-in mic preamps suitable
for professional mics, i.e. not the funny interface on a normal sound
card for the usual electret on a stalk. If not you will need something
to do that job. You can buy mic pre-amps separately or you can use the
mic pre-amps built into a mixer. Otherwise, as long as you have as
many inputs on you sound card as instruments you want to record in any
one go you don't need one.
You may find a mixer convenient because of builtin features like EQ and
effects but bear in mind if you apply these to the signal before you
record you can not change your mind later. Mixing, EQ and effects can
all be done is software too so you can capture clean tracks and then
work out what EQ and effects you want when you go to mix it.
> Do I need digital effects?
Some EQ will probably be useful though you may be lucky and find that
everything sounds nice without it. If you are close micing then you
will probably want some reverb too. How much of what though is a
matter of taste.
> 3. Do I need a new soundcard? I've now an onboard one and can play
> guitar with not to much latency or xruns...
The sound cards designed for recording are generally better than the
ones integrated onto the motherboard. Even knowing which chip your
integrated sound card uses doesn't mean someone can tell how good it is
because much depends on the quality of the analogue electronics
surrounding the chip and how much noise is picked up from things in the
PC.
You would definitely want a new one if you want more inputs. Otherwise
I'd start by chosing a decent mic and get the other things to be able
to connect it. If you chose the sound card with integrated mic pre-amp
obviously you'd need to buy this straight away, otherwise you could see
what results you get with the new mic and mic-pre/mixer and see if you
want to upgrade.
HTH,
Steve.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Tue May 27 00:15:05 2008
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue May 27 2008 - 00:15:06 EEST