Double Bass Where does the tone come from in a microphone…?

[Anthony White]

So there’s a guitarist by the name of Jim Lill who has been making a series of YouTube videos where he runs a series of experiments to see where the tone really comes from in an electric guitar.


This week he published this video about where the tone comes from in microphones. It’s quite fascinating.

 

[brianrost]

Will this ever end?

 

[Ric Vice]

Interesting but I’m reminded of the song “To Much Stuff” While I applaud the inventive way he designed his tests for guitar the bass is a “horse of a different color” I just use my ears and go for the sound that’s pleasing, detailed and works in the mix while I’m recording. Just my take however.

 

[Francois Blais]

Cool video!

 

[C Stone]

Clearly lots of variables, boards op amps, x-formers, eq, ect. ect. ect. BUT mainly it’s the CAPSULE and of course the mics QA, QC, the exact same mics can and do sound very different…SM57 for the win!!!

 

[Ric Vice]

Clearly lots of variables, boards op amps, x-formers, eq, ect. ect. ect. BUT mainly it’s the CAPSULE and of course the mics QA, QC, the exact same mics can and do sound very different…SM57 for the win!!!

Perhaps the Shure SM 57 works so well is that it's "relatively bullet proof" John Cameron Swayze said " it can take a lickin' and keep on tickin' if I'm in a pinch it's a very reliable microphone and everybody's got em. Just my take of course.

 

[the_Ryan]

So there’s a guitarist by the name of Jim Lill who has been making a series of YouTube videos where he runs a series of experiments to see where the tone really comes from in an electric guitar.


This week he published this video about where the tone comes from in microphones. It’s quite fascinating.

I adore his videos, it's so interesting to watch him break things down into their components and testing each variable...and then make something ridiculous to prove a point like the Popcan Mic™, air guitar, tackle box amp, etc. I think particularly with (bass) guitar and pro audio gear we as consumers are often told that certain things matter to the sound of a piece of equipment, and I'm glad to see someone interrogate those things.

I really liked how in this video instead of comparing individual microphones to "flat" (which no mic can ever truly be) he made "flat" the SM57 because it's so ubiquitous in studio and live settings.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I went down the recording rabbit hole very deeply years ago. In truth, it's like any other rabbit hole in that after a certain point it all comes down to technique and skill of the person using _______ . If you can't get a good sound on a 57 (my go to here at school is the Beta 57), that vintage Neumann or Telefunken mic that costs $10,000 isn't going to help you.

 

[JRA]

very cool --- and, i'm glad to hear it!

 

[SAlcott]

A well-known recording engineer friend of mine told me years ago that if he wanted to see if someone knew what they were doing, he'd set them up in a great live room with an orchestra and 3 SM57s, followed by a tpt/sax/rhythm section jazz group. He believed that you could make a record with just about any decent mic if you knew where to place it.

 

[the_Ryan]

I went down the recording rabbit hole very deeply years ago. In truth, it's like any other rabbit hole in that after a certain point it all comes down to technique and skill of the person using _______ . If you can't get a good sound on a 57 (my go to here at school is the Beta 57), that vintage Neumann or Telefunken mic that costs $10,000 isn't going to help you.

I can’t remember exactly, but in college when my bass was miced up for big band concerts I think the sound recording students just used a 57 pointed at my bass (I can’t recall where exactly, I didn’t pay close enough attention…).

 

[Povl Carstensen]

I wouldn't say the SM57 "won" it though

 

[C Stone]

I wouldn't say the SM57 "won" it though

Really was implying the QC on the SM57
was the most consistent, there was very little difference (with frequency analysis) and audibly little if any difference in the four SM57’s mics samples as far as what we “humans can hear”. It’s a workhorse!

 

[Anthony White]

What I took from this is that in the impact of mics on tone, it is 98-99 percent the capsule that makes the difference. So long as the signal/noise ratio is good - which is a thing Jim Lill does not cover in the video - then it really is all about the capsule.

And capsules do have radically different sounds, and are radically different in interesting and useful ways. And some distort on certain sources, while others avoid distortion on those sources. And also, it looks like a surprising amount of the ways that mic capsules are different can be approximated with EQ, especially with an EQ plugin in a DAW.

So my Line Audio CM4, which I have always thought of as really surprisingly good for the price, is probably, actually, just as good in any real sense as, say, some $1000 Schoeps capsule. Actually, if I look at a Schoeps Mk4 capsule and a Line Audio CM4, and compare the frequency response charts, the only difference I see is about a -1dB roll off above 10k Hz on the CM4.

It’s really nice to see that someone else has compared a whole lot of microphones, and presented the results, and that I can hear the difference between the capsules, but not between the downstream ‘stuff’, and I certainly can’t hear the difference between a $10,000 tube mic and a $500 MicParts kit.

 

[the_Ryan]

I wouldn't say the SM57 "won" it though

Not at all, I just appreciated that he used it as the "banana for scale" as opposed to a theoretical perfectly flat microphone. I haven't rewatched the video, but I recall there totally being better (to me) sounding mics he tested. It's also just enlightening how for a microphone the tone is basically all in the capsule and how it's constructed.

 

[brianrost]

What I took from this is that in the impact of mics on tone, it is 98-99 percent the capsule that makes the difference.

An awful lot of effort to measure all those mikes and discover what everybody has known forever.

The least linear and most colored part of an audio path is the conversion to electrical energy and vice versa.

Mikes, pickups, speakers, phono cartridges, etc.

 

[fdeck]

While trying to record myself, I've learned that the tone comes from somewhere within the bass, and I don't know where. But mic placement has to be the biggest variable.