Thought this might be of interest to someone with a limited mic locker.


http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/trmicroom/index.php?pp=t-racks-single-mic-room-info

Nice VST. That should help a lot of people.

I have more than a few mic's and normally try another mic first before resorting to eq. Surprising how often a mechanical change is more effective in getting the right sound over sound manipulation. More surprising how sometimes a cheap mic is more effective for getting a tone than the more expensive mic. May be one of the reasons many recordings are made with an sm58?

I have a few mics myself, but my collection doesn't include any U87's or Royer ribbons.

I like this modeling trend. Can they make a 58 sound like a Neumann? ¿Quién sabe? I would have liked to see a Telefunken U48 on that list though.



Regards,

Bob

My collection doesn't include any U87's or Royer ribbons either. My term expensive is also referenced by my personal cost and not market value. Many in my collection were obtained free and a Behringer B2 Condenser is the most expensive purchase so far.

A chrome plated Electro-Voice dynamic Model 664 has a lot of sentimental value because it was my dad's stage mic. I've never used it for recording. Might be something to try soon.

Thinking of it, my collection makes a good argument that Mic Room may be a good investment for me.

The EV 664. Those were everywhere in the 60's. Real tight pattern with a pronounced proximity effect. I used them a lot back then (The Jurassic Period)

The Antarese Mic Mod EFX offered something similar, although at about twice the price.

The promise of being able to get in the ballpark of some famous microphone definitely has appeal.

These programs have to do two things - remove the color of the original microphone, and then add the color of the emulated microphone. To do that, you'll need to get a fairly neutral recording in the first place.

On the other hand, it's encourages people to believe that what's important about other microphones isn't that they are more accurate, or can capture more range, but that the circuitry performs magic processing which imparts a poorly defined "warm" quality to the vocals.

It seems to me that if you want to "color" the sound, you should have a very specific sound in mind, and be able to get there with EQ and such.

Then again, that wouldn't stop me playing with the plugin if I had it.

“It seems to me that if you want to "color" the sound, you should have a very specific sound in mind, and be able to get there with EQ and such.”



There is a world of differences between mics. It's not about “color”. It's about the circuitry. With a U87 in a good room, you probably won't need any EQ.



Regards,

Bob

Kinda with you on that I've seen McCartney perform with a SM58 and sound great.......now if they had a mic with a talent knob......at any rate this sounds like cool plugin for the bucks but a lot of the purists I know would turn their noses up at it.

Mick Jagger used a 57 on a lot of the old recordings. (That 58 that Macca used was probably going into a $5000 mic pre and a Urie compressor, into a Neve board).

My favorite default mic for a lot of situations is the SM57, and 90 db is right, the preamp makes all the difference in how a mic performs.

An old saying applies; An average mic thru a good preamp sounds better than a good mic thru an average preamp.
Every time

I don't doubt that for a second.

I'm just speaking about using microphone emulators, not the "real thing".

If you're using software to emulate a U87 (for example), that software isn't going to be able to take the signal and suddenly make sounds that didn't exist suddenly appear.

At best, it's probably going map the frequency response curve of your microphone onto that of a U87.

That's essentially using an EQ to color the sound, right?

It may be that the microphone emulator is a lot more sophisticated than that, and emulate the circuitry of each microphone... Nah.

Excellent point Bob. I think a lot of novices fall into that trap.

"If you're using software to emulate a U87 (for example), that software isn't going to be able to take the signal and suddenly make sounds that didn't exist suddenly appear."




I don't know what that means.

"If you're using software to emulate a U87 (for example), that software isn't going to be able to take the signal and suddenly make sounds that didn't exist suddenly appear."

Actually, that may be exactly what it does. In a similar fashion, Jimmy Page re-mixed some of the Led Zeppelin recordings and the new digital recording hardware could capture low end frequencies that could not be captured with the original hardware "making sounds that didn't exist" (although they really did, the vintage equipment simply could not reproduce it) suddenly exist. The frequencies were there all the time but outside the dynamic range of the equipment of the day. It's possible the software emulation can do the same if the physical characteristics are the same that the frequencies were just not being reproduced prior to being processed by the software.

That's my point, exactly - it was already signal information captured by the microphones.

What a microphone emulator can do is analogous to "false color" photography - it can "color" the sound by re-mapping the frequency response - effectively EQ - that can boost or lower particular frequencies in ways similar to how classic microphones respond.

But if you microphone is deaf to certain frequencies or detail, it's not going to be able to recover signal information that was never captured in the first place.

Sorry... I must have been unclear.

Reading through the advertisements on microphone emulators, you might get the impression that they could turn your cheap microphone into the equivalent of a much more expensive microphone.

That's obviously not possible.

Specifically, if my cheap microphone can't capture any signal above 1200Hz (I said it was cheap!), if I record a piccolo concerto, I'll notice that my lots of notes are absent from my recording. Running that through a microphone emulator won't make that "missing" information appear, because it was never captured in the first place.

Did that make sense?

“Sorry... I must have been unclear.”

No. I misunderstood you.

“Reading through the advertisements on microphone emulators, you might get the impression that they could turn your cheap microphone into the equivalent of a much more expensive microphone.”

“That's obviously not possible.”

Since I haven't actually used the IK gadget, I can't be so certain of that. I do know that many guitar players are eschewing amps and replacing them with PODs and the like. Why? Because the modeling is so darned good.


“Specifically, if my cheap microphone can't capture any signal above 1200Hz (I said it was cheap!), if I record a piccolo concerto, I'll notice that my lots of notes are absent from my recording. Running that through a microphone emulator won't make that "missing" information appear, because it was never captured in the first place.”

Agreed. One shouldn't try to record an instrument that has a range of 630Hz - 5K with a 1200Hz mic.


"Did that make sense?"


Yup. I still think the IK gadget is interesting.


Regards,

Bob

So do I!

I'm in the camp of, it's better to have a good mic to start with.

I too, wonder how many folks will think that spending $70 on a plug in while using a cheap dynamic mic will suddenly have their vocals sound like they were recorded on a $3000 Neumann.

Using this to get new flavors with an existing mic that is already pretty decent, is what it's probably very good at doing. But I also wonder if that wouldn't be possible with the artful and tasty use of EQ from a plug in you already likely have. For example, if you want the vocal to be warmer.... boost the mids a bit..... want it cooler, cut the mids and lows and boost the highs to taste.

Well, as of this morning (12/7/2015), Antares Mic Mod EFX is on sale for $50. So you can find out if you've got some spare cash.

Me, I'm saving up for the BiaB 2016 update.