Jim Lill does a microphone overview

mrkb · October 2023

Great video

https://youtu.be/4Bma2TE-x6M?si=8lQ2mnHdnYTWMKNZ

stickyfiddle · October 2023

Really excellent and much scientific than his previous stuff. And now - of course - I want to dive into building my own mics...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bma2TE-x6M

Fingers657 · October 2023

Jim Lil should win awards for his brilliant videos.
Even just editing all of that footage would take weeks - he must really have a great way of cataloging all of the audio and video he does so that he can match it all together when he's editing.
Do YouTube give awards?
Im already looking forward to his next and wondering what the subject will be ?

mrkb · October 2023

Whys this in the guitar section??

Jim Lill does a microphone overview - Studio & Recording Discussions on theFretBoard

stickyfiddle · October 2023

mrkb said:

Whys this in the guitar section??

Jim Lill does a microphone overview - Studio & Recording Discussions on theFretBoard

I kinda figured noone would see it in there...!

bluecat · October 2023

Don't we all mic our guitar amps for home recording?

BillDL · October 2023

bluecat said:

Don't we all mic our guitar amps for home recording?

Depends on the amp and whether you are able to play it loud enough at home to get the sound you want, @bluecat. A lot of amps have direct out sockets with speaker cabinet emulation that mutes the internal speaker and allows you to capture the amp's sound straight to an audio interface without disturbing anybody. Some direct outs capture the amp's sound better than others.

Stuckfast · October 2023

I only got about ten minutes in. He's great to watch and it's a real high-effort video but his comparison process is full of holes. Also his speaker in a box sounds terrible, why would you want to use that as a source?

If you're interested in comparing mics, Audio Test Kitchen has done the same thing much more rigorously.

Nerine · October 2023

Stuckfast said:

I only got about ten minutes in. He's great to watch and it's a real high-effort video but his comparison process is full of holes. Also his speaker in a box sounds terrible, why would you want to use that as a source?

If you're interested in comparing mics, Audio Test Kitchen has done the same thing much more rigorously.

Why is his comparison process “full of holes”?

Why does his speaker in a box sound “terrible”?? Why does that matter?

I think the video is great and mirrors a lot of my experiences when using mics that cost huge money £10-20k and comparing them to cheaper or even budget alternatives in the same recording sessions.

The differences between these things are not as large as everyone would like to have you believe, and a lot of it is utter nonsense and pure snobbery.

Plus vintage mics vary A LOT. Same with pickups, guitars, amps, whatever.

When you actually sit down and think about the whole vintage and/or boutique thing, it’s completely laughable. Fools and their money,..

Nerine · October 2023

Agreed. Excellent from Jim, as per.

Makes the snobs and vintage/boutique aficionados look a bit silly…

Roland · October 2023

Threads merged

Danny1969 · October 2023

Stuckfast said:

I only got about ten minutes in. He's great to watch and it's a real high-effort video but his comparison process is full of holes. Also his speaker in a box sounds terrible, why would you want to use that as a source?

If you're interested in comparing mics, Audio Test Kitchen has done the same thing much more rigorously.

I thought the same. Interesting video and full marks for effort but ultimately pointless. Unless the object was to make popular YT content.

Stuckfast · October 2023

Nerine said:

Why is his comparison process “full of holes”?

Why does his speaker in a box sound “terrible”?? Why does that matter?

I think the video is great and mirrors a lot of my experiences when using mics that cost huge money £10-20k and comparing them to cheaper or even budget alternatives in the same recording sessions.

The differences between these things are not as large as everyone would like to have you believe, and a lot of it is utter nonsense and pure snobbery.

Plus vintage mics vary A LOT. Same with pickups, guitars, amps, whatever.

When you actually sit down and think about the whole vintage and/or boutique thing, it’s completely laughable. Fools and their money,..

All his mics sound terrible on the speaker, so I'm assuming the speaker itself is the issue. There are plenty of good dual concentric monitors on the market right now, why not just use one of those? Since his home-made speaker hasn't been calibrated or measured in any way, we have no way of knowing what its useful frequency range, what kind of resonances it has, or how much of the sound is radiated by the cabinet rather than the speaker itself. The chances are his mic measurements are worthless below 200Hz or above 5kHz.

His home-made jig allows him to line up the front of each mic in the same spot every time, but that's not actually what you want. What you need is the ability to line up the capsule in the same spot every time, and not every mic has the capsule the same distance from the front. Take a look at how Audio Test Kitchen do this with lasers.

Unless he gets into it later on in the part of the video I didn't watch, he doesn't seem to discuss polar pattern or off-axis response, which are both huge factors in the sound of a mic. Nor does he discuss smoothing and how that affects his graphs.

Anyway...

How can it be true both that the differences between mics are not as large as everyone would have us believe, and also that vintage mics vary a lot?

I think a lot of this "all mics actually sound the same" stuff arises because people are using their mics for the same applications all the time, and those don't tend to reveal the differences. For example, if you only ever use mics to record close-up vocals in an acoustically dead space, the main difference you'll notice is that the tone of the recorded voice changes a bit. And you might well find that an SM7 suits the singer better than a £10k vintage valve mic. You might also find that you can make them all sound quite similar in that particular application using EQ.

But that's like saying all cars are the same because you only ever drive them down the High Street at rush hour. Try using those same mics as the main pair for an orchestra, or as overheads for a jazz drummer, or to record a church organ, or for spot miking an operatic soloist. No amount of EQ is going to make your SM7 sound like a C12 now.

The world of mics is a bit like the world of guitars in that it has become quite conservative. A few old models are held up as the 'gold standard' and thus develop ridiculous second-hand prices, and a lot of new mics are basically copies of those old ones. Meanwhile genuinely innovative, high-quality new mics sometimes struggle to gain a market share.

It has gone to crazy extremes, but I think there's a bit more justification for this in the case of old mics than in the case of old guitars, and that's because it's much harder to copy everything that contributes to the sound of the original. No-one is going to make the VF14 valve again, and nothing sounds like it in a U47. Many people have tried to copy the CK12 capsule, and most of them sound nothing like the originals. No-one can recreate the aluminium capsule used in the M50.

So, if you want to buy a C12 it'll probably cost you upwards of £15k. But if you want a clone that actually performs like a C12 that won't be cheap either. Go to Warm Audio or Peluso or Golden Age and you can get something with the number 12 in the model name that looks quite similar, but it won't have much in common with the original. A Squier Strat is much closer to a holy grail Fender than a Chinese U47 copy is to a real U47.

There are also quite a few classic mics that don't really have a modern equivalent, which also drives prices up. No-one makes anything similar to the AKG D12, D19 or D224 today, for example.

Apologies, I seem to have written an essay...

Grunfeld · October 2023

I watched this last night, really interesting. I came away with the idea that there are some important differences between mics, some are better at some jobs than others, but they are not $30,000 better.

I was also impressed by the way Jim Lill tells a story -- which is nothing to do with mics.

Stuckfast · October 2023

One more point about the economics of vintage / high-end mics: unlike guitars, these were developed as professional tools for use in high-end environments where everything was and is hugely expensive. If you're recording film scores in Abbey Road Studio One, the budget might well be six figures a day, quite possibly several million for the entire project. In that context, the fact that your main mics are worth £30k each is essentially irrelevant. They're long-term investments. It costs more than that to employ a receptionist for a year.

We now live in a world where there are very few Abbey Roads, and £30k for a mic is a disproportionate expense in the context of a home studio. But you can't blame the mic for that.

Winny_Pooh · October 2023

As the human brain is incredibly calibrated to listen to speech, it's best to use talking or singing for mic comparisons.

I've heard a few high end mic comparisons on gearslutz with vocalists that will make you think. I've also done a fair bit at home.

A 6 inch speaker is of little benefit here.

Stuckfast · October 2023

Winny_Pooh said:

As the human brain is incredibly calibrated to listen to speech, it's best to use talking or singing for mic comparisons.

Well, again, that will tell you about some aspects of the mic's performance. But they might not be the most important ones.

I guess my biggest problem with this video is summed up in the title: "Where does the tone come from?" The concept of 'tone' is dubious enough when it comes to guitars or amps. It makes no sense in the context of microphones.

Consider omni pencil mics. These come in two types: diffuse-field optimised and free-field optimised. If you use a free-field mic to record something at a distance, it'll sound dull. If you point a diffuse-field mic at something close-up, it'll sound uncomfortably bright. That's not a fault in the mics, or anything to do with their 'tone'. It just reflects their design and intended use.

robinbowes · October 2023

The video is entertaining but can be summarised in four words:

Different microphones sound different.

"Vintage" or "boutique" mics suffer from the same cork-sniffery as pre-CBS Tests and '57 'Bursts.

As @Stuckfast has already pointed out, he is testing just one specific mic use-case. What about omni or figure-8 patterns? They have completely different applications and may sound terrible in a test like this.

As always in subjective audio matters, the takeaway is: use your ears.

Incidentally, @Stuckfast , I'm currently experimenting with the Decca .Tree.recording process and, as u can't afford.M50 mics, I'm using Behringer omni condensers with plastic balls fitted over the capsule!

R.

stickyfiddle · October 2023

Isn't the main point that he was measuring them all and mapping frequency response compared with an SM57 as a baseline. The speaker rig and audio is mostly there just to enable that.

Obviously it's not perfect and cardio/omni/fig8 would give different results in different tests, but he's making YouTube videos, not going for a Nobel prize.

mrkb · October 2023

stickyfiddle said:

Isn't the main point that he was measuring them all and mapping frequency response compared with an SM57 as a baseline. The speaker rig and audio is mostly there just to enable that.

Obviously it's not perfect and cardio/omni/fig8 would give different results in different tests, but he's making YouTube videos, not going for a Nobel prize.

Agreed, it’s comparing freq response under the same setup, not showing which is useful for a particular application . Which has its uses - the preamp tube vs solid state setting showed that there’s dubious claims going on, and the data showed that. For those that can be bothered to watch it, he deduced the capsule was the most critical (not housing, transformers,etc) and there could be a lot of variability between mics due to production tolerances/small design evolutions.

Danny1969 · October 2023

What you learn as an engineer is different mic's are suited to different tasks and it's a lot more involved than frequency response. If you consider the mechanics of how a microphone actually works you can see it's never going to be a linear device, it's always going to do better in some areas than others. Off Axis rejection, max SPL, transient response all come from a mics mechanical construction before you even get into the internal pre amp etc. There's a real science to it and a reason expensive mics cost so much.

I had seen loads of little studios spend 20K on a space for the studio and 40K or so in mics and pre amps. Me and my studio partner went the other way, over 100K on the space but only 20K ish on desk, mics and a bit of outboard. We never had any nice pre amps or any expensive mics. Lot's of good work horses like 57's and 81's etc but no high end vocal condensors or nice ribbon mics. And we suffered for that booking wise and so did the quality of the recordings. Everything we did was ok but always a little too clean and soulless IMO. Conversely some of the people I work with now have small spaces but some great mics and lunchbox pre amps and they are getting better tracking of vocals and guitars than I ever did.

It's a fun video but missing the point on so many aspects.

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Jim Lill does a microphone overview

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