TRICK!!!: how to make your ME66 mic sound like a MHK416 mic

[Michael Bernstein]

This is an EEEnteresting discussion. And thanks to Jose for bringing up Ken Tanaka's mic comparison.

Meandering from the original topic, but providing further reading for those interested in how other professionals talk about sound, I list below some articles I found while Googling:

Aesthetics are weird: this guy hates Pro-Tools (and prefers to record his audio on two-inch analog tape).

And I found one article about recording "Livin' La Vida Loca" that described recording and mixing everything in the digital domain.

But I don't think I've found the article that Douglas Spotted Eagle was talking about. Anyone?

Michael

[Jose di Cani]

We are not talking about Douglas Spotted Eagle's article!!!!! I was discussing the article from Tanaka (comparance between bth shotguns from Sennheiser) that you can read here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/audio/tanaka2.php

The only discussion I had with DSE was about his name and about using VST-plugins in video post-production. I still think that you can come very far with VST-plugins. MOst of us don't have a clue about how to use vst-plugins and want them to be the solution to their audio problems. I been making music for 9 years now , using audio and midi and I saw things change. It is soo easy (too easy I guess) to achieve good results, but sometimes people tend to use the presets instead of experimenting and hearing the sublte differences. DSE also talked about the next VST mic modelor plugin, which I used as well but I don't like it anymore.

http://www.antarestech.com/products/amm.html

Protools I don't use and I don't give a damn if people think I am not a good musician if I don't use PRo tools. You use the tools you are most comfortable with. I don't need PRo tools , but I must say that PRO tools has some NICE PROFESIONAL PLUG-ins that you can't find anywhere else. The studios demand these plugs. that is why! And for video production, you probably need protools cause all the big players use pro tools and that is the prefered way of producinf music. COmpare it with using technics as a standard. The same old story. I prefer to use my own stuff.

End.

[Michael Bernstein]

Gracious.

I actually wanted to find the source which Douglas Spotted Eagle referred to when he said:

The distortion is intentional on LaVida Loca. In fact, the engineer did a commentary on that.

I'd love to read the article or interview (or watch it on video, if that's the case).

Michael

[Jose di Cani]

Hi

Let's be honoust. The vocals of Ricky martin sound as if they were coming out of a sennheiser 66. I too think the distortion was done intentionally. Everybody has to add some kind of distortion cause everybody 9is doing that nowadays. If the beatles were alive today, they too would use distortion cause they are mainstream. Evrything you hear on the radio is distorted anyways, so why not distort it more. I don't like it to be honoust. I don't listen to comercial BS (ricky martin, britney spears, Eminem and the rest of the commercial garbage).

The same is happening with movie/film sound. FOr my taste, the effects of movies are way TOO hard. Sounds that are too hard and thus unlogical are: sound of beating someone up, guns, doors, etc. Grab a 80 film and you will apreciate real logical sound. That is why a sennheiser 66 or other cheap mic will just do fine for movies. It doesn't record garbage. It records sound how it is. Equalize it afterwards to get rid of harsh frequencies and move from there one.

At the other hand, grab a 70 or 80 single and you can apreciate the sound coming out of yoru speakers. You can hear with what mic they recorded their vocals.

[Jose di Cani]

Here some other good links to help you out with getting better sounds with your current low-end microphones. Why spend 1000 dollars on mics, if you can get the same quality with some understanding about recording tricks and pc-editing with plug-ins.


another great general link to how record good vocals:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_record_vocals.htm


interfacing professional microphones
to computer sound cards:
http://www.shure.com/support/technot...soundcard.html


choosing the right microphone:
http://www.kernmount.com/docs/HarveyThread.pdf


Using Plugins for Professional Sounding Audio
http://www.tweakheadz.com/plugins_for_audio.html


equalize your vocals the right way :
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqfreq.php


Guide™ to Putting Together an Inexpensive PC Recording System
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqfreq.php


in this article they are talking about red hot chilly peppers' song californication and the way music is distorted/smashed to sound harder on radios. This is going the wrong way. This is not music. This is worse than listening to HItler talk 24 hours a day. The sound is getting worse and worse. That is why I don't listen to radio anymore. NO dynamics
http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Dynamics.html

[Alessandro Machi]

I hope that all of you besmirching the ME-66 are not basing it on what you hear coming from a mini-dv camcorder or the mini-dv format.

If you are not using a high quality analog record device such as BetaCam SP or S-VHS HI-FI and/or Stereo Linear (with Dolby NR), your acquisition format maybe coloring your results.

If you are using uncompressed audio files recorded on a computer, then does that mean your tests are not location sound recording tests?

The point of the ME-66 is it is a cost-effective internally powered ENG microphone. That does not mean it is the best microphone, nor the cheapest, but it is quite effective in most situations both on location and in studio.

[Jose di Cani]

alessandro,

YOu hit the spot. Absolutely right ! If you record your sounds on labtob through a quality soundcard (soudncards are cheap nowadays), then you can edit the sound in real-time and save your sound on harddisk, delete it and record over again. Record ambience sounds, record effects, doors ete etc , save it on harddrive and you can achieve pro results.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

OK, Now I'm confused.
Record the sound to a hard drive, edit in realtime, delete the file?
Sound cards for laptops are cheap? I'm missing something.
The lowest cost GOOD sound card for a laptop is the Echo Indigo I/O which is a 24/96 2 channel card with 8 virtual outs and AC3 decode. 3.5mm input. USD $179.00

From there, the cost jumts dramatically. Cheapest good firewire box I'm aware of is 379.00.

You can record, edit, playback in realtime on ANY laptop soundcard, internal or not. You can record to external or internal hard drive, edit, or not.

Alessandro's point is that you can't use the DAC quality of a camera to compare the quality of the ME-66, which you call a "semi-professional" microphone, and the quality of the sound you hear is not accurate if you're using a low grade DAC, which most DV camcorders have. He's not correct in assuming that all DV cams have poor audio converters, they don't. It's an uncompressed format, so only the DAC, not the format matters. To assume that an analog recording device is better is also incorrect. In fact, at that point it's worse, because you'll then have an analog to dig transfer at some point, and the potential for adding noise is there. You have no noise transfer potential with dig to dig transfers. Plus, in the analog to dig transfer, you're STILL relying exclusively on the quality of the DAC.
Either way, the ME66 is a good mic, but my question is, why would you (Jose) suggest that editing on a laptop is any more different than anything else anywhere else? Or that recording on a laptop is more "pro" than recording say...to a Nagra, to a field recorder, or other device?

[Alessandro Machi]

I am under the impression that virtually all digital formats (especially the prosumer ones) use compression.

We hear about ever increasing digital audio recording sampling rates. If Digital Audio can keep increasing it's sampling capability, then that must mean the previous digital version was compressed to some extent.

Analog Origination, Digital Destination.

I'm a bit perplexed about the sound card comments also. I firmly believe in recording onto reliable tape based formats, then transfering to ones preferred method for editing.

I don't believe in recording first generation onto any device that can instantly "lose" your recording, aka vaporware.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

No, DV is not a compressed audio format. It's raw audio.
As far as recording to HD, I do this quite regularly. Backup is nice, but tape has dropouts too. I converted all three of our rooms to HD only, we use DA88's for archive and backward compatibility. Have yet to have suffered the problems of dropouts that we've had with digital tape and analog tape formats for years. And I go back to the days of our 2" Stevens machines.
Sampling rates and compression aren't related in the way you are describing them. Sampling is merely how many "pictures" of the sound that the application/hardware takes, and how many times it does it in a given amount of time. More samples means better pictures, that's all. But that doesn't involve compression.

[Alessandro Machi]

If DV is raw audio then how come sound guys absolutely dislike 12k Recording but find 16K acceptable?

More sampling, less compression, sounds logical to me, unless the size of the sampling can be altered.

I've heard that the HI-8's used in DA-88's are not considered long term. Could have more to do with the machines being out of spec but because the tapes are "interchanged" with other decks to verify their
integrity it could actually be that the recordings were flawed to begin with but it was only discovered years later when the tape is put into a machine with a different tape path alignment.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

12 bit, 32K audio means the audio is sampled LESS frequently than 16 bit/48K audio. The fewer the bits, the smaller the sample size and therefore the less detail is found. For the human speaking voice, 12 bit is about as far as you can dumb down the audio and still maintain decent integrity.

Have a peek at http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guid...ages/wave2.gif for a visual explanation. It's the same with video.

Regarding the DA88's, I'm not worried about them at all. We're pulling tapes from 8 years ago that are still fine, playing back just fine. I've had as many as 16 DA88's running at once, and always have owned at least 3 at one shot. I've got one for backwards compatibility with a DA 98 still in a box in case of bad things. There is a lot of speculation and talk about the Hi8 tapes being bad, but since we don't move the machines around, and since we don't change machines, it's never been a problem, and we're pulling stuff at least once a week.

[Graham Bernard]

Sampling aint the same as compression. It may "give" a smaller file size which to you or me may suggest "compression" but it isn't. Would you say that 8mm film was a compressed version of 16mm film. I guess you could argue, philosophically, it is compressed. But again compression implies that the "same" information is compressed to give a smaller file size that on delivery to a decoder - TV or PC screen - we see it back again in all its glory. The same cannot be said the same of 8mm to 16mm film. Put 8mm on the same size screen as the 16mm .. yeah? Point taken? Now can one "compress" 44 or 48 sampled audio and thence onto something that will decode it in effcient way? Don't know . .But apart from FX-ing audio OR getting a file size down .. don't really see the need for using compression if it is for file size . . . ok, yes I can .. but not in the philosphical way we are talking about . .

Sampling IS a very clever way of taking humungous amounts of digital info - "1"s and "0"s - but it is still Digital. Now here I'm on shaky ground - and I'm sure Spot will "correct" me, but as speeds get faster and demands are made on greater and greater clarity it will "approach" that of analogue media . . eg film. You want the clarity of 16mm film? Then use it.

Interesting thread . .

Grazie

[Emre Safak]

Sampling is the technique which allows digital representation of an analog signal. Increasing the sampling rate increases the fidelity of the approximation. Similarly for increasing the bit depth. The truth is a bit more complicated, but this is the shortened version.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Eloquently put, but I think the question is whether sampling rates =compression rates or artifacts. It's easier to visually display than to demonstrate with words. Or at least it is for me.
Grazie, you are dead on, except the mag stripe on 16mm can't do what we can do with 24/48...just simply because of the format and mechanics. I guess a pristine, never been played, one shot of a 16mm might be in good shape, but play it thru a few times...you'll have dropouts. If you'd fly over here for a VASST, you'd hear an 8 mm, 16mm, and 35mm soundtrack after a few plays compared to the original.
These days, digital is the only way for those that work in the biz for money, and even more or less for those who are true artists, simply because we've got so many emulations, tube interfaces, and more...you can get GREAT sound from dig these days. We've come a long way....baby. (you guys are probably too young to remember Virginia Slims)