There are lots of mics that are just fine, and some depend on what you're doing. Obviously if you're an AM part 15 only you don't have anywhere near the frequency response on the air of an FM or streaming outfit and you can get away with a lot less mic. For FM or streaming you need a bit more punch and sparkle.
I do voice overs and commercials for stations around the world. Don't tell anyone, but I do them into a $50 condensor mic from one of the music catalogs. I believe it's an MXL. Now, these mics aren't really very good. They can sound splendid but you really have to learn to work them to avoid pops and wind noise. They're VERY sensitive to room noise, and can overload easy. But I've done a lot of high end stuff for big name outfits (Including Clear Channel and ABC) as well as hundreds of small stations too (I'm also a very active fiverr voice over guy). I don't know if I'd want one for on the air, just due to having to watch the pops, noise pickup, and they're very sensitive to proximity effect -- level changes dramatically off axis, etc. But they can work. Am AM only won't benefit from the extra sparkle of one of these mics. Secret? I'm replacing it with an RE-20 (below)
You can't really miss with a Shure SM58. The standard of live performance, and we use them live on our commercial FM and on remote broadcasts, also for interviews in the newsroom. They look boring. They're not "fun" mics. But they're durable as hell and sound fine. I've sung into them in the band for over 20 years. They generally can be purchased new for about $100. The many clones of the SM58 probably sound ok (some of them) but when compared A/B I can always tell the real Shure. There IS a difference.
If you wanna sound great on AM or FM, have minimal proximity effect, And look impressive, the Electro Voice RE-20 is killer. A standard of broadcast radio and voice over work. About $450 if you watch for a sale. You can sometimes find used ones for less, but I hate used mics, you don't know how they've been abused. They have a new one -- the RE-320 that's a bit cheaper and is getting good reviews but I haven't tried it myself.
The Shure SM7B is also a great studio mic, still about $350.
You don't have to spend this much, but you know you're getting a good unit when you do. I know commercial FM's with $2,000 dollar Neumans on the air.
Generally cheap means crap. We had purchased a bunch of cheap peavy mics --Musicians Friend (I think) had them as a deal of the day 5 for $100. The station owner bought them thinking we may need more mics now and then In a pinch we had to use one on the air. It SO horrible I threw them all in the trash and gave hm a stern warning about buying stuff just becaue it's cheap.
Oh, there's also a Sennheiser I really like -- I believe it's a 421 (I can check) funky looking and been around for years.
So, there's my mic rambling for today 🙂
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country Radio
SM-58 Shure
On the sm58 front, the behringer 8500 is a clone, 24 bucks, and sounds incredible when you look at the price.
Talking about microphones reminds me of the great microphone switcheroo done by a station engineer back in the 1970s.
For several years the station had one of the best voice mics ever made, the RCA 77-DX Ribbon Omni-Directional Microphone. Beautiful voice sound.
The engineer who started and designed the station was killed in a plane crash, and his replacement was a guy just-out-of-school who spotted the 77-DX, declared it to be "old and out of date," and replaced it with a Radio Shack mic that cost around $25. From that time on the announcers sounded like they were on a phone call.
The RCA Mic was never seen again.
that dirty rat.
Until you use it in a production studio on on an FM where you have enough frequency response to REALLY tell the difference. We've had Behringers, Peavey's, and several others that sere suppose do te the same as a '58. We had one at a table where interviews are done live on the air (on a commercial AM). We had one mic missing as an announcer had grabbed one to do an on location remote, which left us with a "quality clone" and a real '58. The difference on the air was loud and clear.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
yep. but we dont.
And the 8500 works great. I have some mid-level mics, an at2020, and a akgc12vr.. cant tell the difference on part 15 AM.. of course im probably missing several frequencies in my own hearing response by now.. I dj'd nightclubs, bars, blah blah no one cares what i did for a living now im ranting about lalalala...
BUT - the fact is, and has been pointed out several times with regard to EQing our stations - we just dont have that much bandwidth. Buy a 30 dollar mic from guitar center that is a SM58 clone (I do like the behringer), it should last, and it will save you mega bucks. For internet streaming; just eq the hell out of it and you will be fine.
A microphone is one of the few audio sources in your station where different units can have different sounds. If you have typical CD players, turntables with RIAA pre-amps (and if you don't your pre-amp is over 50 yeard old) and on down the line, they all pretty much put out the same sound from the same CD or record. (this is where the audiophiles tell me a high end CD player with better sampling and a high end A/D onverter will sound better -- maybe, but not on the air...)
Microphones however, vary from brand to brand and model to model. There's a reason commercial stations don't buy $40 microphones for their air studios. If you were to sit down at your mixer with a dozen different mics, and sit there with your headphones on, and the eq all at neutral, and talked for a minute, switched mics, talked for a minute and switched mics, with no other change besides the mics, you'd notice a difference in eq and output in every one of them.
If you have one mic, and you use it, and it sounds Ok on the air to you, it doesn't matter what it is, basically. But if you bring in a second mic of a different make or model, you will promptly notice that they sound different. Yes, even on an AM station. Now, we all know that AM, FM, internet, etc all have different bandwidth -- tha ability to relate frequencies from high to low. And you're not going to hear the high end of a fine condensor mic on an AM station, commercial OR part 15. You're not gonna hear the bottom end bass, either. But different mics have different equalization curves within the band where they will be heard, which is wny they all sound so different. Some are better at rejecting ambient sound -- if you're in a room with noisy computers or an air conditioner. Some have a different proximity effect -- how the sound changes as you move near and far from the mic -- try it, ride your levels to keep them constant but notice how the response changes as you move near and away from your mic. There are a lot of variables between units besides top and low end frequency response. You want a mic that gives you the sound you like with the requirements you need for your studio conditions. Radio stations and voice over guys don't make the RE-20 one of the best selling mics in the world because it's cool looking (although it is) but because it's one of the best for delivering what is needed, AM or FM, or doing voice overs. A Shure SM58 is a decent, all around mic that sounds acceptable in most any use, although you won't find a voice over studio using a '58. There's a reason people and stations and studios buy $4000 Nuemans. Because they have a unique sound. Every mic has it's signature. For us, no, it probably doesn't make that much difference as long as it's not complete crap. I once had a pair of very thin "pencil" condensor mics (they used AAA batteries for power) that came with some inexpensive reel to reel recorder, and I used them for years recording cymbals in the studio because they sounded so amazing. But they were crap mics, and I wouldn't consider using them for any other purpose, but on cymbals they kicked ass. The different curves in mics is ofven right in the human voice sweet spot. There are even mics preferred for women announcers, because they work better with the sound of a female voice.
Keep in mind, you can't eq in frequencies that aren't there. If your mic rolls off the bass at, say 100 hz (I'm just picking random numbers for demonstration) there's no way you're going to eq IN to your audio low end from that mic down to 50 hz, 'cause it's not there to dial in. EQ increases or decreases frequencies that exist in the signal. Eq won't put in frequencies that do not exist in the signal they're modifying. Trying to do so just ads muddyness to the sound.
Even with the limited frequency response of AM broadcasting, different mics with different sound curves sound different. And again, you should choose a mic that doesn't NEED to be eq'ed to sound acceptable. In real radio, as I've mentioned before, audio sources go into a straight mixer with no controls other than audio switching and levels, no eq, no shelving, no panning. Why would your part 15 station need to eq a mic or anything else? If you crank more bass into your mic to make you sound more "ballsy" how is that going to compare to the other audio in your system? Keep it clean, keep it straight, and let the listener adjust the tone to his liking. Don't try to screw with every audio source to YOUR taste. Give them clean sound with everything in it response wise that you can send out there, without unnecessary coloration.
I've heard a lof of $50 condensor mics sound damn good on commercial FM. I've also heard a lot of '58's sound like hell, because people don't comprehend how to "work" them. You have to actually talk INTO them. They're not especially good for table interviews. RE-20's are great for this however, and they're great for on air, and VO work too. 58's are OK if you're interviewing someone and you're holding the mic, so you can get it in their face.
The phrase "eq the hell out of it" makes engineers like me cringe to the core. Decent gear doesn't NEED eq. EQ is for mixdown after a live recording, bringing live music and instruments within the range of human hearing, and making up for shortcomings in a musical recording setting, not for getting broadcast gear to sound right.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
"eq the hell out of it" - it really does not matter what mic you put on an internet stream, you will have to do some processing on it. The issue is not just with the encoding you use, but also things like network latency, fragmented packets, etc - you will need to compensate..
What is the engineering method for testing a microphone for clipping and distortion?
The ear is sometimes good, but is only subjective and we want some way to demonstrate and prove how well a microphone performs. We want laboratory precision.
Although I am not yet streaming my Part 15 operation, we are streaming both the commercial stations I work for. Both the 100,000 watt FM, and the 5000 watt AM. In both cases the internet stream is fed directly out of the control board -- both regular broadcast boards with no eq, etc on them -- to the streaming computers. In the FM we have a SM-58. In the AM we have an MXL condensor that's at least 15 years old. We have the condensor in the AM only because the previous owner thought it looked impressive. No way does the expanded frequency response of condensor come through in the AM signal. In both studios both mics are plugged directly into the boards with zero processing or EQ. These boards feed the streaming computers directly, with no processing. We stream both stations with Broadwave on older PC's. I don't really have much to do with the computer end of it, but can assure you both streaming computers are several years old, were free, and are using the free or cheapest version of Broadwave you could get your hands on 3 years ago. Our streaming audio sounds great to me, with 40 years of broadcasting behind me, also sounds fine to our contract engineer whose experience goes back to pre-Vietnam War. It also passes muster with (most importantly) the station owner, manager, and sales staff (and no one is more critical than salespeople). A clean, direct feed from decent (although not expensive nor state of the art) equipment makes up our internet streams. Obviously we have to have some processing for the transmitters, VERY basic at the FM, all 20+ year old CRL gear. And of course at them AM we have to meet the NRSC standard by law, and we have some eq, de-essing, and gain control so we can't overmodulate the transmitter. That's it. The FM also has CRL gain control on the feed to the microwave STL units out to the transmitter.
I also own/operate two internet only sports networks where we stream live sportscasting. From sports mixers, using Audio-Technica sports headsets into an iPad, and to the internet, connected to our streaming either via wifi, or 3G or 4G depending on what's available. Our audio quality equals or surpasses that of major sports networks including pro football, basketball and hockey. There is zero processing in those internet streams. We generally have over 1,000 listeners at one time listening to the streams and we also often feed to radio stations from the same stream. We also play our commercials, theme music, halftime entertainment, etc from that same ipad to the stream and it sounds wonderful.
Obviously I don't know your setup, and don't know your equipment, and you could certainly require processing. I can't see how processing or eq can help with network issues, unless you've got a really horrible stream.
Obviously everyone has to figure out what works best in their situation. My philosophy has always been the less stuff in the aduio path from source to listeners speaker, the better. A philosophy that has served me well for many years.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country
Whats the link to your streams? I'd like to hear it.
Well, I don't know much about the technical aspects of microphones.
But I think that there's one consideration that overrides any of those technical aspects. And that's having a good radio voice. If you have it, then you can use pretty much any microphone and sound good. If you don't (as I don't), well, then you're beating a dead horse.
One of Artisan Radio's programmers used a $10 Radio Shack clip on microphone and sounded fantastic (with no audio processing). I can use an expensive microphone and sound like, well, I won't say it here.
poo. the word is poo.
I agree with what you said.. not because of the math ( 🙂 ) - but because you *did* it 🙂
Awesome.