Decent live mic for bass/baritone

[tubesornothing]

Hey guys, I currently use a Beta 58 for singing, but I am annoyed at the drop off when I sing low notes.   Any of you guys bass/baritone recommend a decent live mic?

[G._Hoffman]

I like Beta 87's a lot, and the AKG 535 is really nice for lower voices (it can be a bit shrill for higher voices - I'm not sure if it is still on the market, though).  These are both condenser mics, though, so they need phantom power. 

If you don't mind the look, you could also try a Shure SM-7 or, probably best of all (even if it does look like a rather improbable dildo) is the EV RE-20.  These are both larger diaphragm dynamic mics, so they have a better low end response.  The big advantage to the RE-20 is that it is a cardioid mic that has no proximity effect (that's where the low end gets emphasized as you place the mic closer to the source).  If you can deal with it's appearance, the RE-20 is the way to go.  People won't see much of your face, but it will sound great!


Gabriel

[tubesornothing]

thanks Gabriel I will look into those.  I like the idea of no proximity effect - I am having a hard time getting use to the proximity effect with my Beta 58.

[PRR]

If you can work Omni: RE-55 is an excellent vocal mike, including the baritone zone. And cheaper and smaller than RE-20.

[tubesornothing]

If you can work Omni: RE-55 is an excellent vocal mike, including the baritone zone. And cheaper and smaller than RE-20.

Wow, that is a FLAT and wide frequency response...

[G._Hoffman]

If you can work Omni: RE-55 is an excellent vocal mike, including the baritone zone. And cheaper and smaller than RE-20.

Wow, that is a FLAT and wide frequency response...

That's true of most omni mics.  

Its a physics matter.  The way you make a mike directional is to feed it a bit of sound to the back side of the diaphragm.  The problem is, this is frequency dependent, so you mess up the frequency response of the mic.  So, the easy way around this is to use an omni directional mic.  Works great in the studio, and OK for broadcast (the off sides pickup can really wreak havoc with intelligibility).  Omni mics are mostly completely useless for live work, however, because they have almost no feedback rejection* and very little isolation from other instruments on the stage.  If there is a loud electric bass player or drummer on the stage, omni mics will pick them up.  The RE-55 is an excellent broadcast mic, and has some great uses in the studio, but is just a pain in the behind for live work.  Like every other mic EV makes, it is a great mic for it's intended purpose, but it is not that versatile.  My suggestion of an RE-20 is kind of a joke.  It would be a great mic sound wise, but is rather impractical for live vocal use (it was Ray Charles' favorite studio vocal mic, though).  My first suggestions - the Beta 87 and the 535 - are really probably the best options.  Both are fantastic mics, and are likely a good choice.  You should try them before you buy, if possible, because they may or may not suit your voice.  I would guess that the 535 would be the better choice, as the 87 is really better for voices in the higher range.  The 87 is usually my favorite live vocal mic for female singers.

Somewhat counter intuitively, the way to improve the low end response in omni mics is to make the diaphragm smaller, because it raises the resonant frequency - and all of it's overtones - which means you have fewer issues with comb filtering.  This makes it really easy to get a flat frequency response in a small diaphragm omni mic.  Perhaps the only good thing Behringer makes is their small diaphragm measurement mic - which I use for my system test software.  These types of mics are fantastic for certain purposes where noise isn't an issue, such as system measurement and drum micing, but because of the small diaphragm they put out a small signal which must be amplified quiet a bit to get a usable signal, so they are really noisy.  Plus, they have very bad feedback rejection, so they are no use for live work.  Better test mics usually don't do much better on frequency response (some, but not a lot), but they are much better in terms of noise.  


Gabriel




*There is an old way around the feedback issue.  Use two mics dynamic mics, and use a Y cable with one line wired in reverse so they show the console opposite polarities.  The trick to this is to sing directly into one mic, so as to minimized the amount of leakage.  This works shockingly well, but it doesn't work as well as you would expect on isolation, and it sucks for anything but vox.  If you ever see any pictures of The Grateful Dead back before the 70's oil crisis, when they were using their "Wall of Sound" system, they used this system for their vocal mics.  

[RicharD]

Sennheiser MD-421

[birt]

a Beyerdynamic M88 will sound great too.

[G._Hoffman]

a Beyerdynamic M88 will sound great too.

Worth a try, at least.  They have a pretty sever proximity effect, though.



Gabriel

[tubesornothing]

Well I ended up buying a Heil PR35.  I really like it. Good step up from the beta 58 for my voice.

http://www.heilsound.com/pro/products/pr35/

[PRR]

What I said. Use an omni.

Yeah, that oddly-tuned Heil is pretty directional up top. Better be, with a voice coil bigger than many speakers. But below 200Hz they "reduce proximity" by basically going omni.

[G._Hoffman]

What I said. Use an omni.

Yeah, that oddly-tuned Heil is pretty directional up top. Better be, with a voice coil bigger than many speakers. But below 200Hz they "reduce proximity" by basically going omni.

No doubt.  At 200hZ, the wavelength is almost 6 feet, so to get a directional microphone without a baffle your diaphragm would need to be about three feet in diameter (and your baffle would need to be just as big).  By the time you get that low pretty much every microphone is looking pretty omnidirectional.


Gabriel

[PRR]

> to get a directional microphone without a baffle your diaphragm would need to be about three feet in diameter

No. Small mikes can give full directionality. A ribbon 1/4" wide will hold an excellent figure-8 pattern far below 50Hz. So do somewhat larger condensers. RE-15 holds 15dB rear to 100Hz. SM58 still has 10dB at 125Hz (declining fast).

These mikes work on a pressure and phase -difference- across two points in space.

To get "good output" in bass you need a big mike. But in most mikes, Mass works against high frequency response. Potentially there is ample bass; actually we diddle-up the high end at the expense of bass to get the best we can at both ends.

[G._Hoffman]

No. Small mikes can give full directionality. A ribbon 1/4" wide will hold an excellent figure-8 pattern far below 50Hz. So do somewhat larger condensers. RE-15 holds 15dB rear to 100Hz. SM58 still has 10dB at 125Hz (declining fast).

Ribbons are better in that regard, because they are working in a fundamentally different manner - pressure gradient or velocity mics rather than pressure mics - but still loose their directionality at low frequencies.  All mics do.  That's fine, of course, because you can't actually hear where lower frequencies are coming from, and lower frequencies don't feedback as easily.  Then again, it sucks, because when you start using more than one mic on a stage, you get a lot of extra low end.  Mics get directional in the mid to upper midrange, but by the time you get down to low-mids - not so much.  I wouldn't trust most manufacturers documentation on this either - in practice, they seem more like fantasy than fact.  

The problem you run into with dynamics and condensers is that the front and back side of the capsule are seeing basically the same part of the wave.  Its the difference between the front and back that makes microphones directional.  They are most directional at wavelengths ≥ the size of the diaphragm.  Below that, mics become steadily less and less directional.  (At least, that's how the physics was explained when I was in school.  It doesn't actually matter all that much in real life, but it sure does a good job of explaining the way mics work in the real world.)

The only real exception to the low frequency omni thing is boundary mics, but even there it is relative to the size of the baffle they are mounted on - usually they are mounted on the floor, so they stay hemispherical to frequencies lower than you can hear.  They also don't get used much any more, as they don't sound all that great.

All of which reminds me of something - does Kevin O'Connor understand electronics better than he does live sound?  His electronics seems good, but he sure doesn't understand why sound guys do what we do, or what we actually would like musicians to do.*


Gabriel


*Set up so you can hear yourself, by the way, and don't ask for guitar in the monitors, which is a sure fire way to insure that both the monitors and the FOH sound sucks.  Constant fights over who is loudest in the monitors are best eliminated by putting less in the monitors.  I, for one, do not want you all that quiet on stage.  Though if you can point your amp towards yourself instead of the audience, that's helpful!  Then again, I like to mic drum kits with 2-4 mics max, and no close mics.  

The issue is that if you put too much in your monitors, they become unintelligible.  These things are not made for CD playback.  They are made to help minimize feedback, and then they are EQ'd to go even further down that road.  Even if I can make them sound "good", they have so many notches carved out of the sound they will never achieve much in the way of articulation.  By setting up so you can hear your guitar out of your amp, and hopefully the drums and maybe bass direct as well, you have the sounds coming from different locations, and your ears can tell what's what much better (that's just physiology).  People always seem to think their monitors should sound like a CD, but they don't, they can't, and they won't.  For myself, all I like in my monitors is as much vocals as I can get, the snare drum, and maybe a bit of keyboard if they are being used.  Bass and kick drum should NEVER be put in monitors for singers, as it makes singers sing flat - don't ask me why, I just know that it does.  Every time.

[G._Hoffman]

Oh, and the "good bass=big diaphragm" thing is a myth.  Listen to the low end out of a good measurement mic some time.  Those things have diaphragms in the 1/16" to 1/8" range, for the most part.  Because they are so small, they have fewer problems with comb filtering.  (Think about it - with a 1" diaphragm a sound with a 1" wave length is presenting both rising pressure and falling pressure to the diaphragm at the same time.  It doesn't actually cancel out completely, but it does cause some frequency cancelations.)  All of which means they do a really stellar job of picking up all frequencies, though their output can be pretty small.  The smaller the diaphragm the better (to a point - at a certain point you get more noise than signal!). 

(To be fair, another part of the advantage to measurement mics is their being omnidirectional, so there is no phase cancellation from the back side of the mic, but the small size is part of the equation.  +0dB/-1dB from 10hZ to 40khZ is actually pretty easy to do, if you don't mind a lousy S/N ratio.) 

The internet has spread a lot of myths about large diaphragms, and they are wonderful for some things (and good ones sound can sound really nice), but they don't have an inherent superiority to small diaphragms at low frequencies.


Gabriel

[PRR]

> that's how the physics was explained when I was in school.

And you believed them??

> They are most directional at wavelengths = the size of the diaphragm.

Actually when wavelength is >> diameter.

But most "for music" mike diaphrams are < than musical wavelengths. OTOO one inch. Which is one wave at 13KHz.

> Below that, mics become steadily less and less directional.

Simple diaphragms do. Phase-difference microphones don't have to.

> Ribbons are better ... velocity mics

That's marketing bumph. Electricity has both voltage and current. Acoustic waves always have both pressure and velocity. If they slam into a wall, the ratio changes; but most microphones are small to attempt to preserve "free field" (the waves which would exist without the mike), and no studio mike is big enough to mangle the pressure/velocity ratio much.

("Velocity" is a valid way to begin setting up your equations. But the reason we all know the phrase is RCA's attempts to market the ribbons in the face of excellent condensers and rugged dynamics.)

The simple bi-di fig-8 capsules, if modestly well designed, and not tuned for declining bass directivity, have large front/side ratio at _all_ frequencies, even well below their useful passband. You want to know which way that 2Hz rumble comes from? Either a ribbon or a condenser will tell you, even though you'll have to boost the heck out of 2Hz to fight the designed-in 50Hz or 20Hz low-cut.

Of course fig-8 mikes are pretty awkward, essentially never used. Certainly not the way we set up stage monitors. The fad is for cardioid. A card is a mix of a fig-8 and an omni. Early ones were literally two capsules. But large directivity needs a good match of sensitivity, and to do that over a broad frequency range you want to use a single more-complex capsule so the two modes comes from essentially the same parts. There's not an elegant way to do this on ribbon: you need an infinite hole, and folded stuffed pipes are only passable approximations. The Neumann double diaphragm is a very elegant way to pull both modes off a "single" system. Actually the thru-holes only work in fig-8 mode, which gives differences in stiffness and damping. The residual mis-match decays the fig8/omni balance, but in practice it can be kept good over more than two decades 50Hz-5KHz, and the 1"-2" capsule wave-size directivity gives a slightly beamy "cardioid" for another octave or two up.

> "good bass=big diaphragm" thing is a myth.  Listen to the low end out of a good measurement mic

A sealed omni condenser with a perfect charge-amp can be a barometer: it will respond to "DC" pressure. Indeed this is one way small pressures are measured. But this conflicts with other goals in a "sound" mike, so we always have a low-cut.

Look at the whole picture. A small mike has a lower output than a large mike. A 0.25" measurement mike may have 12dB less sensitivity than a 1" mike, but stays flat for 2 octaves higher. It in fact has "less bass", but since less overall (and more above 12KHz) you turn-up and hear "full bass", albeit with a higher noise level. You do have to watch the design. I see that even in the same size B&K mikes come in several nominal sensitivities. One is scaled for high output to work down to noise level, another is for monitoring loud noises which would overload any preamp. There was a plot of the four basic sizes on the same bias, but Google won't find it so it may be unpublished. The AIP mike book has a couple sketches, below. By this time, each size was offered in a couple variants of response and sensitivity, pushing corners of each envelope. Because the market does not ask for much below 20Hz, they aim at 2Hz, but you see the 1/8" mike can't quite do that either because of sealing versus volume or because the head pFd dribbles so few electrons to the head-amp.

Constant directivity is not always the goal. There is that old ball-mike which is omni below 500Hz and pretty beamy at 5KHz. In some recording situations (far-field in select good rooms), this is great stuff.

Agree that stage monitors should be semaphores, not photographs.

[G._Hoffman]

> that's how the physics was explained when I was in school.

And you believed them??

The teacher was the single best audio guy I've ever met.  He knew more about system design and mic use than any single person I've ever met, worked faster than anyone, and 15 years ago he had been doing it longer than I've been alive today!  Yeah, I trust him.  

> They are most directional at wavelengths = the size of the diaphragm.

Actually when wavelength is >> diameter.


Of course fig-8 mikes are pretty awkward, essentially never used. Certainly not the way we set up stage monitors. The fad is for cardioid. A card is a mix of a fig-8 and an omni. Early ones were literally two capsules.  

We're both wrong - most directional when the wavelength≤diaphragm diameter.  But we also both knew what the other meant.  

And yeah, the ~10Khz knee of a 1" diaphragm is pretty much outside musical usefulness (though I am happy to say I can still hear 10K, which is pretty impressive for a live sound guy!)  But that is where things start becoming less directional, not where they become an omni (I know you know).  It is quiet a bit lower than that where you see an actual "cardiod" pattern, of course (above that it is more, as you say, beamy).  From a monitor feedback point of view, I don't need it to reject much below about 4-500hz (though its nice if it does), because those frequencies don't tend to cause all that much feedback anyway.  By 200hz, its just not an issue, and they usually don't reject much at that point, which doesn't matter, as most live mics roll off the low end stuff to deal with proximity effect, and you can actually roll off more low end to deal with any feedback you might get there.  Because your singer is so much closer to the mic than the monitor, the proximity effect compensates for the EQ!

The way most people mic up for live situations, the mic's real bass response doesn't really matter much, since most mics these days are designed (and used) to rely on proximity effect for bass.  I like a LD condenser in omni as my primary drum mic (hard to get away with it - drummers all want 40 mics to capture their "sound," and of course the overheads must be in "stereo," never mind that the whole rig is mono because - bizarrely - the whole audience wants to hear everything), but I've only met one other guy who works that way, so most live sound guys couldn't care less what a mic's actual bass response looks like, just what it's proximity effect looks like.  


A fig 8 isn't all that useful for sound reinforcement, but it is fantastic for sound recording.  When you don't have to worry about monitors or audience noise, they can be very helpful to isolate instruments, and ribbons sound damn nice.  Well worth any issues they might create.  Mid-Sides micing is always good to wow your assistants too. They just don't get how it works!

> "good bass=big diaphragm" thing is a myth.  Listen to the low end out of a good measurement mic

A sealed omni condenser with a perfect charge-amp can be a barometer...

Well, I like omni for a few live sound tasks, so I can't say I always agree about conflicting with our needs, but measurement mics are of limited use in live work.  (So why is it, then, that every presenter mic - lavs and headsets - are omni!  But of course the president of insert company here needs to use a lav while he stands stock still  at the podium!    And then they put you in those stupid convention center rooms with the speakers directly above the podium! )  

I see that even in the same size B&K mikes come in several nominal sensitivities.

You keep mentioning Brüel & Kjær, and you're going to make me swoon!  I usually have to settle (if that's the right word) for Earthworks (which are great mics).  But every now and then, you get to record with some DPA's, and life is so much more pleasant!  If you are ever recording drums in a really great room, put up a pair of 4007's about 6-10 feet apart out in the room and 10-15 feet from the drums, and you will be very, VERY pleased!  


Gabriel

[G._Hoffman]

Agree that stage monitors should be semaphores, not photographs.

Great line!  Not entirely my point, but great!  The issue is your ear works better if the sound is coming from multiple directions.  You can hear everything on the stage - that's fine - just don't expect to hear it all from the monitor.  Monitors are for quiet stuff like vocals and pan flutes!  I've never been able to figure out why some guitar players don't get this?  They'll be asking for more and more of themselves, and when I walk over there the problem is they can't hear themselves in the monitor because their amp is too loud! 

That is when the Concerned Look Fake Knob Adjustment gets used.  That is usually the only way to make those guys happy!


Gabriel

[tubesornothing]

That is when the Concerned Look Fake Knob Adjustment gets used. 

I use that **all** the time.

[G._Hoffman]

That is when the Concerned Look Fake Knob Adjustment gets used. 

I use that **all** the time.

For me, it is reserved for those moments when I've tried all reasonable and most unreasonable means of making someone happy.  I want the musicians to have what they need, but some people just can not be satisfied.


Gabriel