Recording - October 2013 - 34

When done in the spirit of fun and learning, gear
shootouts are a great way to educate yourself on the
similarities and differences of various studio tools, and
to build up a mental catalog of where, when and how
each piece works best. Now, when I say “shootout”, I
do not mean the Internet variety of anonymous A, B, C,
D choices, with subsequent bickering about how the
tests were obviously skewed... because, after all, “How
could my favorite piece of gear possibly have lost...?”
Rather I am talking about testing gear in your own
personal space where you physically touch the gear
and your hear the results with your own ears. Those
are the only “shootouts” that are going to be 100%
relevant to your needs—because you’re doing them
yourself! Here’s how.

Leave your baggage at the door
Before we get to the mechanics of setting up a
shootout, let’s get our heads in order. There are some
mindset things that will pop up as you get ready to
work, and you need to recognize up front that they’re
tempting, fun, and wrong.
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RECORDING October 2013

~ First and foremost, suspend any preconceived notions of how good the
gear is going to be, based on how and where it was made and/or how
much it costs. Those things create bias and may skew your result—it’s not
about what you want the outcome to be, it’s about the actual outcome.
~ You also need to leave snobbery aside; if you insist that the only way
to ever capture a worthwhile recording is with a vintage U47 into a Neve
console into a Fairchild, then this type of shootout is not for you. After all,
discovering that an inexpensive mic works as well on one particular
source as your spendy boutique model just might shatter a preconceived
notion or two, and you can’t have that, can you? Of course not. Leave real
results of real tests to the people who actually make those tests.
~ Don’t get excessively technical! Don’t cast the performer’s feet in concrete, bolt the microphone stand to the ground and pull out a tape measure, compass and T-square for perfectly reproducible test conditions.
~ Don’t be sloppy or careless, but it’s perfectly fine to eyeball and ballpark your setups and measurements! You can tell by looking at your DAW’s
metering if two or three mics are on the same plane or if your mic pre’s outputs are closely matched. The initial goal here is to gather gut-level initial
impressions of the gear and get a feel for where it works and does not work.
You can get scientific later if you feel you must, but what you’re aiming
for here is an instant takeaway—this product works better than that one in
the application you have just tested. You want results that matter to you,
not fodder for net-forum flamewars.
Microphones
Of all the gear types tested in shootouts, microphones are probably the
most common. To effectively shootout microphones it works best to have a
multichannel interface and/or a preamp with two to four matching channels. If not, there are a few companies that make solutions such as the
Radial Engineering Gold Digger (reviewed on page 30 of this issue) and
the Manley Engineering Mic Maid—devices that allow you to move from
mic to mic with ease, all into a single preamp channel.
The simplest way to shootout mics is to set up 2 to 5 mics on stands and
quickly swap them out in front of your subject, be it a vocalist, an acoustic
guitar, or a kazoo. Ask the performer to maintain the same position as best
he or she can while you swap out the mics, and pay attention to the height
and angle of the mics as you exchange them.
For a test like this with a singer I pick a verse and chorus of their songs,
loop the instrumental backing in my DAW and have them quickly do vocal
takes. For a vocalist or a mobile (standing) instrumental performer you
can set the mics up all at once, in a line or semi-circle, and have them
move from one to the other as each take loops around. After your takes

Recording - October 2013

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