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most Startup Studios get tripped up. Now we can safely look at
the next layer-microphones. Often the practice in home and
project studios is the "one good mic" model, in which 90% of
the work is handled by a single high-quality microphone, usually a large-diaphragm condenser.
I'm going to offer a variant on that model, which I call "One
Mic Plus". And, for my entry-level recommendation, I'm going to
depart radically from the usual practice, because the mic I'm
recommending for the do-many-jobs position is a high-end
dynamic microphone, rather than a condenser. Stick with me
here; "though this be madness, yet there be method in't."
In the "One Mic Plus" setup, we choose one good dynamic
mic plus a pair of small-diaphragm condenser mics. This lets us
get great drum kit recordings (stereo overheads in ORTF plus
kick), and a whole lot more.
Small-diaphragm condensers do a great job on acoustic
instruments like guitars, banjos, and mandolins; when properly
padded they can handle horns and winds, and if you set them
up in ORTF configuration on a stereo bar like the König & Meyer
23510 they can even record choirs and small orchestras. Their
lack of off-axis coloration will help assure that room coloration
will be from the room, not the mics.

well-established Neumann KM 184, which I've worked with a
lot, to many designs with which I don't have personal experience, like the Earthworks mics renowned for their very flat frequency response.
If you want a snare drum mic (that's useful in other applications as well) in addition to these three, I personally like the
much-underrated Shure Beta 57A more than the ubiquitous
SM57, and many engineers swear by the Audix i5. There are
many worthy makers out there that I haven't touched on-
Telefunken, Kel Audio, Blue, Lewitt, Mojave Audio, Lauten-and
we haven't even touched on ribbon mics from the likes of AEA,
Royer Labs, Coles, Cascade, and others... but that's for an article well beyond the Startup Studio.
Into the center
Now we get to the heart of the matter: the machines that actually make, store and process the recording. I won't presume to
advise you on what computer to use or buy; you have probably
solidified your preference already.
What I will tell you is that overkill is your friend. Buy faster
than you expect to need, and buy twice as much memory as you
think you'll need. Believe me, you won't regret that. Get a whopping big second hard drive to store your audio files, rather than
keeping them on the main drive; hard disk storage space is so
cheap these days that you won't regret that, either. Get a big
external drive for backup, too.
Finally, if at all possible, try to dedicate your audio computer
to only audio. Use a different computer for other applications,
especially Internet surfing. Virus scans and malware detectors
constantly switch on and off and can wreak havoc on your

Readers may still be tempted to shave some cost off their bottom line
by omitting the room treatment we discussed in Part 1. I urge you-don't do it.
My personal favorite for this task is the Oktava MK012; buy
from oktava.com and beware of cheap Chinese knockoffs and
dealers selling mics that had less strict quality control. There are
many others, of course; you'll find useful and affordable alternatives from RØDE, Audix, Audio-Technica, Shure, MXL, and others.
As for the dynamic mic, I'm recommending the Electro-Voice
RE20 (or, if you need to save a little money and get 90% of its
utility, the RE16). The RE20 is a truly remarkable mic, period. It's
a great kick mic for our 3-mic array, but it can do a serviceableto-excellent job on many other sound sources; in fact, the RE20
is the closest thing to a do-everything "Swiss Army Mic" on the
current market. It makes a great vocal mic; the rise in its upper
midrange is similar to that of a Neumann U 87, giving vocals
the emphasis they sometimes need to punch through a dense
mix, and the mic's lack of proximity effect provides uniform
sound at a variety of mic-to-source distances. The RE20 takes the
edge off horns and saxes, and its tight pattern means leakage
is seldom an issue when you have several mics open in the studio at once. And it's dynamite for miking the speakers on guitar
and bass cabinets. Other high-end dynamics worth looking into
are the Sennheiser MD 421 and the Shure SM7.
If you want a large-diaphragm condenser that's almost as much of
a mic-of-all-trades as the RE20, I must mention the remarkable
Neumann TLM 102. It does a fine job on acoustic instruments, amplifiers and vocals, and it's one of the few condenser mics I'd stick inside
a kick drum and expect good results. This is a true high-end condenser mic at an unprecedented price, well worth looking into.
Small-diaphragm condenser mics have proliferated in the market, as manufacturers and users have recognized their useful
qualities (typically flat on-axis response and uncolored room
response). At the "upgrade" price level are everything from the
52

RECORDING April 2014

audio; an audio computer with no Net connection can live without them. If you need to do downloads or software upgrades,
pull them down to your other machine, virus-check them (yes,
once in a while even a legit upgrade will have a worm in it),
and move them to your audio machine via a USB drive.
Interface and DAW
Next we consider the interface, the part of the system that
actually takes analog signals and converts them to the yes-or-no
information that we mess with in the DAW.
I don't believe that a $150 box with its own preamps will
have the sonic refinement of a $2500 box with a $2000 preamp plugged into it. However, I've heard enough interfaces to
suspect that at a given price point, most interfaces will offer a
similar level of sound quality, since they use many of the same
chips and design strategies.
Furthermore-and this sentence is the key to this article!-I suspect that the quality of many low-priced interfaces, including the mic
preamps that are almost always included, is good enough so I can
say, "I'd rather hear a good room recorded through a $300 interface than a bad room recorded through a $3000 interface."
This level of consistency and quality in interfaces is the development that enables us to concentrate on getting the room and
monitoring right. We can be reasonably certain that the interface, even if it's not a multi-dollar world-beater, won't let us
down. These days, much budget-priced equipment follows the
old rule promulgated by J. Gordon Holt way back when: If a
piece of equipment is imperfect, its imperfections should be
errors of omission, not commission; it should err by leaving out
the tiny last measure of detail, rather than by adding a nasty
edge of distortion to the sound.

http://www.oktava.com

Recording - April 2014

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