Your accordion recording technique?
- Thread starter Ben-jammin
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iPhone SE, raw and unmodified 'live':
iPod touch for me! Which is basically an iPhone without the phoning. I use an audio recording app in there, and export the MP3 to my computer to crop the start and end, but no other adjustments. I mainly record clips to share with friends and family on Facebook. I combine the audio with an image to give a video MP4 I can upload there. This is done with the ffmpeg software.
A few years ago, I purchased some very cheap $20 (each) condenser mics. This was a test just to see what could be done with them and to learn some recording techniques and practice. To date these are the most sold mics on Amazon in the last 2 years. Now that doesn't mean they are the best, in fact they are likely near the bottom of the barrel, but you can see the layout in the picture and hear the results with some post processing. Not great, but very few would be able to say that those are $19.95CDN mics (shipping included... lol)
I also picked up a set if Neewer NW-410 pencil condenser mics, and those were surprisingly good for $99 mics. They came as a pair, came with a "stereo bar" and with 3 interchangeable heads (Omni, Cardioid and Hyper-Cardioid)and they were sincerely surprisingly better than their cost would suggest.
I also picked up a set if Neewer NW-410 pencil condenser mics, and those were surprisingly good for $99 mics. They came as a pair, came with a "stereo bar" and with 3 interchangeable heads (Omni, Cardioid and Hyper-Cardioid)and they were sincerely surprisingly better than their cost would suggest.
That clip indeed has very good sound. Modern inexpensive mics do a good job. For much more expensive microphones part of what you get for the extra money is a lower noise floor. When that is not important (when the sound is loud enough to mask noise) there is little benefit in very expensive mics. (When you want to capture the sounds of nature in a forest the story becomes very different...)
It's highly modified to sound good, the sound straight out of the mics is close to unusable... lol
You are right, the moment you want nuance, true tone, clarity and a low noise floor, that is where things start to rise in price. One thing that I found common is that the lower priced mics all want to "try" to make the sound better and do all kinds of strange things to it, where as the higher you go, the LESS the mics try to affect the sound and their intent is to capture the sound and make the final file sound as close as possible to what it sounds like to the real life event, this is one of the (many) reasons mics like AKG or SE Electronics cost so much higher.
But all that to say that for our needs as amateurs, unless you are trying to push boundaries or get a sound closer to a real sound studio, you don't need to spend a ton of money. That said, don't forget to consider sound treating a room, that can, in many instances, have a bigger effect than moving from a $20 mic to a $1000 mic.
"That said, don't forget to consider sound treating a room, that can, in many instances, have a bigger effect than moving from a $20 mic to a $1000 mic."
Now yer torkin'.
We become accustomed to our environments to the extent that we are no longer able to assess them objectively - which, of course, applies to much more than just music.
Now yer torkin'.
We become accustomed to our environments to the extent that we are no longer able to assess them objectively - which, of course, applies to much more than just music.
Glad to hear that maybe I didn't waste money by buying a pair of AKG C214 mics to do my recordings. The sound requires virtually no tweaking. I only raise the lower frequencies of the bass accordion a bit because the Pigini bass has weak low sound. And then I need to do volume control because my accordions are not equally loud (when using the same amount of force). And I add some reverb.
All things otherwise equal I do notice that recordings I made before, using my Zoom H2 recorder are good but not as good as what I achieve using the AKG mics and Tascam digital recorder.
wirralaccordion
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I just use a Sony Cyber-shot "point and shoot" camera. Just done a recording on here and it's a bit dark. Falls a long way short of the quality you'd get from a professional but I'd say that for a £70 camera it's acceptable.
What post recording modifications did you do? I does sound quite good.
From memory, as this was a while back:
- Recorded on my Mackie 1640i mixer which has excellent pre-amps and full 48-volt phantom power (these mics demand full voltage for best performance else they have tons of noise)
- Did a lot of hardware EQing using the Mixer's Perkins EQ
- Recording at highest available quality for best resolution
- A slight software noise reduction
- Heavy software EQing (I mean a LOT... with a 64-band EQ and every band was touched/modified), these mics have no real bottom end and excessive high end.
- A touch of reverb
I remember needing to go through the EQ process 3-4 times before getting the final sound. I EQ'ed using quality headphones, Bose 802-E speakers and mid-range home stereo speakers to give me an idea of how people would hear the sound through different sources.
I'm kind of glad that just now there are some positive responses to the perceived quality of the sound in the video. I knew going in that these were the lowest quality condenser mics on the market and was just starting my learning process with condenser mics and their capabilities. This was only all about the fun of learning for me, not to seriously use these in my recordings. Today I use the mics as vocal only when I am talking in some of my educational videos.
So, can someone make a $19.95 mic sound as good as a good quality condenser? No, I was just not able to get that same quality sound at all (I tried a couple times... lol). Sure we can improve the sound with mechanical and software EQs and other tools, but there is only so much one can do.
What we are trying to do is to improve what we have, and if you start at 10%, its easy to get to 50%, but if you are at 90% (with good mics), it takes very little work to get to that 100% mark with very little work.
Hello everyone.
Excellent content and comments, thanks.
I'm going to do some recording samples for a local musician with two goals;
1. As accurate as possible representation of what he sounds like with only two good ears in a quiet location.
2. An easily usable setup for live/concert work.
I record almost every instrument with stereo pairs using a slightly modified ORTF configuration.
I use microphone stereo bars with about 6.5" spacing, and adjust the angle between based on the distance from the instrument. Just like a pair of ears. It creates a very 3d image that can be positioned anywhere in the soundfield mix.
For live sound work and simultaneous recording of a live event I turn my good old AKG C1000's with the hyper cardioid cap installed. They offer a very decent response on anything, instrument, voice, etc., while having great feedback rejection.
I'll post samples after we complete them.
Cheers,
Stay well everyone.
Tom eh
Excellent content and comments, thanks.
I'm going to do some recording samples for a local musician with two goals;
1. As accurate as possible representation of what he sounds like with only two good ears in a quiet location.
2. An easily usable setup for live/concert work.
I record almost every instrument with stereo pairs using a slightly modified ORTF configuration.
I use microphone stereo bars with about 6.5" spacing, and adjust the angle between based on the distance from the instrument. Just like a pair of ears. It creates a very 3d image that can be positioned anywhere in the soundfield mix.
For live sound work and simultaneous recording of a live event I turn my good old AKG C1000's with the hyper cardioid cap installed. They offer a very decent response on anything, instrument, voice, etc., while having great feedback rejection.
I'll post samples after we complete them.
Cheers,
Stay well everyone.
Tom eh
I use a Zoom video recorder for the video/audio. then I go direct into my H4N4 pro audio recorder. I use the audio in the video recorder to synch the tracks and use the audio from the H4 to marry to the video. Normal edits on Resolve ( free edition) and on to you tube it goes. ( I'm too cheap for the paid version)
Now I just got the Bugari 288 gold and have not done any recordings yet. I have been busy preparing. I pulled the grill off, ordered a new jack from Claudio Sabbatini (music tech) and converted the pick up to stereo, particularly for use in recording videos. In addition I have purchased a Mackie Thump 15 and a Mackie pro 8 channel mixer. Just got those in last week and hope to be doing some recording w/i the next 2-3 weeks. The mixer and the amp also will improve my sound for my work gigs, as I needed something to run 3 inputs into ( I do vocals also). I have only tried the 288 just yesterday with the new set up and it sounds awesome, but need some time to accustom myself w/all this new stuff.
All of this by the way - I'm a student of Jerry PH for recording and audio. The quality ( by and large) of my videos on you tube is thanks to his generous time helping me learn.
Now I just got the Bugari 288 gold and have not done any recordings yet. I have been busy preparing. I pulled the grill off, ordered a new jack from Claudio Sabbatini (music tech) and converted the pick up to stereo, particularly for use in recording videos. In addition I have purchased a Mackie Thump 15 and a Mackie pro 8 channel mixer. Just got those in last week and hope to be doing some recording w/i the next 2-3 weeks. The mixer and the amp also will improve my sound for my work gigs, as I needed something to run 3 inputs into ( I do vocals also). I have only tried the 288 just yesterday with the new set up and it sounds awesome, but need some time to accustom myself w/all this new stuff.
All of this by the way - I'm a student of Jerry PH for recording and audio. The quality ( by and large) of my videos on you tube is thanks to his generous time helping me learn.
I'm excited to hear what this sounds like, Mackie audio equipment is something that I am a fan of especially for live entertainment. As far as students are concerned, when it comes to playing accordion, that is where I am your student!
I have a nice gig in about a week, first time playing in many years, I'll be using my Bose 802-E, 500 watt amp and QSC TouchMix 8 digital mixer with my 8X and BK-7m. We'll see how it goes!
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