Anaxilus
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2010
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Quote:
ha, glad i'm not boring everyone with recording and mixing talk.
so, as i mentioned, i had a recording session all sunday. it was a location recording in a pretty nice hall, properly designed and acoustically treated to a basic level,... so not exactly a concert hall, but i've recorded in worse spaces.
i was recording a koto class. koto is a japanese zither instrument, if a guitar have nasty sex with a harp in japan then their offspring would be a koto,... kinda.
i used a small condenser omni, and for those not in the know, true omni's are pressure transducers and their response is as flat as you can get in a mic which is one of the reasons they're used on classical recordings.
anyway, i moved the mic around alot which i normally do and i've gotta say, reverbwise, or soundstage wise, these are pretty much spot on. i stood just in front of my mics about 3-4 feet away from the kotos, listened to the room,... then went back to the sm3's and they pretty much sounded the same. not much room, which was what i wanted and the reason i put the mics there.
move the mics back to get more room sound, and the sm3's will gave me a more reverberant sound similar to what i heard at the new spot.
so i'm quite happy with the way the sm3's do reverb,... i think some of you might notice how certain recordings are all of a sudden alot wetter than what you were used to, i know i have. when multitracking and mixing down a whole bunch of tracks into a stereo track we use reverb to put everything into one space,... this is how an instrumental can be written and recorded in say london, but an artist in LA will do the vocals, and the two will blend to make it sound like it all happened in the same room.
the trick is to make it barely noticeable, you dont want to be swimming in reverb making a pop track sound like a church recording. the sm3's dont push out the reverb like i thought they did, but if someone used just a tad too much to be unnatural, then you'll hear it. for live recordings, if the mics were placed just a tad too far capturing more room, you'll hear more of the room. watch some tv shows, something like futurama,... all artificial reverb of course and on the sm3's you hear it alot more.
so what does all that waffle mean? lol effed if i know,...
are they flat and neutral? no, they're ever so slightly warm, a bit more than tepid, just enough so that i still enjoy work .
they are pretty honest though, for better or worse.
not quite the end of the ride though,... i've got a bit of mixing to do and i'm gonna see how they translate as well in a few days time.
Would love to hear more of your findings as they come in. If the SM3 really is that accurate w/ imaging the true mic placement in a recording then I would certainly consider that an asset rather than a weakness.