External mic recommendations?

is it going to be just one or two and for just instruments and / or vocals?
 
What's your budget?

How will you use it/connect it? (USB, Audacity, ?)
 
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pretty sure she uses a mac if I remember correctly. Answer depends on budget. I like the blue brand products.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BlueBirdScarBun I am hoping this is around when I am ready to buy around xmas next year.

there is also the usb spark and the usb yeti. All different price points.
 
Is this for live or for recording? Completely different situations.
 
Hi, nongdam, thanks for replying. Actually, I was thinking one for the uke? But I have NO experience with mics aside from the one I use that sits on top of a stand. I use it now for the recordings that I make. I know nothing about how to record properly. I just have been winging it to date. I had the option to have an internal one installed on my Mya-Moe tenor when she was built, but I didn't do it...guess I probably should have. I am worried about having someone aside from the folks at MM do it now...what do you think? Is it pretty straight forward? I don't want to risk my MM getting a boo-boo cuz I can't afford another one. :)

is it going to be just one or two and for just instruments and / or vocals?
 
Hi, Dog_J ~ Great questions! Thanks for checking in here, too! Actually, no idea about how much these things even cost. I haven't even been on Google to do a preliminary perusal of what's out there. $100 maybe for a budget??? I use GarageBand on a Mac laptop with an iTrack Solo device/interface and Rode mic on a stand right now.

What's your budget?

How will you use it/connect it? (USB, Audacity, ?)
 
Hi, ohmless! Yes, you're right -- a Mac, indeed. :) Thank you for the recommendations and the link to sweet water -- I'll check it out! :)

pretty sure she uses a mac if I remember correctly. Answer depends on budget. I like the blue brand products.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BlueBirdScarBun I am hoping this is around when I am ready to buy around xmas next year.

there is also the usb spark and the usb yeti. All different price points.
 
Hi, katysax ~ I was thinking for live purposes. For recording, I use a Rode mic on a stand that plugs into an iTrack Solo device which then plugs into my Mac laptop. I would imagine that I'd get a better sound if I had a mic directly on the uke, tho? What do you think? Thanks for your help! :)

Is this for live or for recording? Completely different situations.
 
Hi, katysax ~ I was thinking for live purposes. For recording, I use a Rode mic on a stand that plugs into an iTrack Solo device which then plugs into my Mac laptop. I would imagine that I'd get a better sound if I had a mic directly on the uke, tho? What do you think? Thanks for your help! :)

For live purposes, the industry standard seems to be the Shure SM57. These are pretty affordable and almost indestructible. If you're a singer, an SM 58 is a good choice for a vocal mic.

I find when the house supplies the sound, these are what I get most often. If we supply the sound, most of the musicians I play with use tese Shure mics too, but some have pretty comparable mics.

I can't help much with recording mics, but many folks like condenser mics for this.
 
Hi Chelle...

Welcome back! We missed you.

As far as your questions, if you want a mic ON/IN your uke, you are talking about a 'contact mic' or instrument pickup (as it is normally called)...I have a lot of experience in this area that might be of benefit to you.

Condenser Mics, or studio mics (like the Blue Microphones mentioned above) or even live mics, like the Shure SM57 or Shure SM58 are all a completely different thing compared to a 'contact mic'.

The reason for using one of these pickups is because when you perform live and use a mic on a stand you have to stand in one place, and if you have an actual non-contact mic, like a condenser or electret mic mounted inside your ukulele, there are usually devastating problems with howling and/or screeching feedback that are VERY difficult to overcome without special equipment unless you have someone running the PA system for you....

These other 'contact mics' or 'pickups' mainly come in 2 varieties, either a 'surface' transducer that gets fixed to the soundboard, or an under-saddle transducer, that gets physically installed underneath the saddle inside the bridge.

Neither are difficult to install nor are complicated, I've installed about a half-dozen of them myself in the past year...not professionally, just in my own ukes and guitars

Most of the time these pickups (of both kinds) are made from a piezo, piezo-ceramic, PVDF or piezo-electric material (they are derived/made from the crystals that form when you mix up a batch of Rochelle Salts - *learned this in high-school chemistry class*), which can sense the physical vibrations and convert it to an electrical voltage to run into other equipment that will translate that vibration into something you can hear...

You might want to search for and become familiar with the L.R. Baggs Five-O (~$150) the Mi-Si Acoustic Trio (~$109) which are both under-saddle transducers, as well as the K&K pickups (~$79), McIntyre Acoustic Feather (~$105), JJB Pickups (~$17), Kremona Uke pickup (~$65) which are surface transducers...all of which are widely used here on UU by MANY of your fellow members....

B-Band also makes a pickup system (~$179)with both a surface transducer, as well as an under-saddle pickup that both go to the preamp and you can blend the two pickups to your liking...

You can see most of the above (and many other pickups) at Blue Star music, who I have bought from in the past:

http://www.bluestarmusic.com/Ukulele-Pickups_c_227-1-1.html

Also, Mainland Ukes, Kala, PinPegPickups, as well as HMS sells the Mi-Si, and Sweetwater sells a few of the others like the Kremona, just search for 'ukulele pickup' on their site.

Elderly also sells a wide variety of pickups that will work just great on the ukulele.

(I'm not affiliated with any vendor, just a happy customer)

The biggest differences that most folks say is that the surface transducers have a more 'woody' and natural sound, but they pickup every little surface noise on the body of your uke...

...meaning if your fingers hit or scrape the soundboard when you strum, or the back of the instrument moves across your body when you play, ALL of those sounds are amplified too, and surface transducers can also have bad feedback problems...

OTOH, under-saddle transducers are almost completely impervious to both feedback as well as the instruments' body-noise of tapping and scratching sounds, yet they sound different from surface transducers, and while it still sounds like a ukulele, it is not the same as the natural acoustic sound....and has a bit of inherent compression due to the way they work (which can be a good thing too, but some folks dont like it)

Also you need to factor into the cost, if you are not able to do the installation yourself (typically just drilling a few holes in the instrument), you have to find either a guitar/uke shop or luthier to install it for you.

This can cost anywhere betw $50-$175 for installation.

The exception to this is the Kremona which fits to the bridge where you tie the strings, and you only need to loosen the strings to install it. The Kremona's sound is better than the cheapo $7 chinese 'stick-on'/'clip-on' surface transducers (AXL, Adeline brands), which tend to sound far away, and/or lack the intimacy of the other pickups.

Something else to consider is that any piezo-type pickup is going to sound much better if you use a preamp (either a mic preamp or instrument preamp) with it.

Some pickups have a preamp that gets installed INTO your instrument, and others have no preamp, and that allows for some flexibility in that you can select any preamp. Once you have the pickup going into the preamp, you can then plug it in, like to a guitar amplifier, or even right into your iTrack Solo, which already has preamps built-in for both channels of the mic input and the instrument input...

The reason to use a preamp is two-fold: one part is for impedance matching (which is a long, technical subject maybe for another time) and the other part is the result of the sound.

WIthout a preamp, the sound can be 'tinny' and suffer from what is known as 'piezo QUACK', and is usually lacking in any meaningful bass frequencies, which yields a very thin and harsh, cutting sound that most folks will NOT enjoy listening to.

If you already have that R0DE Mic (which is like a condenser if it needs phantom power), you have most of the work done for you, (for your recordings), keep in mind that a pickup installed into your uke will likely not necessarily give you a BETTER sound for recording, but it will most certainly give you a DIFFERENT sound, and you would then have the option of recording the R0DE mic signal to one track in Garageband, while SIMULTANEOUSLY recording the pickup signal to another different track in Garageband. I do this ALL the time, and then I can EQ them to make the sound fuller or better than either signal/sound would be by itself.

If you are planning to play some gigs, like at an open mic night, you might want to go check out the venue (as a listener), sans uke, and see what the setup is and talk to the host or the sound guy and see if you even need your own pickup on your uke, and if you had one, do they provide you a guitar cable on the stage that you can just walk up there and plug yourself in? If not,, you might be just fine by using whatever mics they have on the stage, just make sure to stand close enough that it can pick up the sound of your uke playing and singing...

So, my question to you is, do you want the pickup for recording, or for live performance, or BOTH, as there are better choices from the wide selection available, depending upon your priorities...

I hope this helps....if you have any other questions, I will do my best to share my experience :)

-Booli
 
Hi, Booli ~

Thank you for all of the great information -- I have read through everything once, but I will read it again to make sure I can digest every kibble of info you've provided. :) I will definitely follow up with any subsequent questions; I greatly appreciate all of the time you took to post your feedback -- thanks so much, again!

~ Chelle
 
Thank you, Jim, for your input; I am very appreciative!

~ Chelle

For live purposes, the industry standard seems to be the Shure SM57. These are pretty affordable and almost indestructible. If you're a singer, an SM 58 is a good choice for a vocal mic.

I find when the house supplies the sound, these are what I get most often. If we supply the sound, most of the musicians I play with use tese Shure mics too, but some have pretty comparable mics.

I can't help much with recording mics, but many folks like condenser mics for this.
 
Like Hochapeafarm I am interested in an external mic too. Not so much for the uke but for GP use. I have started making videos recently. The internal mic. in my Logitek c615 webcam is a problem. If I sit still and play and sing there are no problems. If I move around my voice wavers in volume on the recording. Sing and play without moving around? Preposterous!

I am considering an omnidirectional Lavalier style mic. Requirements would be for wifi/hardwiring to computer or patiching into a sound system for stage work. I know next to nothing about mic.s except how to use them on stage with the assistance of a sound person.

It occurs to me that a "lepel mounted, omni-directional mic. might benefit my vocals and my ukulele. True?

I had put a $100 price point on this project but see that the price range quoted for these things ranges between $28 and $250 - my top limit. I would like something that is suitable for outdoor stage work as well.

I would appreciate all input.
 
Like Hochapeafarm I am interested in an external mic too. Not so much for the uke but for GP use. I have started making videos recently. The internal mic. in my Logitek c615 webcam is a problem. If I sit still and play and sing there are no problems. If I move around my voice wavers in volume on the recording. Sing and play without moving around? Preposterous!

I am considering an omnidirectional Lavalier style mic. Requirements would be for wifi/hardwiring to computer or patiching into a sound system for stage work. I know next to nothing about mic.s except how to use them on stage with the assistance of a sound person.

It occurs to me that a "lepel mounted, omni-directional mic. might benefit my vocals and my ukulele. True?

I had put a $100 price point on this project but see that the price range quoted for these things ranges between $28 and $250 - my top limit. I would like something that is suitable for outdoor stage work as well.

I would appreciate all input.

Tommy,

I have read lots of complaints about the audio on the Logitech C615 webcam, and lots of folks are replacing it with either the Logitech C910, C920 or C930 model, all of which have stereo mics, but are three times the price of the C615, but also have better optics and a better image sensor, as well as some processing done WITHIN the camera itself to make a better video get fed into your computer. I myself am in the market for one, and am leaning towards the C920, which I see for ~$80 all over. But I will NOT be using the camera's mic, I will be using the Apogee MIC (which is a $200 mic by itself) and you just tell your (Windows/Mac/Linux video recording program to use the Logitech for video and the Apogee for audio (in the setup), and your program binds them together when it makes the recording.

However, You may be satisfied with a cheaper mic, a lavalier as you said, for minimal cost.

Take a look at the
Audio-Technica ATR3350IS Omni Lavalier Microphone for Smartphones via Amazon

Dont let the 'for smartphones' thing fool you, it comes with a dongle for the headphone port if you want to use it with a smarphone, but otherwise is the SAME mic that sells for $5 MORE, WITHOUT the adapter dongle (Go figure)

I have used this mic (I have 2 of them) for both recording interviews (clipped to the shirt collar) and also for music with my uke and vocals.

The recordings were crisp and clear and the little batteries it uses are like 3/$1. Audio-Technica has been selling this little gem for years and it is well received.

The problem I had with it was that I have lots of background noise that I cannot isolate from my recording environment, so an omnidirectional mic PICKS UP EVERYTHING (360 degrees), but if I had it about 2 ft away, at head height (clip it to the desk lamp or mic stand, aimed at your head) the sound quality is decent, not great, but decent.

If you clip it to your shirt collar and sing with it, you will likely need to adjust the input gain on your recording program to compensate for the added vocal volume and to prevent clipping and distortion, but it will in fact pick up your uke at belly level, and a banjo or banjolele should have no problems at all being heard (they are usually pretty loud any way).

It is a cheap investment to see if the problem is your C615's mic or something else, and at least with a 'detached-from-the-camera' mic, you have options and can experiment with mic placement to get the best sound...

Hope this helps :)

-Booli
 
Hi, Booli ~

Thank you for all of the great information -- I have read through everything once, but I will read it again to make sure I can digest every kibble of info you've provided. :) I will definitely follow up with any subsequent questions; I greatly appreciate all of the time you took to post your feedback -- thanks so much, again!

~ Chelle

Anytime! If you have more questions - fire away and I will do my best to share my experience to help. :)

-Booli
 
Tommy,

I have read lots of complaints about the audio on the Logitech C615 webcam, and lots of folks are replacing it with either the Logitech C910, C920 or C930 model, all of which have stereo mics, but are three times the price of the C615, but also have better optics and a better image sensor, as well as some processing done WITHIN the camera itself to make a better video get fed into your computer. I myself am in the market for one, and am leaning towards the C920, which I see for ~$80 all over. But I will NOT be using the camera's mic, I will be using the Apogee MIC (which is a $200 mic by itself) and you just tell your (Windows/Mac/Linux video recording program to use the Logitech for video and the Apogee for audio (in the setup), and your program binds them together when it makes the recording.

However, You may be satisfied with a cheaper mic, a lavalier as you said, for minimal cost.

Take a look at the
Audio-Technica ATR3350IS Omni Lavalier Microphone for Smartphones via Amazon

Dont let the 'for smartphones' thing fool you, it comes with a dongle for the headphone port if you want to use it with a smarphone, but otherwise is the SAME mic that sells for $5 MORE, WITHOUT the adapter dongle (Go figure)

I have used this mic (I have 2 of them) for both recording interviews (clipped to the shirt collar) and also for music with my uke and vocals.

The recordings were crisp and clear and the little batteries it uses are like 3/$1. Audio-Technica has been selling this little gem for years and it is well received.

The problem I had with it was that I have lots of background noise that I cannot isolate from my recording environment, so an omnidirectional mic PICKS UP EVERYTHING (360 degrees), but if I had it about 2 ft away, at head height (clip it to the desk lamp or mic stand, aimed at your head) the sound quality is decent, not great, but decent.

If you clip it to your shirt collar and sing with it, you will likely need to adjust the input gain on your recording program to compensate for the added vocal volume and to prevent clipping and distortion, but it will in fact pick up your uke at belly level, and a banjo or banjolele should have no problems at all being heard (they are usually pretty loud any way).

It is a cheap investment to see if the problem is your C615's mic or something else, and at least with a 'detached-from-the-camera' mic, you have options and can experiment with mic placement to get the best sound...

Hope this helps :)

-Booli
Thanks Booli. I was thinking about spending a little more on a mic. than the model you suggested but have reconsidered. Your suggestion to experiment and keep one's options open makes a lot of sense.

One of the things I've discovered about the C615 and the C900 series is that they autofocus on the center of the screen. I have been recording videos so that my fretting hand, and ultimately my strumming hand are straight on so people including me can see what I'm doing -tutorial usage. This pushes me off center stage and out of focus. There are aesthetic and pyschological reasons for not being center stage as well. My buddy Ray Naylor pointed this out to me.
 
Thanks Booli. I was thinking about spending a little more on a mic. than the model you suggested but have reconsidered. Your suggestion to experiment and keep one's options open makes a lot of sense.

One of the things I've discovered about the C615 and the C900 series is that they autofocus on the center of the screen. I have been recording videos so that my fretting hand, and ultimately my strumming hand are straight on so people including me can see what I'm doing -tutorial usage. This pushes me off center stage and out of focus. There are aesthetic and pyschological reasons for not being center stage as well. My buddy Ray Naylor pointed this out to me.

Spending a bit more can go 2 ways:

1. USB condenser mic with built-in preamp

2. XLR Condenser mic, with phantom power and preamp, via audio interface (e.g. via USB) to the computer

You can get a Blue Snowball USB mic for ~$50 or a Blue Yeti USB or Blue Nessie USB for ~$100 and the only cable you deal with is a USB cable. For what they are, these mics have been getting rave reviews across the board, although I have never used one since I have always gone with #2 above...

With an XLR-connected condenser mic, they all need 48 volts phantom power provided either by a phantom power box or a preamp (that provides phantom power), and also some way to get the sound into your computer digitally, i.e., NOT via the 1/8" mic or line input plug on the sound card in your computer.

The audio circuits inside the computer are fine for gaming sounds, but for pristine audio which the main point for the investment in such pro equipment, if you then run the sound into the built-in sound card, chances are you will get EMI/RF interference from the other parts inside your computer like hard drive chuffing and other 'noise' that you would not normally hear.

However, if you feed the signal into the computer digitally, via an external interface that connects via USB (or Firewire, or Thunderbolt) similar to the Focusrite unit that Chelle uses (and there are about 40 manufacturers with over 3 hundred different interfaces on the market right now) all of the analog singal, which is susceptible to interference is physically OUTSIDE and isolated from the computer, and with USB (or similar) you are feeding a digital signal into the computer, which is mostly immune to these problems, provided your cables from the interface to the computer do not exceed about 10 ft, and you have a ferrite bead/barrel at each end of your cable into the computer.

I will not discuss microphone impedance issues, you can thank me later.

I had previously owned and used for a while, and then later sold/traded each of:

AKG C4000B ($699)
AKG C214 ($399)
AKG C414 ($1000)
Audio-Technica AT-2020 ($99)
Audio-Technica AT-4040 ($299)
Shure KSM32 ($550)
Samson C01 ($79)
ART Pro Audio M-One ($299)
M-Four ($599)
Oktava M-220 ($499)
R0DE NT-1A ($199)

and 2 higher-end 'broadcast' dynamic mics:

Shure SM7b ($349)
Electro-Voice RE-20 ($399)

all with 5 different preamps and 3 each different USB and Firewire interfaces. I could not hear a difference in the sound capability of these mics that I sold off when compared to the AKG Perception 200 ($149) which I kept and still use now, so that is why I got rid of them all.

I was tempted to keep the AKG C414, which was VERY close to the sound of the lowly AKG 200, but had a bit greater clarity and depth, but I needed the funds for something else at the time, and the AKG 200 was a close enough approximation that I was still satisfied with it's sound.

Mind you, I did not own them all at once. The AKG Perception 200 was one of the first mics I ever bought, and only ever had 2 other mics at a time, and sold or traded them for other mics and each time compared them to the AKG 200. I could not justify the price and keeping a bunch of mics for my purposes (acoustic instruments and vocals) when the AKG 200 worked great, sounded great and could be replaced if lost or broken without needing to sell my left foot.

I have not tried Telefunken, Schoeps nor Neumann condenser mics since they are all priced beyond my budget. Everybody drools about them, and if you've listened to the radio since 1950 you've heard them each on dozens of recordings.

The mics that I got rid of either colored the sound in a way I did not like, or did not provide an improvement over the AKG 200.

About 3 months ago I got it into my head that I needed a matched stereo pair of small diaphragm pencil condenser mics, with accompanying matched tube mic preamps (yes vacuum tubes matched within 1% tolerance - OY), etc....I narrowed it down to 3 options, but once I worked out all the cabling and all the costs (~$1400), and combined with the fact that I do not have a fixed studio environment, and everything needs to be set up, and then broken down afterwards each time I want to record, I decided to go another way.

Fellow UU brother Libranian provided a link to the Apogee Digital 'Black Friday Sale', whereby they had most of their products, as OEM refurbs, with full 2 yr warranty for ~40% off normal street price. When I figured that this Apogee MIC (USB & iPad/iPhone compatible) combined with a few different software plugins I was testing that lets you SIMULATE stereo from a mono source (with impulse response reverb, which is a whole other topic in itself) I realized that I could SIMPLIFY everything down to the Apogee MIC via a single cable, and then massage the software settings, and then save it as a preset for later re-use to gain the same sound.

This is a big problem with analog outboard gear (that is not MIDI compatible, so you can save settings into your computer) in that you need to keep a pen & paper log book of each session and write down how all your knobs are set, in case you want to recall the exact-same-setup at a later date. I've been recording myself and others for nearly 30 yrs with all sorts of gear (not 'professionally' mind you), and continuing a session 'later' and getting the SAME setup is always an issue, and rarely perfectly repeatable.

Primarily I use GarageBand on both Mac and iPad. I've used over 50 different DAW (digital audio workstation) and songwriting programs since about 1982 going all the way back to the Commodore 64, Atari ST/Jaguar computers and through the Voyetra/Master Tracks pro of MS-DOS/Windows 3.1, Nuendo, Digital Performer and dozens of others on Mac OS7 thru OS9, as well as eMagic Logic Platinum (before Apple bought them out) on Mac and Windows (and every version of Cakewalk on Windows up until 2006), and even many more on Mac OS X since 2006.

I dont 'do' Windows. Microsoft is evil. Let's leave it at that.

Garageband is the ONLY program that is both capable AND flexible enough to do what I want, and the software itself GETS OUT OF YOUR WAY and lets you just record something. Massaging it after the fact (mixing and mastering) is also likewise painless.

All the other programs I've tried even recently, have either too steep a learning curve or the important features are more than 3 clicks from the main screen (which is both stupid and evil) and especially bad when you are trying to capture something in the moment and remain inspired.

I will also be evaluating Ardour and Jokosher on Linux, as well as Auria and Meteor on the iPad down the road.

Soon, I will be selling off all my other recording gear which has been obviated by the computer software plugins and use of digital microphones like the Apogee MIC.

Also, I should point out that the frequency range of the ukulele is from about 300hz up to about 3khz, which incidentally is WITHIN the same range of the human singing voice. The reason I am telling you this is that MANY folks get by perfectly fine using a VOCAL microphone to accurately record or amplify via P.A. system not only their voice, but ALSO their ukulele. Hence the recommendations from fellow UU brother Jim Yates in this thread for an SM57 or SM58, and elsewhere are very well founded.

However, I prefer the Electro-Voice N/D-767a ($129) dynamic vocal mic when I use one. I have also tested a whole lot of dynamic mics as well (maybe I will detail that another time?)

Sorry for going on so long here,, but hopefully my experience will be of some value to others, and that was my intent in sharing. :)

Back to the topic -

...TOMMY - what OTHER microphones where you looking at?

What are your other considerations for your recordings?

-Booli
 
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