This past weekend I spent a lot of time in the car, so I pulled out the iPod and listened to the entire “Joe Gilder catalog,” almost every song that I’ve written and recorded over the years.

As I listened back to some of those very first recordings, it reminded me of all the stupid mistakes I’ve made along the way, particularly with microphones.

Here’s a list of eight microphone mistakes, and yes, I’ve done all of them.

1. Not using a pop filter

This may seem silly, but it took me several years to finally buy a pop filter. Perhaps you can relate. You spend $80 on your first cheap condenser microphone. It looks amazing in your studio, so you start using it, and the thought of buying a $20 pop filter never enters your mind.

After all, all the singers in those microphone advertisements are singing directly into the mic without a pop filter…and those ads are always super-accurate, right? You soon find, however, that whenever anyone sings into the mic, there’s nothing to block the plosives, those annoying pops in the audio whenever the singer sings a “p” or “b” sound.

So you think you’ll be all clever and fix it without buying a pop filter. You decide to angle the microphone 30-40 degrees to the side, that way the singer isn’t singing directly into the diaphragm.

Well, this does help with the plosives, but now you’ve got to deal with the fact that microphones tend to have A LOT of off-axis coloration. They’re designed to sound their best when aimed directly at the source. By angling it, you could be drastically affecting the sound of the mic.

Just get a pop filter (or make one yourself with a clothes hanger and pantyhose).

2. Singing into the wrong side of the mic

Raise your hand if you’ve done this. (Joe sheepishly raises his hand…)

Yep, I recorded an ENTIRE vocal track while singing into the back of a Rode NT1A. I kept thinking to myself, “MAN, this sounds awful. My vocals must be off today.”

I finally figured it out…and was thoroughly embarrassed.

3. Miking too close

Since noise is a common issue with home studios, we try to compensate for it by miking the instruments/vocals as closely as possible. The idea is that the closer the mic is to the source, the less noise it will pick up. Right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, placing the mic really close to the instruments doesn’t pick up any less noise, AND you have to deal with proximity effect.

Your recordings will sound much more natural if you move the mic back from the source by 6-12 inches.

I talk about this in 7 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently on my Album.

4. Miking too far away

Obviously, you can go too far in the other direction, too. If you place the microphone so far away from the musician that you’re picking up EVERYTHING in the room (computer, hard drive, your growling stomach, etc.), then that’s certainly not ideal.

You need to find a middle ground. It will be different for every mic, every room, every musician…so play around with it a bit.

5. Using too many mics

When I first learned about the mid-side technique of stereo recording, I recorded an entire EP for a singer friend of mine using the mid-side technique on his acoustic guitar.

It didn’t turn out very well. I was dead set on using this technique, regardless of whether or not it sounded good. We were recording in the sanctuary of a church, and the the figure-8 side microphone picked up ALL sorts of air conditioner noise, etc.

It just wasn’t that good, but I was too stubborn to actually listen to the audio and make necessary changes. Using one microphone in this situation would have probably been better.

6. Using the most expensive mic by default

This is a big one. You spend $800 on a nice condenser microphone, then you use it on absolutely everything, regardless of how bad it may sound.

No single microphone will sound amazing on every source. What sounds phenomenal on one singer might sound nasally and thin on another.

Don’t let your wallet dictate which mic you use. Yes, you’ll use your nicer microphone on plenty of tracks, but don’t sacrifice quality to make yourself feel better about buying the nicer mic.

For example, on my album I used three different microphones for my lead vocals. A tube mic that costs around $800, a regular condenser that costs around $300, and a dynamic mic that costs around $100.

Why not use the $800 mic on everything? Because it just didn’t sound right for every song. Plain and simple.

7. Not tightening the mic stand

Nothing frustrates an engineer more than recording five takes of an acoustic guitarist, only to find that the mic stand you used slowly lowered itself by six inches over the course of those five takes.

Now, instead of aiming at the 12th fret of the guitar, the mic is aiming at the musician’s crotch. Not good.

Your takes are pretty much useless if you try to comp between them, because each one sounds noticeably different from the next.

8. Being lazy (“We’ll just fix it in the mix”)

One of the things that stood out to me after listening to all my old songs was how much time I spent setting up the microphone and getting a decent sound.

I was so clueless about recording, I didn’t even mix my first couple of albums. I had no idea what EQ or compression was, I just thought I had to make it sound good as I recorded it, then bounce out the recording and slap it on a CD.

While this had its obvious downsides, it was actually a really good approach to the recording process. Rather than wait around to fix a poorly-recorded guitar with EQ, I spent MORE time setting up the microphones and listening to make sure it sounded great on the way in.

Fixing it in the mix wasn’t an option for me…because I didn’t even know what mixing was.

Sometimes a primitive approach can be immensely more creative.

What about you?

Got any tips or suggestions? Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

[Photo by Robert Bejil Photography]

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1. Day 3 – One Good Microphone [31DBR]
2. 5 Stereo Mic Techniques for Acoustic Guitar (or ANY acoustic instrument)
3. FREE EQ That Works Better than Anything I’ve Tried

Welcome to Day 17 of 31 Days to Better Recordings.

On Day 12 we talked about keeping it simple, and only using one microphone for each instrument. These limitations can force you to be more efficient and creative.

There are certainly situations, though, where it’s a good idea to use multiple microphones on a single source. I almost always use two microphones when I record acoustic guitar, for example.

Flashlight Mics

Some instruments are large (acoustic guitar, piano, drum kit); others are small (human voice, harmonica, kazoo). It can be helpful to imagine that your microphones are flashlights. Wherever the light shines, that’s where the microphone is picking up sound. For larger instruments, you may need more “light,” so multiple microphones might be necessary.

If you place a flashlight 2 inches from the 12th fret on an acoustic guitar, it will illuminate a tiny little area…it will hardly light up the entire guitar. When your microphone is that close, the recorded signal will sound a lot like that little section of the guitar rather than the entire instrument.

Most instruments are designed to be heard in their entirety. Imagine if your acoustic guitar didn’t have a wooden body, and only had a REALLY nice, 3-inch area of wood around the 12th fret. That would obviously sound horrible.

There’s a reason the guitar is created the way it is. If you shine your microphone on such a small area, you might be missing out on the overall tone of the instrument. (Not to mention you’ll have a heck of a time dealing with the proximity effect.)

The moral of the story? Most of the time, you want to record the instrument as accurately and naturally as possible, and sometimes this means using multiple microphones.

For more on this idea of stereo-miking acoustic guitar, read these two articles (FYI – “stereo miking” simply means to use two microphones on a source and pan them left and right to create a wide, natural sound, much like the way the human ears hear):

• 3 Reasons to Stereo Mic Acoustic Guitar (with audio examples)
• 3 Reasons NOT to Stereo Mic Acoustic Guitar

Mo’ Mics Mo’ Problems

As you might guess, if using one microphone makes things simple, using multiple microphones makes things more complicated.

You’ve got to worry about mic placement and preamp gain for EVERY mic that you use. That’s not a big deal, but with every mic you use, that’s one more thing you have to mentally keep track of.

It’s easy to set up a bunch of mics and just start recording. “We’ll figure it all out later,” you say to yourself. This can be a dangerous approach. Why? Because of phase issues.

Whenever you use multiple microphones, you need to make sure the microphones are in phase with each other. If the sound reaches one microphone a few milliseconds before the second microphone, when you play both tracks back, the recording begins to sound thin.

Why? Because this tiny delay between the two tracks causes phase cancellation. In other words, some frequencies are removed, so you don’t hear them.

Still confused? That’s okay. Have you ever heard a guitarist play through a phaser pedal? A phaser pedal intentionally takes the guitar signal, duplicates it, and puts the second signal out of phase with the original signal. It delays it by a few milliseconds, resulting in that classic, thin, “phasey” sound.

That thin sound can happen to your recordings when you use multiple mics.

My 2 pieces of advice?

1. Listen, listen, listen. Spend a lot of time listening to the mics together before you commit anything to tape. Adjusting one microphone by just a half-inch can make a huge difference.
2. Observe the 3:1 Rule. (I highly recommend reading that article.)

Day 17 Challenge

Your challenge for today is to try using two or more microphones on your next recording session. How did you like it. Do things sound better or worse?

If you have used multiple mics before, tell us what you think. Do you like it? Why or why not?

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1. 3 Reasons NOT to Stereo-Mic Acoustic Guitar
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Welcome to Day 15 of 31 Days to Better Recordings.

One of the biggest challenges we face as home recording engineers — or is it recordists? Heck, I don’t know — is low-mids.

Initially, when you’re recording everything, you want a really rich, full sound. You want everything to sound…wait for it…warm.

Once everything is recorded, you start mixing, you want to blend everything together and have it sound amazing, but you find that no matter what you do, everything sounds muddy.

When you solo the guitar, it sounds great. When you solo the drums, they sound great. When you solo the vocal, it sounds great. But for some reason when you play everything together it’s a big mush-ball of low-mids.There are certainly things you can do during mixing to help (and even eliminate) this problem. But what if there was something you could do during recording to minimize this low-mid buildup? Wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t it be better for your tracks to blend together naturally before you start adding EQ, compression, etc. during mixing? Absolutely.

As you’ve heard a bajillion times, get it right at the source.

“Don’t stand so close to me.”

Have you ever heard of proximity effect? It’s one of those recording school glossary terms. Most of those terms won’t help you get better recordings. This one is an exception. Knowing and understanding proximity effect could be your saving grace.

So what is it? Proximity effect is this phenomenon that happens with directional microphones, particularly cardioid mics. (I’m not sure if phenomenon is an appropriate description, but…I can’t tell you why it happens, so…phenomenon it is.)

Chances are you’re using a cardioid (unidirectional) mic. Whether it’s an SM58 or a Rode NT1A, most studio microphones are cardioid.

When you place a cardioid microphone closer to the source, it tends to pick up more low frequencies. This is the proximity effect.

You’ve probably seen this all the time. Radio announcers, bass singers in a gospel quartet, voiceover artists — they all tend to “eat” the microphone. This is a smart move, because the proximity effect causes their voices to sound deeper and fuller.

If you place a cardioid mic 3 inches from the 12th fret on an acoustic guitar, it’s most likely going to sound very boomy. If you move it back to 6 inches, or 12 inches, it progressively captures less and less low end.

Moving the microphone from 3 inches to 6 inches won’t really change how the mids and highs sound, but the lows will be reduced.

How This Can Hurt Your Recordings

Let’s say you’re recording 20 tracks for a song you’re working on. And let’s say you close-mic every one of them — acoustic guitars, guitar amps, bass amps, piano, vocals…everything.

While the proximity effect can really help a voiceover artist, it oftentimes does more harm than good for us recording folks. Why? Because each of those 20 tracks you recorded has a lot of low end. The proximity effect has essentially exaggerated how much low end was actually there.

While the individual tracks may sound nice and full, it can be nearly impossible to mix them all together without whipping out some pretty serious EQ ninja tricks.

As I mentioned in 7 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently on My Album, I recorded the acoustic guitars with the microphones way too close. I was able to make them sound okay, but it would’ve been a lot easier if I had paid more attention to the proximity effect during the recording session.

Some Final Points

As you might have guessed, the proximity effect only occurs in cardioid mics. Omnidirectional microphones have no
proximity effect, which means you can mic things closer, but they also pick up everything in the room. (Catch 22.)

The proximity effect isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Too much of it can be problematic, but you can also use it to your advantage. Need more “umph” out of your bass track? Move the mic closer to the spearker cabinet. Vocal sounding a little thin? Have them sing closer to the mic.

Just be careful.

Day 15 Challenge

Your challenge for today is to share either a. an example of where you used proximity effect to your advantage (or disadvantage) OR b. tell us one instrument you’re going to mic up differently on your next session after reading this.

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Welcome to Day 13 of 31 Days to Better Recordings.

Setting up for a recording session takes time. You’ve got to deal with mics, stands, cables, etc. It’s normal to want to jump in as soon as possible and start recording.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this. Three hours later…I’ve recorded a lot of material, THEN I listen. If it sounds bad, then I’ve wasted three hours of my life.

Front-Load Your Sessions

It’s understandable to want to rush through the setup process to get to the “good stuff.” If that sounds like you, I want you to try something.

Next time you have a session, make a conscious effort to to spend twice as much time setting up the microphones as you normally would.

Spending just a few extra minutes on mic placement can save you exponentially more time during recording AND mixing. I wrote about this in 7 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently on my Album. I rushed through recording the acoustic guitars. Granted, I recorded them quickly, but I had to spend a lot of time EQ-ing them during mixing to get them to sound right.

All that extra work could’ve been avoided if I had spent more time making sure the microphones were set up properly.

Listen

It should be obvious to us that we need to listen to our recordings, right? You’d think so, but it’s fairly common to go several minutes, even hours, without really listening to what you’re recording.

So here are the steps you should take to make sure you’re getting the best possible sound before committing anything “to tape.” (“To tape” is just a fun way of saying “to hard drive”…or simply “recorded.”)

1. Know the source. Before setting up the microphone, simply stand in front of the instrument/vocalist and just…wait for it…listen. You need to become familiar with what the actual instrument sounds like in person. 

   You’d be surprised how many recording engineers will listen to the instrument for the first time through the monitors in the control room. How can you possibly know if your recording sounds accurate if you don’t even know what the instrument actually sounds like?

2. Take your time setting up the microphone. Find a “sweet spot,” a place where the mic sounds especially good.
3. Listen to it in the control room. Does it sound bad? Go back and move the microphone(s). Does it sound good? Great! Record a minute or so of the musician playing.
4. Stop recording! Don’t get ahead of yourself.
5. Listen to what you just recorded. Before you jump in and start recording 5 guitar takes, listen to the recording you just captured. Listen to it in context of the mix. Listen to it solo’d. Does everything sound as good as you want it to sound? Are there any changes you would make? If so, now is the time to do it. Don’t wait until it’s too late to notice that there’s too much low end, or that one of the microphones has a buzz in it.
6. Once you’re content, then (and ONLY then) you should start recording.

Follow these steps, and you’ll save yourself hours of wasted time.

Day 13 Challenge

We’ve all wasted time in the studio. We’ve all been in such a hurry our recordings suffered. Leave a comment below and share a quick story about one of these such occasions that you have encountered. Sometimes it’s encouraging to hear that other people make these mistakes, too, and hopefully we can learn from each other’s mistakes.

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Welcome to Day 3 of 31 Days to Better Recordings!

In the 12 Home Studio Necessities series, I talked about microphones. Regardless of the style of music you’re recording/producing, you’ll need to use a microphone from time to time.

If you’re like me, you use a mic for almost everything you record.

There are hundreds of mics to choose from. It can easily become overwhelming. You could buy microphone after microphone, in search of the perfect combination.

Just One Microphone

Ever heard the phrase “less is more”? It really applies to home studios, especially if you’re starting out.

It’s easy to hop on some of the popular forums and hear a hundred different engineers recommend a hundred different microphones. Before you know it, you’re starting to think you need a whole closet full of microphones to have any hope of making good recordings.

That’s not necessarily true. Having all of those microphones doesn’t guarantee you’ll make better recordings.

I’m not against a big mic locker. In fact, I wholeheartedly believe that a good engineer will give himself several microphone choices for any given recording scenario. (For example, one mic may sound better on a particular vocalist than another.)

Re-read that last paragraph. The key phrase there is “good engineer.” My buddy Slau (of the Sessions with Slau Podcast) is a full-time professional engineer in New York. He loves to talk about (and buy) new microphones. He has a lot of microphones.

The difference? He knows how to use them.

If you’re just starting out in the recording world, you need to first learn how to use a single microphone effectively. Once you’ve mastered that one, move on to a second, then a third, and so on.

I’d suggest starting off with a large-diaphragm condenser mic, but you can start with something as simple as a Shure SM57 or SM58. There are no rules. (See Graham Cochrane’s article about $100 microphones.) Whatever you choose, commit to becoming an expert in using that microphone.

Find out how to best record acoustic guitar, male vocals, female vocals, piano, guitar amps, etc. with that one mic. Once you’ve mastered it, get another mic and repeat.

Imagine owning three or four different microphones that you are intimately familiar with rather than a dozen mics you don’t know how to use. That’s a huge way to start getting better recordings.

For more on mics, check out Intro to Microphones.

Day 3 Challenge

Leave a comment below and tell us what your one microphone is and what you’re going to do to start learning it inside-out.

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Last week I posted a video called Intro to Microphones. This week, let’s follow the signal past the microphone and into the microphone preamp.

A preamp is one of those necessary items for your studio. Either your audio interface will have built-in preamps, or you’ll use external preamps. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtrjC6YjpyA

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Ah, microphones. They can be so much fun to use and collect, but if you’re just starting out, you may not really know what different types of microphones exist out there. Hope this helps!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiaiEr_bjCI

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After writing What is Phase? last week, one of my readers emailed me, asking me to address the 3:1 rule of microphone placement. (Thanks Mike!)

What is the 3:1 Rule? According to the handy Sweetwater glossary,

…when using two microphones to record a source, normally you will get the best results by placing the second mic three times the distance from the first mic that the first mic is from the source. Confusing? An example: If the first mic is 1 foot from a source, the second mic should be placed 3 feet from the second mic. Using the 3:1 Rule will minimize phase problems created by the time delay between mics.

This rule originated when engineers were micing multiple sources in the same vicinity. The same principle applies. If you are recording two different sources of sound, their respective microphones should be at least three times further apart than they are close to their respective sources. Keep in mind that rules are meant to be broken; you may prefer the sound created by ignoring the 3:1 Rule – experiment and let your ears be your guide!

Before you scroll down to the comments section and start asking me how the 3:1 Rule came into existence, let me just say that I honestly don’t know. I’m not exactly sure why it’s 3:1 as opposed to 2:1 or 5:1. However, what I do know is that a lot of people who are much smarter than me developed this theory, and it seems to work well.

The basic idea here is that you want to get the 2nd microphone at least 3 times the distance away from the first. When you get the microphones this far apart (or farther), then you provide enough separation between the two mics to keep the combined recorded signal from having phase issues.

A great example of this is recording a choir. Most new engineers try to put as many microphones in front of the choir as possible.

It looks something like this:

I used to get all sorts of calls at Sweetwater from churches who weren’t happy with their choir sound. Nine times out of ten, they would have too many mics on the choir. Each of those mics was picking up so much similar information as all the other microphones, and the choir ended up sounded thin and small.

The solution? Less is more. The 3:1 Rule would look like this:

Perhaps 3 feet away from the choir is a bit close, but it really depends on the application. You could move the microphones back one foot, then have the microphones be 12 feet from each other. Even a pair of microphones would sound better than seven mics. However, with a source as wide as a choir, three microphones seems to be a good number.

As the Sweetwater glossary stated, the 3:1 Rule is just like any other “rule” you’ll run across in the recording world. Regardless of what everyone says you should do, do what sounds best.

[Photo Credit - mrgilles]

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Photo by takomabibelot

I had a nice handful of questions this week. Three to be exact. Let’s dive on in.

Question #1

Shawn wrote:

Hi Joe,
I am recording a instrumental jazz/bossa nova piece with classical guitar.  I have a mbox2, AT 4033, MXLV69, AKG C1000S, and a Universal Audio 2610.  Should I rent a mic or a to d conv and go digital in on the mbox.  I have no space and like the acoustics of my bathroom.  What would be the best option for the limited budget.  A U87 is $30 a day.  The rosetta I think 800 is $100 per day.
Thank you so much for your time.
Website: shawnfleming.com

Great question, Shawn. First of all, kudos on the Universal Audio 2610!! That’s a great preamp. While you have some nice microphones, I think it would make more sense to rent a really nice mic to go along with that really nice preamp. At $30/day, it wouldn’t be too hard to rent a pair of U87s and get a phenomenal recording.

I have to admit, I’m drooling a little at the thought of the U87 matched up with the 610 preamp. Great combination.

While there are better converters out there than what’s on the Mbox2, the Mbox converters aren’t bad. If it was me, I’d get the better microphone(s) first, then move my attention to converters.

Question #2

Krem Osle wrote:

Hello Joe,
I’m looking for a good pair of monitors based on what you recommend on your 12 studio necessities guide. However, as I was searching for a good brand and reviews and all that, I found out about passive and active monitors. I read that with passive I would need an AMP but actives do not need that since they supply their own power. Multiple sites mentioned that both are the “schnitzel” and I just gave up researching. Joe, what is YOUR recommendation?
k.
Website: http://kremstudios.com

Thanks Krem. Originally, all studio monitors were passive. You would buy a nice power amp, and run wires from the back of that into a pair of passive monitors.

Now, you’ll only find a handful of passive monitors. The overwhelming majority of studio monitors out there today are active, meaning (like you said) they have the power amp built in.

I prefer active monitors for three reasons:

1. Since almost all of the studio monitors are active, you have plenty of choices.
2. Since the amp is built-in, you know that it is matched perfectly with that speaker. You don’t have to worry about matching a power amp to a set of speakers.
3. They’re just easier to use – no need for an amp, speakers, and all the cables to connect them all to your recording equipment.

There’s nothing wrong with passive monitors. Pair them up with a good amp, and you’re in great shape. However, there just aren’t that many options. I can count on one hand the various passive models out there that I am aware of. However, I could go on for days listing out all the different active monitors.

Good luck, Krem!

Question #3

Gregory Marquez wrote:

I have a question about a set in protools.  I have a track that I have been working on and I feel the track is progressing well.  For the most part I have been successful introducing instrument tracks to the session and then selecting the RTAS to play. To be more efficient I convert the RTAS over to a wave file by creating a new audio track and then placing the instrument and audio track on solo and record the .wav version of the instrument thus saving computer cycles.  For reason that are beyond my comprehension and for everything that is holy and good in the world my audio track will not pick up any of the instrument track even when putting them on solo.  To add to this twisted mystery is the fact that when I select the audio track it plays the first instrument on the session however it will not record it.  Either way ,, it is clear just by reviewing the session that what ever audio track I put in it will not pick up any internal RTAS players … it has no problem picking up my Korg Triton when i hit the local
control. To check my systems I opened a new session to check to see if the problem would resolve itself and it did. This tells me the set somewhere is wrong however I am unable to locate it.  I have a finite amount of hair upstairs and this problem is putting me over budget.  Any advice?????

Website: www.binge-records.com

Hi Gregory. That sounds like a headache for sure. To summarize, you’re trying to record an instrument track to an audio track, so you can then deactivate the instrument track and save on the extra computer processing it takes to play back the instrument. Am I right? If not, leave a comment, and we’ll discuss it further. Otherwise, I’ll go ahead and answer, since this is a great topic.

Not all computers are created equal. Some of us can play back seemingly endless tracks with hundreds of plugins. Some of us can’t get more than 4 instruments playing at once.

For those of us with slower computers, you’ll need to “print” your instruments and effects. In other words, you need to record these instruments and effects to a new audio track. That way you can turn off the processor-intensive plugins and simply play back the audio (which is much easier on your computer).

To do this, simply set the output of the first track to a bus, something like “Bus 1″ or “Bus 17-18.” Then, set the input of your new audio track to the same bus. Record-enable the new track and start recording! That’s it.

Gregory, I’m not sure why you’re soloing the track. I think perhaps you don’t have things routed properly. If you route it like I described above, you won’t need to solo anything, because only one track will be feeding that bus, and only one audio track will be “listening to” that bus.

As always, thank you all for your questions. If you have a question, you can submit it via the Ask Joe form. Also, if you have additional suggestions, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

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You may remember a shoot-out I did between the Shure SM58 and its big brother the SM7B. It was interesting to hear some of the similarities between the mics, especially since one costs almost three times more than the other.

Ever since then, I’ve wanted to compare the 58 to a microphone I use quite a bit both in my studio and when I play out live – the AKG D5.

I’ve loved the sounds I’ve been able to get out of the D5, but I’ve never compared it directly to the SM58, which dominates the live sound market.

The D5 is a pretty stylish mic, with its black grill and body and nice big AKG logo. It’s also a super-cardioid microphone, as opposed to the standard cardioid pattern on the SM58.

Aside from these differences, the microphones are fairly similar. They’re both dynamic mics, and they both sell for right at $100.

So…does one sound better than the other? Let’s hear.

Shure SM58

[See post to listen to audio]

AKG D5

[See post to listen to audio]

If you’re having trouble playing these, you can download them here: SM58 and D5. (Right-click and save.)

How It Was Recorded

Here’s a quick run-down of how I recorded these. I left the grill on both, and simply stood about four inches from the front of the grill. I recorded directly through a Focusrite preamp into my 003, and I didn’t use any processing on either take.

My Thoughts

Both mics sound good, but I think the D5 has a good bit more high-end content to it. It doesn’t seem hyped to me necessarily. It just seems like the highs aren’t as rolled off as with the SM58.

Also, the bass of the D5 seems to reach a little bit lower. Sadly, this is only really heard when the mic “pops” from my breath, but still, it was something I noticed. This may make the D5 a better choice for bass amps, for example.

All in all, while it definitely depends on how well each microphone sits in the mix, I’m pretty impressed with my D5. It gives some of the benefits of a dynamic microphone, in that it doesn’t pick up as much room noise and is a bit “aggressive,” but it doesn’t sound as much like a dynamic as the Shure SM58 did, particularly in the high frequencies.

What do you think? Which do you like better?

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