I just read again the whole thread and noticed the original problem of @JT was not the quiet mic but not being able to use the bass and and the usb web cam mic (or integrated mic of the PC) at the same time.
My initial act was to buy a studio mic myself and make use the second channel of my DAI same as JT and I had the exact same problem! My solution to the problem that my first “solution” brought in was a mixer!
However I had a lot of opportunity to study different approaches since then and I would totally handle it differently today!
I noticed that it was not suggested so I just drop it here… When you are using the PC and DAI for online lessons you can mix your bass signal from DAI with any other source of audio (web cam mic, laptop integrated mic, internal sound card audio input etc…) virtually by using several software. A donation based one is “Voicemeeter Banana”
Here is a video on how to do this…
I agree that the camera mic is probably not “better” in quality (eventually) but certainly it works “better” and “much easier to setup” if all you want is to be heard on the other side when you talk.
The mic technology in web cams and especially smart phones is heavily invested in capturing the human voice with minimum background noise possible but with a studio mic you have to be doing all the proper amplification, filtering and mixing to get the full potential…
As I have described before I have been using a low end dynamic studio mic and a mixer before going into the DAI and to Zoom from there but in the last couple of weeks I had to do my online lessons in other places than my own house… I must say I suffered greatly packing un packing and repacking all that stuff every time!
Now I am thinking to get a USB wearable mic with a long cable and DAI only to do this… I think I will go into the DAI from my VOX Amplug2 but need to convert the cable to mono first…
The research for ultimate mobile bass playing goes on!
Just did a test of VoiceMeeter. It will do the job fine actually for my simple online course purposes. You just saved me something like £180 ($250) as I can now return all this mic stuff. Thanks!
I am incredibly happy that this works for you mate! I took the plunge on the XLR Dynamic mic at that time also because I thought “Hell worst case scenario I let my son play around with it” which he did and it was heaps of fun!
There is also a mixer in each room and the BASS and Guitar amps have DI outs that I could connect to it but I really prefer to get things as simple as possible! And I don’t know the first thing about microphoning a drum set!
One good mic in as an overhead would be better for immediate results. Two mics can have phasing issues and in general, there’s a true art in stereo recording and processing.
In addition, based on my previous experience with the Behringer XM8500 - I would not buy another Behringer mic. The Shure mics are way more than twice as good, even for the PGA budget line. So I would echo the sentiment - get one good mic instead of two Behringers.
I am a big fan of Behringer but it kind of amazed me how much better even the cheap Shure’s are.
Hmm… hadn’t looked at those. Could be an option for sure. Deals with distance from mic issue and some have a XLR connector. Good shout. Going to test this Voice Meeter thing a bit more first though. Works most of the time, but sometimes I have to restart the computer to get things working again.
Another thing I have seen is people just mounting a SM7 or SM58 (or 48 or PGA58 - for voice it doesn’t really matter, they are all great) on an arm mount and using that to hold it an appropriate distance, moving it as needed. That’s a more permanent solution but it does give really excellent audio quality.
There’s a few people doing that at work for remote meetings, even.
Some of their pedals are worth it - the BDI-21 is simply great
So I just checked and the Shure SM58 is 26dBV (!) more sensitive than the XM8500. That explains why my XM8500 sounded like hot garbage compared to even the PGA58 I eventually replaced it with.
The XM8500 would be a good loud environment PA mic though, for something like Karaoke. And you can’t beat the price ($25!). It seemed to be made well. But for the home studio, nope nope nope.
The main difference is in the grille. The SM58 was designed for vocal applications, and therefore uses a ball grille with built in pop filter to eliminate plosives. The SM57 is designed as an instrument microphone, where a smaller grille size is more practical and plosives are less of a concern.
I had started typing before and then stopped, but was going to say…
I have two mics, a large diaphram condenser and a ribbon mic, bought both really for sax.
The Rode NT1A was the first, than an SE something ribbon mic on a reco of a good friend sax guy. I can’t tell one from the other…yet.
Point is, until your ear gets better or cares, you shouldn’t.
But a good quality mic you can afford that is suited for the job.
Then, as your ear fine tunes, you can start collecting these as well as basses, pedals, picks, strings, etc
Still going on with making use of this thread to meet my own ends!
So I have tried to record using the already available mics in the studio which already had a 16 channel mixer which was connected to the big monitors.
I connected:
One mic for vocals, one mic for kick drum and one overhead mic to the drum set where all was connected to studio mixer. I had to lower the drum mic inputs since they would be also heard from the monitors (Spoiler, I shouldn’t have lowered them)
Both bass amp DI and guitar amp DI to the little mixer I brought and added an output from the studio mixer here…
Finally connected the output of my little mixer to the DAI…
It took about 15 minutes to figure all this out and the result was definitely a cleaner recording but the mix was pretty bad in the end (guitar and vocal too high, drums and bass barely being heard). And in the end I couldn’t set the mix afterwards since all was recorded into a single stereo track.
This time around the studio was free before we got in but if it was full all this thing would have stolen our precious practice time…
Talking to the techs in the studio I learned that they are using multi track field recorders like Zoom H6 which is kinda expensive for me… There are some used H4Ns and H1Ns around which I will consider…
I really wanted to resolve this using a single condenser mic but all my research shows that people are not doing it this way…
