Results from the acoustic guitar demo recordings

Review of the Microphone Recordings: Acoustic GuitarMicrophones:

Guitar Recording Review:

On the last day of term, I recorded the acoustic guitar demos in the recording booth sing a variety of different microphones. Each of these microphones obviously gave a different result. Below shows the results and my review of each of the microphones and the comparison between recording in mono and stereo.

Shure SM57 (Mono)

The recording of the SM57 in mono, lacks any sense of warmth and depth. The sound of the guitar is thin and watery and therefore is not the best microphone to record acoustic guitar.

Shure SM57 (Stereo)

Unlike the recording in mono, the sound of the acoustic guitar has gained a lot of warmth. The sound between these 2 recordings is quite substantial and has a noticeable difference. With a level of EQ and editing in post production, these recordings could come out sounded very good.

Rode NT4 (Stereo Pair)

The sound of the Rode NT4 stereo recording has a huge amount of high end frequencies, but seems to lack any of the bass end. The tone is quite thin and lacks the bass, warmth and depth that I am looking for in the recordings. With a level of EQ and editing in post production, I feel the recordings could be developed but I would like to have captured more of the low end from the initial recording and this can only be put down to the microphones.

Audio Technica AT2020 (Mono)

The tone of the recording from the AT2020, definitely incorporates the low frequencies more than the other microphones and has an overall more dark presence. This dark, rich tone is nice for the more fingerstyle recordings, as the high end is not too sharp and prominent. This microphone is not ideal for the heavy strumming, as the dark presence makes it very boomy and unclear. Overall, I like the microphone for more of the fingerstyle recordings, but would avoid for heavy strumming. I feel for the strumming even with some EQ and editing in post production the recordings would not benefit enough to make them nice enough to use.

Audio Technica AT2020 (Stereo)

The recording that came from the AT2020 in stereo, was outstanding. The audio quality, warmth, and depth was great and truly captures the resonance and warm tone of the acoustic guitar. The microphones struggles slightly more with the heavy strumming and more boomy playing, but I believe if I had turned the gain down slightly more or moved the guitar away from the microphone slightly further the recordings could have been better for that. With some fine tuning and EQ in Logic, I believe the recordings could come out sounding even better. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the resonance, the microphones captured the fading out of the guitar naturally and with good quality. I would rate this set up as number 1 out of all of the microphone I tested.

sE 2000 Condenser (Mono)

The recordings that came from the sE 2000 condenser microphone were very dark and muddy. Although, considering the muddy sound recordings did have high clarity. The recordings did sound thin and felt like they needed some more bass end. Despite the lack of bass end the recordings still had an overall dark presence and didn’t have a warm and rich tone. The microphones were more suited for the strumming and louder playing. I would not use this microphone for recording acoustic guitar again as its dark presence is not the sound I like for when I am recording acoustic guitars. Even with EQ and post production, the audio quality is not as good as the AT2020’s in stereo.

JWJ