Are you hearing what you think you're hearing?

[Rue]

Several different microphones - but...further complicated by whatever device/s you are using to listen to the recording!

 

[Al Cramer]

It gets even worse! The way the sound is encoded (digital or analog) is hugely important. It took Neil Young years before he'd allow his stuff to go out as CDs, because he wouldn't accept the loss in sound quality. If you still have access to a turntable, check out how much richer & truer & just plain better vinyl sounded. My guess is that whatever differences exist between these mic's risks being occluded by digital encoding.

Sometimes I wish electricity had never been invented. A few weeks ago we lost power in the early evening, so my wife and I lit 5 candles at the kitchen table. To while away the time I took my fiddle and played a bunch of baroque tunes. I swear they sounded better by candlelight.

[Rue]

Lol! Yes! They say candlelight is very flattering! 

[Violadamore]

46 minutes ago, Al Cramer said:

Sometimes I wish electricity had never been invented.

[Pauses from mixing Frozen Strawberry Daiquiris in her blender, plainly aghast.]  Bite your tongue!!  Anyway, without electricity, we wouldn't be having all these lovely discussions, so there!   

Don't you have a generator? 

[PhilipKT]

2 hours ago, Al Cramer said:

I took my fiddle and played a bunch of baroque tunes. I swear they sounded better by candlelight.

That is an extremely poetic image, and I do not disagree.

Edited December 27, 2020 by PhilipKT

[PhilipKT]

53 minutes ago, Rue said:

Lol! Yes! They say candlelight is very flattering! 

“Does this candlelight make my butt look big?”

[PhilipKT]

38 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

[Pauses from mixing Frozen Strawberry Daiquiris in her blender, plainly aghast.]  Bite your tongue!!  Anyway, without electricity, we wouldn't be having all these lovely discussions, so there!   

Don't you have a generator? 

Without a generator, my dear, you would be mixing it the old-fashioned way...with a churn.

Edited December 27, 2020 by PhilipKT

[palousian]

Neil Young's rich-man's obsessions aside, digital sounds great if you have ears and can make good records.  Vinyl's distortions are certainly pleasing... but the random damage that creeps into vinyl records drives me nuts, though I suspect the pressings are better these days.  Still, digital is fine, vinyl is fine, moving on. 

As for the gear, decent quality is available for less $$ all the time.  Of course different microphones sound different, but it used to cost you the big money, say, to buy a Royer ribbon mic (lovely on violins), but now you can get a nice ribbon mic (Cascade Fathead II, get the Lundahl transformer) for under $400.  Interesting that the thumbnail implies that we're going to see a much more interesting microphone shoot-out between a Shure SM-58 and a Neumann U-87, neither of which appeared in the test.  In fact, there were no "expensive" professional-quality microphones used in this test, so it isn't surprising that the quality of the recordings consisted of various shades of meh.

[Violadamore]

16 minutes ago, PhilipKT said:

“Does this candlelight make my butt look big?”

You, sir, are a cad.     

[PhilipKT]

4 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

You, sir, are a cad.     

I’ll take that as a “no,” then!

Whew!

[matesic]

Sorry to "butt" in but to try to answer the question, yes I can tell there's a difference but not knowing how the piano sounds in the flesh I can't tell which microphone is the most faithful. And if I had no knowledge of the price I wouldn't be able to rank them with any confidence. Call me cloth-eared if you like

[Mansfield Piggot]

You can take the electronics completely out of the picture and still ask if you're hearing what you think you're hearing.

[martin swan]

On 12/28/2020 at 5:51 PM, Bill Merkel said:

You can take the electronics completely out of the picture and still ask if you're hearing what you think you're hearing.

Not just that, but if you are in fact hearing what you think you're hearing (one massive philosophical conundrum there), can you ever be sure that someone else is also hearing (or thinking that they're hearing) what you think you're hearing ....?

[Mansfield Piggot]

^Sounds like a teacher could be useful...  He could report back on what he thinks he hears and make you produce what he thinks he wants to hear...