Which microphone will give you best recording - Part 2 - Professional Sound Series

Professional Sound Series

Author

Master Editor
November 27, 2024

Is a microphone important for recording? Of course, without a good microphone, you will never get decent audio.

Should you buy the most expensive microphone you can afford? Not so fast!

The microphone is important for good-quality audio, but an expensive microphone does not necessarily mean good-quality recording.

If you do not understand how a microphone can give you good-quality audio, it does not matter how much you spend on it.

Let me explain. The job of any microphone is not to make your voice sound better.

A microphone only captures what is happening around it. The better a microphone captures the sound, the more expensive it tends to be.

Now, think about how a microphone captures your voice or any other sound. You do not have to be a technical wizard to understand this process.

Every sound we hear is an analog signal. The sound wave that propagtes through air or any medium is an analog signal.

If this analog signal or wave can not propagate, we can not hear any sound. For example, if you and your friend are in a vacuum and survive somehow, you will never be able to understand what your friend is saying.

Your friend will hear nothing, even if you scream as loud as you can. Why is it so?

Because the sound wave can not propagate in a vacuum. Let’s use this analogy to our microphone.

When you speak, the sound waveform, the analog signal, hits the microphone. Different types of microphones are built differently, but they do one job.

It receives the analog signal, which is stored on your computer. However, the computer can not store analog signals; it can only store digital data.

That leaves us with the question of how the analog signal captured by the microphone is converted to digital data that the computer can use.

Some circuitry between the microphone and computer can convert the analog signal to digital data.

For example, the audio interface you use helps in this conversion. You may ask, what happens if you do not use any audio interface, for example, when you use a USB mic to record your voice?

For USB microphones, some circulatory systems are built into the microphone that handles the analog to digital data conversion.

Your computer’s sound card also plays a part in this process.

All these talks indicate that the main job of the microphone is to capture analog signals.

A microphone price is set based on how well and how detail can capture the analog signal.

So you see, a microphone's worth is not measured by how good your voice sounds with it. In fact, a microphone does not have the ability to make a voice sound better.

Because different people have different types of frequency distribution. A microphone can not calculate which frequency of a voice sounds better.

That is the job of the EQ process. Now, you may feel that there is no relation between a good recording and a microphone.

Well, that’s not the case. A microphone has to be good enough to capture all signals from your voice.

Then, your audio processing ability will do the rest to get excellent audio.

If a microphone cannot capture some frequencies, you do not have all the audio data to play with, and your audio will lack some good bits to make it sound better.

So, which kind of microphone captures good enough details for a professional-quality sound? There are too many types, but I would answer that with price range.

Any microphone that is priced more than $200 can produce professional-quality sound.

You may wonder then if a $1000 mic would sound better than a $200 mic. Well, that may not be the case.

A $1000 mic will capture more nuances; its built quality will be better. However, the sound quality of a voice may not be better than that of a $200 microphone.

Or not in the ear of a regular listener. Is buying a microphone for $1000 or more is a complete waste of money?

Well, no. A $1000 mic will have better resolution in Audio data, and you have to have that skill to take advantage of that.

If you can’t get crystal clear audio with a $200 mic, then you wouldn’t get a better result with a $1000 mic.

You should proceed with a $200 - $500 mic first. Once you have enough knowledge and experience, then you can think of a more expensive microphone.

But never purchase an expensive microphone with the wrong thought that it would make your bad recording sound better.

To have the proper audio processing skills, you have to practice what you saw in YouTube videos. Without practice, you won’t get much far.

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