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Review of the Audio-Technica AT2035 Microphone (Audio Samples)

December 4, 2012 by Ken 80 Comments

This is an excellent microphone for home recording, especially for vocals/voice-over purposes. It gives professional sounding results for only about $149. This review contains audio samples and comparisons with a more expensive mic. My Star Rating –

Audio-Technica AT2035 Mic — Audio-Technica AT2035

The Audio-Technica AT2035 is a large diaphragm condenser (LDC) microphone with a cardioid pickup pattern. (For a review of what a large diaphragm condenser mic is, see our post: What Are The Different Types of Microphones?)

The AT2035, which normally sells for $149, is an improvement on its less expensive sibling, the AT2020, which sells for $65, which is still a great value.

The capsule in the 2035 is a newer and larger design that gives a flatter response in the low (bass) frequencies and is overall more sensitive than the 2020. In fact technically, the AT2020 is not really a larger diaphragm condenser mic, even though it looks VERY similar. It’s only 16mm compared to the 24mm diaphragm in the 2035.

So What is Different?

For the extra 85 bucks or so you not only get a more sensitive mic with flatter low end and more sensitivity, but you also get a mic with less self noise, a much larger capsule, and some additional features thrown in for good measure. The 2035 gives you more control over the sound by offering two switches: a high pass filter (meaning that it reduces the low frequencies) switch at 80 Hz and a 10 dB pad, which lets you reduce the signal coming from the microphone by 10 decibels when you engage that switch. This function is pretty handy, especially if you’ve done all you can in a recording session to tame loud signals.

And that brings us to another improvement in this mic over the 2020, which is that it can handle a very loud signal (148dB of signal processing level (SPL) without the pad, or 158dB with the pad engaged) before it distorts. For a mic to be both very sensitive (can pick up very quiet sounds) and be able to handle that level of SPL is a good thing.

And finally, this mic comes with the shock mount in the box. This may seem like a small thing, but it gets very difficult to keep noise from traveling up a mic stand with sensitive mics like these if you just use a clip. A shock mount suspends the mic from a web of elastic bands, which keeps out a lot of low frequency noise. If you have ever had an LDC mic without a compatible shock mount, it gets to be a chore to find one and then order it and wait for it to come in, etc. So the fact that this mic comes with a shock mount is awesome and should be standard practice.

So How Does It Sound?

I always recommend that when they can afford it, folks get a large diaphragm condenser mic, along with a decent audio interface, if they want to produce professional audio. If you have less than $100 to spend, the AT2020 is an excellent choice. But if you can produce the extra 85 bucks, I highly recommend the 2035 because it sounds awesome.

I compared the AT to my Rode NT2-A, another LDC mic, one that I use daily. I recorded a short voice passage as well as some acoustic guitar. The first thing I noticed before anything else was that with everything else being equal (audio interface settings), the level of the AT was significantly higher than the Rode, which is saying something. That’s that sensitivity thing coming into play.

First the voice test. I just read some specs from the box for this. The 2035 sounded clear and present, very nice. Compared to the Rode (a mic costing almost 3 times more than the AT, by the way) the sound had a bit of mid-range hype to it. Take a listen to the samples below.

	Rode Voice
	AT Voice

For the guitars I found exactly the same thing, a mid-range bump and less even across frequencies. Take a listen to those below.

Rode Guitar

AT Guitar

Lastly, I recorded silence (well, the sound of my room without any talking, etc.) to measure mic noise, and corrected the Rode recording for the difference in levels. There was no significant difference in noise at all. both were very quiet, registering about -65 RMS average level of amplitude. This is pretty amazing considering the price difference between these two mics.

Overall

For the things I tested it on, voice and acoustic guitar, the AT2035 sounded great. If you weren’t comparing it to a mic that cost nearly 3 times more, the bumps in the mid range wouldn’t be noticeable. My advice is to get one of these mics as your first large diaphragm condenser if you can afford the $149 and if don’t have a really good one already. To find out more of go get one right now, click here.

You cannot go wrong.

Vocal Compression Using Reaper's ReaComp Effect Plugin

November 7, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

I just had my first audio recording tutorial video published by AudioTuts+. The video shows you how to compress a vocal track using the compressor plugin effect, ReaComp, that comes with Reaper audio recording software. If you’d like a refresher on what the compression effect is for, see our article: What Does Compression Mean In Audio Recording?
In this video, I show you how to place ReaComp on a vocal track in Reaper (my dulcet tones doing a bit of singing). Then I walk you through the settings screen and explain the main controls and meters so you can see how the voice is affected by them. Then I show you how to set the starting levels for the threshold, ratio, and attack/release settings. You can then both see and hear how compression affects the vocal track.
https://homebrewaudio.wistia.com/medias/r479d81v6c?embedType=async&videoWidth=700
The tutorial video was published here: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/quick-tip-how-to-use-reapers-reacomp-compressor-plugin/. I encourage you to check out the AudioTuts+ site because it has a lot of resources on audio recording that you will find very useful. But if you just want to watch the video, check it out below. Enjoy!

What Does Compression Mean In Audio Recording?

September 29, 2012 by Ken 10 Comments

A very common question I see is “should I use compression in audio recording?” The best answer to this question is, as is so often the case, “Do you need compression in your recordings?”
Let’s start with a workable definition of compression in the audio recording sense. When you lower the volume of only SOME of your audio, usually the bits that are clearly louder than most of the rest of the audio you’re working with, you are “compressing” that audio. You would do this in order to allow you to raise the average loudness of the entire audio file.

How Can I Compress My Audio?

Now, this can be done manually, by which I mean you could open your audio in an editor, seek out all the areas where the wave forms (I like to use the term “blobs” instead) are loudest, then turn those bits down. But that can get REALLY tedious and time consuming. So to automate this process, a machine (nowadays done with software) called a “compressor” was invented. This allowed folks who really knew what they were doing to more quickly manipulate volume and loudness dynamics. The dark side of the situation, though, was that it allowed folks who were less expert to mess up their audio, and do it much faster and more efficiently than ever.

Compressor Settings?

There are all kinds of settings on a compressor that are better discussed in other articles. For a good idea of what those are, see my article and video – Vocal Compression Using Reaper’s ReaComp Effect Plugin.
For the moment I’d like to focus on a visual explanation of basic compression, since I strongly believe that those who use compressors to mess up their audio (usually without actually WANTING to mess up their audio) do it because they don’t have a really good grasp on what compression really is. This should help.

Lets Just Focus on What Compression Is

use compression in audio recording — Figure 1 – Uncompressed Audio

Take a look at figure 1, which is a voice narration file. I’ve boxed off the two loudest peaks.
If I tried to turn up the volume of this audio, all of the audio, including the 2 peaks, would “get bigger.” But there is a problem here. Do you see it? Look at the label in the picture pointing to Max Loudness. If any of the audio wave forms (blobs) get pushed beyond that border line the arrow is pointing to, you get nasty, awful digital distortion. Suffice it to say that the border line represents the upper boundary you must not cross.
Knowing that, it should be easier to see why you can’t turn the loudness up very far before the peaks hit that boundary. And when that happens, none of the rest of the audio can get any louder either. See figure 3 to see what would happen if we told our editor to turn the file up until the loudest bit hit the upper boundary. There wasn’t a lot of change was there?

The blobs didn’t get much bigger (louder) did they? Oh no, whatever shall we do?
How about if we turn DOWN the level of JUST those two peaks? Let’s do that. Now take a look at figure 3 to see what our new file looks like. Notice that the

average level of the audio blobs is much more even now? THAT is what compression is for. Now that we don’t have just a couple of pesky peaks preventing us from turning our audio up without it distorting, we can raise the average level much higher, resulting in louder audio across the entire file. If we now tell our editor to raise the level of the loudest peak to maximum loudness (raising the rest of the audio by the same amount), we get figure 4. Compare

the picture in figure 4 with the one in figure 2. You will notice that blobs in figure 4 are much wider/bigger than the ones in figure 2 across the board.
Being able to increase the overall loudness level of your audio is just one benefit of compression, and perhaps its most common goal. when used wisely, this can also add punch and “up-frontness” to your audio. But don’t forget what compression actually accomplished for us BEFORE we were able to turn it up. It evened out the overall levels first, which gives a more consistent listening level to the user.

How Compression Would Help When Watching TV

I’ve often wished I had an audio compressor attached to my television for this very reason. Have you ever been watching a movie where the action scenes were so loud that you had to turn the volume down on the TV, only to find that now the talking parts are too quiet? Then you have to turn the TV back up to hear those parts. You end up turning the volume up and down throughout the show.
What about when the commercials on TV are much louder than the show itself? Don’t you wish you had a compressor to even out the volume so that it automatically turned the commercials down to the same level as your TV show?
I mentioned earlier that people frequently mess up their audio by over-use or incorrect use of compression. The most common problem is with music.
If you compress it too much, say, in order to make your mix louder than everyone else’s, you risk sucking out the dynamic range of the music. Changes in levels are important to the emotion of music. Over-compressing can flatten things so much that there is no more emotional flow to the music. That can also make it sound unnatural.
Also, compressors tend to impart certain sonic strangeness to audio when over-done, such as increasing sibilance (the sort of hissy sounds you hear when someone uses the letter “S”) in vocals, or audio “pumping” which is when the compressor is rapidly clamping down on loud audio and then letting up on quiet parts over and over.

So Should I or Shouldn’t I?

So back to the original question. “Should I use compression in audio recording?” Now that you understand what compression is, you can answer your own question. Do you want to even out the loudness of your audio? Then compression can help you. Do you want to raise the overall loudness of your audio without distorting? Compression can help you. Do you want to add some punch and ‘in-your-faceness” to a voice over? Compression can help. Just make sure you remember that it is really easy to overdo compression if you’re not careful.
Now go forth and squash your audio responsibly.
Ken
ps – Since this article was written, there have been several more posts that have to do with compression in some way. Since you’re now thinking about compression, you might be interested in learning more about it. See our other articles on compression here:
Using Multi-Band Compression
Home Recording: Singing As Loud As You Want
Compression For Punch and Presence

Using a Click Track For Recording Music

February 8, 2012 by Ken 2 Comments

The click track is a tool in audio recording, especially for recording music, that allows a person to hear the tempo or timing information of project. For example, in Reaper (though this is pretty common for all recording software), if you want to listen to a click track while recording, you simply click (no pun intended) the little button in the tool bar that looks like a metronome. This will then play through the speakers and headphones when in Record or Play mode.
Yes, I see your hands up. I know what you’re going to ask. Yes, you absolutely must use headphones, with the speakers turned OFF (or muted) when recording to a click track. Also, you’ll want to use closed-back headphones if you can. Otherwise the sound of the click track will leak out of the headphones and straight into the mic while you’re recording.
Why even use a metronome/click track in the first place? Musicians recorded without one for decades. True. And I sometimes do record music without one. But most of the time I wish I hadn’t foregone the click-clack (actually it sounds more like “cleek-clock” to me, but I digress). This is due to the fact that I often wish to remove or add entire sections of a song after it is recorded. I also frequently copy and paste sections and maybe loop them. If I hadn’t recorded to a click track, these different bits and pieces of the song would all be at slightly different tempos, and trying to get them to work and play well together is murder. So if at all possible, I record music to a click.
Some people say they cannot record to a click because of how it sounds. Typically, the default sound of a metronome in recording software is sort of like a real metronome, only more annoying. It usually sounds like somebody is tapping a salad mixing bowl with a chop-stick. Not only is it irritating and sometimes hard to “groove” to, but the frequencies of the default click sounds are perfectly designed to explode out of headphones and stampede for the microphone, even closed-back ones sometimes.
So what to do? One solution is to replace the sound of the click with drum sounds, which are much more natural and musical sounding. There are two ways to do this.
First, in the Metronome Options (right-click on the Metronome button), you can replace the primary (downbeat) and secondary beat sounds with any audio file on your computer. If you have a drum, you could record a couple of hits and use those files. Or you can use any drum-hit sample you may have on your computer.
The second option is to not use the metronome at all. That’s what I do. You simply create a new track (ctrl-T), change the Input to MIDI and insert a virtual instrument drum program using the FX button. Then simply record a measure or two of drum hits. I usually use a kick, hi-hat and snare. Edit the MIDI file (double-click on the item in the track) to make sure your hits are on the right beats. Then trim the MIDI item to make sure it is exactly one measure long and starts exactly on beat #1. Then all you have to do is drag the right edge of the MIDI item to the right (this loops it) for the length of the song.
When you’re done recording, you can simply delete the MIDI track if you want.
The reason this works is that both the metronome and any MIDI items in your project will automatically correspond to your project time (4/4, 3/4 etc.) and tempo (in beats per minute – BPM), which you set in Project Settings in Reaper.
So here are two ways to record you song to the right beat, and have it STAY on that beat all the way through. It’s definitely faster to just use the Metronome tool and its default clip-clop (or more like “cleep-clope” – are you getting the idea that I don’t like this sound?) sound. It doesn’t require you to create any tracks or deal with virtual instrument plug-ins, etc. On the other hand, with a little extra time spent up front, you can have a more natural and musical sound to keep time to.
By the way, our newest recording tutorial course – The Newbies Guide to Audio Recording Awesomeness 2: Pro Recording with Reaper – walks you step-by-step through this and many other awesome Reaper tips. To find out more about those Reaper tutorial videos, including taking a peek inside every lesson, CLICK HERE.
Happy pleep-plopping!
Ken

Crossfade Meaning – What Does It Mean To Crossfade Audio?

January 5, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

So what exactly does it mean to “crossfade audio”? Well before we talk about crossfading, we should probably first talk about just plain old regular fading. What is a fade?
Happily, this is one of those few audio terms that actually sounds like what it means. Whether you know the term or not, I’m fairly confident that you’ve at least experienced/heard fading going on before.
Pop songs used to end with a fadeout a lot back in the day. You see it on sheet music all the time. At the end it often says “repeat and fade.” It just means that instead of an abrupt or definite ending, the song would continue. The volume would just get lower and lower until it was inaudible, at which point it would end. It fades out.

Fades

Often on TV or movie soundtracks you hear the audio fade in (as opposed to the above example of fading out). The music (usually) or other audio will start out inaudible and rise in volume gradually until you can hear it at full volume.
This is the same idea for audio items in our recording projects. We use it as describe above sometimes, especially when producing voice overs or narrations that have background music.
The music frequently fades in before the narrator starts talking. If the music is not going to continue behind the voice for the duration of the program, as in a podcast or radio show intro perhaps, the music usually fades out just after the narrator starts speaking.
But the most common use of fading when doing multitrack recording projects is simply to allow audio items to start and finish more smoothly. If the edges of an audio item do not fade in or out at least a little bit, you get clicks and pops due to the sudden stops and starts of the item.

Crossfades

Now we know what fading is. So let’s talk the crossfading. It is when one bit of audio fades out at the exact time as another bit of audio is fading in (see the picture at the beginning of the article).
Let’s say you are recording a vocal track, and you mess up. What most of us do is wait a second while the program continues recording, and read/sing the part you messed up a second time, and then proceed with the recording.
Things often run more smoothly this way, as opposed to stopping and starting over all the time. However, doing it like this requires that when you have finished recording, you go back and cut out that messed up part. Crossfades to the rescue!
A common way to deal with mistakes is to simply highlight the screw-up, and cut it out. This leaves a blank space there (unless you have ripple editing turned on – see our post on THAT here: https://www.homebrewaudio.com/what-is-ripple-editing), creating 2 audio items, the part before the cut and the part after it. Now you’ll want to join these two items so you drag the later audio to the left to connect it up like a train section to the end of the earlier audio item (see figure 1).

Crossfades Are About Seamlessness

In order for the audio to sound seamless to the listener, you’ll usually want to slightly overlap the end of the earlier audio and the beginning of the later audio item. But that will still frequently give you an abrupt and unnatural sounding transition. So you want the end part of item 1 to be fading out exactly at the same time as the beginning part of audio 2 is fading in.

So most programs, including Reaper (shown in the pictures in this article), default to automatically crossfading any audio items that overlap. Take a look at Figure 2 where I have connected the same audio items shown in figure 1. I’ve drawn a box around where the item on the left is fading out as the item on the right is fading in. The red lines represent the volume of the items. It sort of looks like an “X.” I did not have to do anything extra because as soon as the items started overlap, Reaper automatically executed the crossfading.
This kind of crossfading is not done as an effect, where you’d hear something slowly fade in or out pleasantly. I had to zoom in pretty far to even see the red fade lines. That’s because the fades happen very quickly. This type of crossfading is used as a tool to help avoid the popping and clicking that frequently accompany the cutting and deleting of audio.

You can edit each fade if you wish. You could change the shape of the curve or make the fade longer or shorter. Do this by hovering your mouse over the edge of the audio item until the “fade” tool icon appears (Figure 3). Then right-mouse-click to change the shape of the fade. Or simply drag the edge of the item to change the length of the fade.

Items Do Not Have To Be On the Same Track To Crossfade Them

One last note – items do not have to be on the same track to use the crossfade idea. In Figure 4 I used the same two audio items, but I put the second one on a different track.
They still overlap in time. The end of the first one still fades out just as the beginning of the second one is fading in. The only difference is that they are on different tracks.
So now you know what crossfading means. And you know how you can use it to smooth out the transitions between audio items. Crossfading is a good tool to give you better audio recordings.