Well, for my birthday my wife bought me a Samson C01U. I just had a half hour or so to play around with it last night, but from what I can tell, it is awesome. I did two recordings: one with guitar and vocals at the same time and one with them separate. Both recordings sounded excellent. Even with the air conditioning on and the computer running, I had no audible background noise. I didn't notice any latency that had been complained about previously with this mic. It was very easy to set up. I just plugged it in and changed the input from built in to the Samson. I would definitely recommend this microphone. For $80, this mic is well worth the investment.
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I got my Samson C01U
- Thread starter bowens
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bowens,bowens said:
Congrats! You've made a good choice in the C01U. I've had a USB Microphone for almost a year and love the ease of use and I don't have to have all that extra equipment. Welcome to the dawn of a new era in recording. When you get a chance I would love to hear what you've done, so if you could post something that would be great!
Kindest Regards,
Jerry
Here is a song that I messed with a little last night. I spent maybe an hour and a half on it, but I think the recording quality anyway is pretty good. The site says the song is not approved yet, but hopefully that won't take too long. Here is a link.
You Are My Strength
You Are My Strength
bowens,bowens said:
Thanks for posting this song, however I get a "This song is not yet approved" from MacJams.com. Can't wait to hear what you have done.
Kindest Regards,
Jerry
macbodock said:
Yeah, hopefully it will be approved today. They said it could take 24-48 hours and I put it up yesterday morning about 8:30 EST. I'm also going to try to put one more up this afternoon. It's a song that I wrote for my wife. It was played at our wedding last year.
Hey, they finally approved my song over at MacJams. Here is the link if you want to have a listen. You Are My Strength
and here's another one. Everything to Me
I guess after the first song, they don't have to approve them anymore. This one went active immediately.
Edit: I took down the second song. When I converted it to mp3 I had the bitrate way too low. I'll put it up again this afternoon.
and here's another one. Everything to Me
I guess after the first song, they don't have to approve them anymore. This one went active immediately.
Edit: I took down the second song. When I converted it to mp3 I had the bitrate way too low. I'll put it up again this afternoon.
not a bad engineering effort, at all. instruments are placed well, but they're still fighting each other.bowens said:
best thing you can do right now is treat your room. the bass freqs are a little out of control, the mids are muddy, and the highs are too dead. have you hung blankets and such? take those down and replace them with some cheapie bass traps.
in the meantime, some extra mixing effort will help:
1. remove the mud from the acoustic
2. automate the volume level of the bass
3. snare needs a little more crack to it
4. lead vocal needs a touch more high end
5. find a better sounding crash cymbal
how much of that was put through the samson: vox, acoustic, anything else? you're going to have to do some work to fight the buildup in the mids.
zimv20 said:
Thanks. This is my first attempt mixing a song. I will see what I can do with your suggestions. I agree about the crash but that was the best I could find. I'll look around a little more in GB and see what I can find.
You're really gonna have to walk me through some of this. How would I go about removing the mud from the acoustic?
Just the vocals and the acoustic guitar are through the mic.
Edit: Second song is up and I added one more. Everything to Me, The End
lots of little things added together. at record time, use newish strings. make sure the room isn't too dead. play around with mic positioning to ensure you're getting enough highs and that the lows and mids are tamed.bowens said:
then when mixing, you can use EQ to take out those freqs which are fighting. each instrument should have its own space carved out for it (like you did with the vox). for the song in question, your mids are too crowded. the acoustic, bass and your vox are all fighting for terrority there. so EQ out some of the acoustic mids and see if that cleans it up some. you'll probably find that you can pull back the vox a bit and still have them stand out.
the bass is a whole 'nother matter. tell me how the bass was done.
erp. that's kind of bad news, IF the mic pre in the samson is contributing to the mud. no need to panic, though, if other measures can remedy the issue.
that's the thing i really hated about the VLZ pre's in my (now sitting in a closet) mackie board. the more things i recorded with the pre's, the smaller and muddier everything sounded when mixed together. cheap pre's don't stack upon themselves very well.
check your midi values for velocity (i assume it's set up where increasing velocity increases the volume). it sounds to me that the bass has too much dynamics, for starters.bowens said:
the second problem is, as i've mentioned, it's fighting the other instruments. so you can either EQ what you've got or look for a less instrusive patch.
but perhaps the largest issue, it seems to me, is that you can't hear what's going on down there. this is all down to your monitoring. speakers or headphones? if the former, your room has nodes and what you're hearing isn't what's really happening. and it's difficult to mix on headphones, full stop.
yes, checking multiple system are good.bowens said:
after doing so, did you conclude that the bass was problematic? (this is one of the harder things about mixing, the self-critique. separating the part of you that can honestly assess what you've done, and the part of you that just wants the darn thing mixed already).
i got this mic a few months back.. it worked great.. really great. very little background noise... but recently I started getting a LOT of background noise.. and it sounds like a 20 dollar mic form radio shack now.. 
I have never used the soft pre.. nor I am using it right now.. any ideas? suggestions? please help
I have never used the soft pre.. nor I am using it right now.. any ideas? suggestions? please help
Everything To Me
wonderful song! i love vocals and the guitar... i would either lose the drums or if you really feel you want them, do the entire drum track over. Also add another track of guitar to fatten it up a bit.... Maybe a soft string pad, not all the way through but in certain sections. Jmho
wonderful song! i love vocals and the guitar... i would either lose the drums or if you really feel you want them, do the entire drum track over. Also add another track of guitar to fatten it up a bit.... Maybe a soft string pad, not all the way through but in certain sections. Jmho
Bought the Samson C01U mic and quickly returned it. Entry level USB mics still can't shake off internal self pre-amp noise. The noise floor is just too much to try and add an EQ noise gate. Unless you spend 4x on a RODE podcaster, USB mikes still aren't there yet unless the preamp is very properly insulated from the mic.
I ended up getting a Shure preamp with an XLR M-audio Nova. The difference is night and day. It's more than I wanted to spend but I needed a 'clean' USB signal.
I ended up getting a Shure preamp with an XLR M-audio Nova. The difference is night and day. It's more than I wanted to spend but I needed a 'clean' USB signal.