Blue Microphones

G

Gorilla King

Well-known member
What's the general feeling on this manufacturer? I'm in the market for a large diaphragm condenser for under 1,500 and some of these caught my eye.
 
BLUE mics are quite nice, highly recommended. However, you must understand that most of the BLUE mics (except for the Bluebird) have very strong personalities - and thus are not as general in use as many other mics. So, if this will be your only mic, or one of a very few, you may have luck with the Bluebird, but I wouldn't really recommend the others (well, the Bottle with all capsules is versatile, but is an order of magnitude more pricey than your $1500 stipulation). However, if you have a few genral-purpose mics, and are getting into the realm of fleshing out your mic cabinet with mics especially suited to certain sources (and especially un-suited to others), then the BLUE line has a lot of charm.

They're extremely well-built, tend to be highly sensitive and low in self-noise, and of course have that "cool" factor. If you're building complex mixes, the different mics can be used to carve up the frequency spectrum quite well without having to use EQ. They really give you a lot of sonic options to play with.

What're your plans for the mic?
 
Well, this mic will be used solely for recording the dialogue for an animated feature. I intend to use a Schoeps CMC 641 for recording all of the effects work. Any Blue mics you'd recommend in particular for this job?
 
The issue is, they'd be very specific to the particular voice you're recording. The Bluebirtd will work with a variety of voices, cleanly, without hype. Any other BLUE mic might be magic, or might be lousy depending on the speaker... if you have a number of speakers you're planning to record, and you are set on BLUE, get the Bluebird.
 
If you are going up to the $1500 range, you have a lot of good options. You could easily get a used u87, or a new or used AKG 414. There are even some really good U47 copies in this range: Peluso 2247 and Telefunken RFT AK47. I'm assuming you want something for VO only.
 
Only experience I have with Blue mics is playing with them down at our local GC. Damn they do sound sweet but as Ullanta said they are pretty colored so not a great idea if you are just getting one mic.

The u87 is a great one size fits all mic. I would lean that way on your budget.

If you can, find somewhere you can play with various mics to get a feel for what you like best.

Hey Ullanta, have you had any experience with the Red Type B mic? Seems like an interesting capsule system. http://www.redmic.com/

Cheers
 
wabbit said:
Hey Ullanta, have you had any experience with the Red Type B mic? Seems like an interesting capsule system. http://www.redmic.com/

Cheers
Click to expand...

No, I haven't had a chance to try 'em... though I've eyed 'em, primarily as a "cheaper" way to get a set of perspex omnis (the R4/B4 capsules)... I don't think they're gonna release a version of those for the MC-12, huh?
 
Having read up, I think I am going to go with the Blueberry. It seems like the right mic for me and I certainly don't object to saving 500 dollars.
 
Gorilla King said:
Where can I find a u87 for 1,500? I'm looking and they all seem to be in the 3,000 range.
Click to expand...

I was suggesting a used u87 would be in the $1500 range.
 
That's certainly a possibility, but I don't know how comfortable I'd be buying a mic without really knowing it's history.
 
I will keep an eye out. I'd certainly love to be using a mic of that quality for this job since it's really a passion project for me. I'm watching the mic you linked to and I'll wait to see it's closing price tomorrow to get an idea of what I could expect. I am somewhat partial to the Blue mics though for somewhat sentimental reasons. They're made in the country my dad was born in. It's a pretty poor country. I would love to be able to support them in my own small way. We'll see. Under 1,500 I could handle. Over? Probably not.
 
We all get a little emotional over our gear in one way or another. At least that reason has some meaning behind it.

Don't forget a mic is only as good as its preamp. Leave some money for that too.

Cheers
 
Bluebird is flat, tonally... that's what makes it a good general purpose mic. The Blueberry is hyped on the high end, which will work magic for some voices and sound ugly on others...
 
Thi is a somewhat urgent question so I hope someone will be able to help me out. Let's say I did get a Neumann u87ai and that I used a firebox for my audio interface into my laptop. Would the quality of the sound suffer on account of the preamp?
 
Both the mic and the pre-amp affect the quality of the sound. Just like mics, preamps come in price ranges of practically nothing (built into mixers/recorders) to $1,000+ per channel (Avalon's are nice). If you already have the firebox, I'd get the u87, as a better preamp down the road will work with both. In general, I'd upgrade mics before pre-amps.
 
I have never used that device so I can't say for sure but my guess is the preamps are going to be average at best. Certainly won't be doing justice to such a good mic. The best price to quality ratio preamps I have found are the Mackie Onyx. You could get their 12 channel mixer with firewire interface for your computer for under $1000.

Hopefully someone who has used the Firebox will chime in.

Good luck
 
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