GBall wrote: ↑Thu May 21, 2020 9:01 pm
Two things for what ever it is worth: - I''m not sure the boxy sound is a proximity effect but a room sound. I have the sound of my wife's office or other small room, especially if its of the near cube dimensions that a lot of small bedrooms are in my mind as I say that. (9x10 or something). Proximity effect I would describe as sounding more bassy that boxy. It could be exactly what you say, but If its room sound then a better condenser could actually sound worse...
Secondly to reply to the Asio / sound card question: Built in sound card have filters to cut off both low and high frequencies. Think ear buds in its frequency response - no matter the quality of your headphones or monitors. Because you can't hear them, its very easy to mix a song with shrill highs that would make the paint peel, or bass that the most die hard fan with a thumper in the trunk can't stand. Or... no bass or highs at all, because you know, you have no way of knowing.
Okay, I'm leaving now so you can talk bad about me.
I'll second this and slightly disagree with some others, on a couple of points. Proximity effect is a separate issue from 'boxiness', though they're somewhat interrelated and either can exacerbate the other. All microphones with a directional polar pattern display proximity effect to some degree, which is down to the particular model; the SM58 has a fairly wide pattern, such that two or three singers can share one mic, if the preamp has enough juice. You don't see this in a live setting, these days, because mics and channels are cheaper than they once were and concerns about feedback are ever-present at a live show. Another point of consideration is that the tighter a mic's polar pattern, the more information is picked up from the rear of the capsule, so a reflection filter can indeed be useful in conjunction with a handheld, front-address mic like the SM57-58, SM7; the caveat is that it may be difficult to get the capsule deep enough into the filter's radius to do much good. They make some reflection filters with a hole to poke the mic 'handle' through, for this reason.
Your Audient ID4 is an excellent choice and a huge upgrade from your device's built-in sound, which is rife with compromises, to say as little as possible. In my experience, upgrades of this potency will lead naturally to upgrades elsewhere in the recording chain, cuz when you're able to really hear what's going on in your room, you'll want to deal with its limitations, and small rooms have big limitations, because it's very difficult to get away from reflections that can bugger everything.
The good news is that while you may be unable to do much about anomalies in the bass and mid-bass frequencies, you can do a lot to tame highs and mids, and particularly, reflections from nearby walls, floors and ceilings. Some ingenuity may be required. For instance, I have a portable partial booth made from a room divider and some thick blankets, positioned in front of a sliding closet door that can be opened behind the singer, providing additional absorption; the mic, stand and reflection filter go in the crotch of the "V" formed by the blanketed room divider; it's ugly, but it's working.
Lastly, I can't recommend the Audio-Technica AT2020 enough; like the SM57, it's a great starter mic that you'll never stop using.
PS, here's some stuff I've written on microphone and preamp types and building a mic collection.
tube-mics-preamps-who-needs-em-t140510.html
. Be sure to use proper XLR cables rather than XLR- jack which you would have been using with the keyboard.
