Soundelux U99

[brandondrury]

I have a session starting in about an hour. I'll be able to truely test my latest mic, a Soundelux U99. It's supposed to be similar to an old Neuman U67 tube condenser mic. We shall see. This thing cost me about 10% of my house, so it better sound damn good. I'm expecting good things. I'll keep you updated.

Brandon

[TranscendingMusic]

Hey Brandon, any results (good ones hopefully) on that new cadillac of a microphone?

[brandondrury]

So far so good dude.

I used it on a drumset. That's right. I recorded an entire drumset with one mic and a room mic. It was impressive. I used it on a bass amp, too. It sounded great.

I did a rock vocal yesterday with it. Everyone says that the U67 sound, which this mic sort of replicates, is very dark for a condenser. A U67 is almost always called "thick". The U99 is definitely thick. It has a massive low end to it, but it's high is very "hifi" as well. On the particular singer I was recording yesterday, the vocals were nice and bright. I didn't notice the low end one way or the other. I thought this mic was going to be a little dark. It is not dark.

I used it tonight in front of a drumset. I'm really liking this application for this mic. I've been putting the U99 about 3 feet in front of a drumset in omni mode. I like to put the mic about waist high or so. The mic picks up a thunderous amount of kick that is not even present in the room and does a great job of picking up the natural sound of the drum set. For today's application, we were going for a very natural drum sound. The music is kind of along the Dave Mathews path, give or take. I mic'd the kick drum with my usual Shure SM 91. I'm not sure why. I used almost none of it in the mix. I also mic'd the snare top and bottom. They were used more as "flavors" than as important parts of the sound. I could bump up the snare if I wanted just a tad, but there was no real NEED to do this.

Overall, there is something that is just perfect about the high end of this mic. It just sounds right. None of my other mics have it. I can't speak for any other high end microphones because I've never used them, but there is a sweetness to this one that that Audio Technica mics do not have, my AKG 414 doesn't have, and none of my various other condenser mics have.

Brandon

[TranscendingMusic]

Very nice, sounds like you found a perfect task for this microphone.

There isi nothing worse than using a microphone that is harsh in the upper frequencies; then use the harsh microphone as a room mic? Rough. Because now, you've got every acoustic nuance of the room as an abhorrence. So, if your micophone has a nice high end response, that's awesome especially for the mic technique that you used.

I'm with you on the technique, I quite enjoy making material sound good with technique rather than constantly reaching for an eq.
It seems for the style of music you recorded, it was also appropiate.

Hey, post an MP3 at its finale.

Take care