When you have as extensive of a mic closet and gear list as I have, it’s easy to get caught up in the pissing contest of gear sluttery. I’ll see your C12 and raise you a 47 (ORIGINAL tubes mind you…the ones with the schwastikas on them). I’ll see your GML and raise you a Pultec; I’ll see your Pultec and raise you a K&H. We marvel over the beauty and fidelity and richness of high-dollar recording equipment, but it’s easy also easy to forget that if something is truly the highest of fi, the end product can only be as good as what you put into it.
Hi-fi, otherwise known as high fidelity, is a term that was adopted in a time when most recording technology could not physically reproduce sound in a veristic way. For instance, carbon microphones from the 1870s had very low sound quality, limited frequency response, and a whole lot of noise. These were the most common microphones in the early days of AM radio—Reginald Fessenden, the Canadian inventor who pioneered transmitted voice and music along with Guglielmo Marconi, used carbon microphones for his first audio transmissions. These mics were considerably low fidelity and contributed to the desire for more high fidelity equipment.
In 1973, a standard for noise, distortion, and frequency response was established by the Deutsches Institut fur Normung. The DIN 45500 standard was meant to be a guideline that set out the minimum requirements for audio gear to earn the “hi-fi” label. Of course, once the term became popular marketers for audiophile equipment began applying it everywhere since there was no governing body to regulate the use of the label.
“Fidelity” itself is defined as “the degree of accuracy with which sound or images are recorded or reproduced.” “High-fidelity” then implies that reproduction can be achieved with a reasonably true approximation of the original source. Note that this does not indicate that hi-fi gear will make the original source sound better. That presence bump in the upper-mids on your SM57 is not, strictly speaking, “high-fidelity” because it adds extra stuff to the original sound.
If you are a weak singer, you won’t make yourself sound better by having a super hi-fi tube microphone. On the contrary, hi-fi gear will accentuate every shortcoming in your vocal performance: from mouth-noises to mucus in your sinuses, hi-fi mics can hear it all.
Oh, and they won’t fix your pitch either…
In choosing the right microphone for the job, I draw a distinction between two types of recording gear: smart and dumb. A “smart” piece of gear is one that picks up everything around it. These are usually condenser or ribbon mics that take very little energy to excite the diaphragm into inducing electrical current. In common application, these mics are best for room mics and distance miking soft acoustic instruments like acoustic guitar or strings. For vocals, they can be great for show-stopping performers who sound so great in the real world that you don’t want their reproduced sound to be impeded by the recording method.
But the vast majority of instrumentalists, vocalists, and performers of all varieties are not seasoned pros and this is where a “dumb” piece of gear can be a lifesaver. Dumb microphones do not pick up every little noise. The best example is the all-purpose SM7 vocal mic. This dynamic microphone has a very heavy diaphragm that requires a lot of energy to excite. As such, the little ticky noises of smacking lips and glottal buzzes don’t get picked up as readily. SM7s are generally renowned for their work in broadcast voice and for screaming vocalists. But this workhorse is supremely underrated for intimate, breathy vocals where extracurricular noises are commonplace.
When talkie movies took over in the late 1920s, many silent movie actors found themselves out of a job because their voices (which were unnecessary in their trade previously) did not suit the new medium. Now that most of the country is switching to HD, have you seen an actor and just thought, “This guy really shouldn’t be filmed in HD”?
I was at the first game at the new Cowboys stadium with that mammoth HD screen mid-field. When they cut to a close-up of anybody, the audience got an unfavorable view of every physical abnormality of every football player, coach, cheerleader, and drunken fan.
Never let anyone you love be made that big in that kind of detail. Ever.
In ivory tower versions of audio engineering, the end goal is generally said to be creating high-fidelity recordings. But in the real world, the truest reproduction of a sound source does not create the best overall sonic experience to the listener.
