Vocal Test Recordings - Part II

Forehead

Hairline

Ear

Cheekbone

Center Chest

M30 Position

The goal was to capture a-cappella vocal recordings in a low-noise and nearly anechoic environment, using commonly found lavalier microphones and placement techniques. The microphones were all fresh from the factory and had never been used prior to this recording session. All the wireless microphones had the same gain settings on the transmitter, receiver, and MOTU preamp. This should allow you to hear the difference in sensitivity between the various microphones. The M30 mic was wired directly to the MOTU preamp and therefore had a different gain setting than the wireless mics. No processing has been done on the files. What you hear is exactly what came in from the digital converter. The recordings should be suitable as a test signal when tuning and lining up vocal reinforcement systems in theatre. Every effort was made to make the recordings completely neutral — when playing these recordings you can trust that what you are hearing is your sound system and not any unwanted baggage from the recording. The recordings are organized below by microphone element.

Download the complete collection of all of these files (3GB zipped).

These recordings were made on March 8th, 2011 in Sound Stage 6 at the UNCSA Film School byMFA sound design students Eric Schwartz, Patrick Calhoun and Maggie Hall with faculty advisor Jason Romney. The microphones used were DPA 4061 (soft boost cap), Sennheiser MKE 1 (small cap), MKE 2 GOLD (short cap), Countryman B3 (flat cap, red band), Countryman B6 (flat cap, red band) and Earthworks M30 Omnidirectional at 3 feet away. Other hardware included a Shure UR1-M / UR4D wireless system and a Presonus Digimax FS preamp, via ADAT into MOTU 8-Pre , via firewire into a MacBook Pro using Logic Pro software to record the data. The audio files are formatted as WAV, 96 kHz / 24-bit.