"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article ,
sreekant wrote:
Are you aiming at recording the spoken word (as I assumed), or someone
singing? If singing, what type of music?

I am mainly looking to record voiceovers for an animation I am making.
It is unlikely that there will be any singing soon :-)

Right - that's what I thought. A mic that might be ok for a singist buried
within a music mix is not necessarily going to sound good when exposed
with the spoken word. And frequently will sound horrid.

The industry 'standard' for this sort of thing would be a U87 - but even
used scruffy ones will fetch more than your budget. However, there are
several Chinese and Russian large diaphragm mics that do a similar job. I
wonder if you could find a friendly local shop that would allow you to try
perhaps secondhand ones and decide which one suits you best?

Few want this sort of mic - compared to PA type mics - so there might be a
larger selection of them available secondhand.

I don't know - nowadays it seems like everyone wants a studio at home so
studio type mics are in demand. Maybe when home recording goes out of
fashion we'll see glut of cheap Chinese mics on the market but the
Chinese seem to be undercutting themselves already - take a look at
http://www.red5audio.com - they're selling a U87 lookalike for around 50
quid (and I've seen similar mics for $39 in the USA).

Cheers.

James.