Help me choose a room mic (or pair) for a practice room?

[lions!]

Hey everyone,

I work in a college IT department and the Media Services guys are trying to find the best mic (or matched pair to put in their student practice spaces. The goal is to simply have a recording of individual practices that students can then review.

Their needs:
a single mic or mic pair that can be fixed in the room (probably over-head, or boundary)
mics that will be good for various instruments (each room has a piano, but may also be used by string, brass, or woodwind instrumentalists)

The rooms are about 10ftx13ft or smaller with sound absorbant material on the walls.

The mics are going to go into a Tascam SS-R100 Solid State Digital Audio Recorder.

The goal is to let students have a good to decent reference at their disposal at their leisure. Any advice??

[D.o.S.]

PZMs (Pressure Zone Microphones) are ideal for this sort of thing.

[Ancient Astronaught]

PZMs (Pressure Zone Microphones) are ideal for this sort of thing.

This.

Or if they want a "industry standard" kind of sound a pair of Shure KSM32's would do the trick.

[lions!]

Thanks for the quick responses! I was thinking the boundary/PZM type mics myself. I'll see if i can get my hands on one for a few days to test it out!

[Grrface]

Wow, this thread is incredibly relevant to my interests. Will some of those PZMs hold up under heavy volume? Say, drums, distorted guitar and fuzzy bass? We've been looking to try and mic our practice space, and we get loud.

[cheesecats]

i would suggest a pair of small diaphragm condensers (pencil mics). some inexpensive choices:

oktava mk-012

http://www.oktava-online.com/mk012.htm

audio-technica 2021

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/2e21cfb668854714/index.html

or you could get a cheap handheld digital recorder:

[Ancient Astronaught]

Wow, this thread is incredibly relevant to my interests. Will some of those PZMs hold up under heavy volume? Say, drums, distorted guitar and fuzzy bass? We've been looking to try and mic our practice space, and we get loud.

With correct placement and levels yes they will.

i would suggest a pair of small diaphragm condensers (pencil mics). some inexpensive choices:

oktava mk-012

http://www.oktava-online.com/mk012.htm

audio-technica 2021

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/2e21cfb668854714/index.html

or you could get a cheap handheld digital recorder:

These are all great options as well. For the handheld records i highly recommend the ZOOM one. I have an h4n and our drummer has the Q3HD video camera one and both are excellent and extremely easy to use.

[The4455]

I'd seuggest a pair of Sterling Audio St-31's small diaphragm condenser mics, they're supercardiod, but if you have them as overheads it won't really matter for a group setting. They are $100 each, so $200 for a pair, that or the Cascade m-39 pair, they come together in a nice case with clips and such for $150, a pal of mine has them and likes them, I've heard recordings with them, and they sound good. I'd get those since you're on a budget. or an omnidirectional large diaphragm condenser mic that would go in the middle of the room, but those would be much more expensive.

[Chumley]

I dig the small diaphragm condensers also. Mojave MA101s with the omni cap are the best mic I've ever heard for this application, but they don't come cheap. The Oktava stuff's supposed to be great also, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

[The4455]

You could even use Sm-57's as overheads with the gain cranked way up, that would be cheap, especially if you bought used. I also thought of some more others since my last post. You could use AKG C-1000's they are $200 each, but are extremely versitile and durable, akg mics are made in Austria, and the quality is extremely high, up there with Shure and Electro Voice. I would also reccomend anything Electro Voice, although I don't have anything in mind specifically, they make awesome mics that are voiced to fit what you need based on what the intended use of the mic is, for example I have a N/d76a, for vocals, I almost never use any EQ, and when I do it's usually just to roll off alittle bit of the high end for female vocalists, and to roll back some of the mids on male vocals. And although this would be very expensive, you could look into shotgun and boom microphones like the ones used in film making, since the are kinda what you're looking for, overheads that are versatile, except they are generally stupid expensive.