Camera Microphone ......vs professional mics

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why do i always get the idea that Camera microphones sound like 100 times better than other mics

check 1:37 camera sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I416aUq_9lo

vs

2:57 where its basically normal recording with professional mics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I416aUq_9lo


why does the camera mic sound so realistic (1:37) and in your face whereas the professional mics you take them into the session (2:57) and they sound like so less powerful

[serr]

Does Spock have a beard in your world?

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Originally Posted by serr

Does Spock have a beard in your world?

please explain?

[karbomusic]

Isn't the camera one louder? If the other was cranked up louder it would be better.

I agree though, the gap is shrinking. I often record my band live using GoPros and I can usually coax as good audio out of their tiny onboard mics as I can dedicated recorders for the task. I don't do board mixes because they are so, well board mix sounding and I really have grown to hate that sound after all these years.

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Originally Posted by karbomusic

Isn't the camera one louder? If the other was cranked up louder it would be better.

I agree though, the gap is shrinking. I often record my band live using GoPros and I can usually coax as good audio out of their tiny onboard mics as I can dedicated recorders for the task. I don't do board mixes because they are so, well board mix sounding and I really have grown to hate that sound after all these years.

to my ears the camera sounds 10 times more clear as well

[vdubreeze]

The camera mics are getting a room sound, and I assume had the auto limiting in the camera on, as it's pretty hard to record in an environment like that without it, even if you're not getting uncompressed audio. You would never hear what the engineers and drummer were saying if it wasn't engaged because it would mean turning the input way down to not overload. So the two aren't an apples to apples comparison. So it's a lovely, bright "castle" wall sound, nicely squashed, and brighter than the close mics, the same way that bringing in a room mics in a normal drum recording will usually brighten up the snare, or at least add a squashed snare that's not as flat as the close mic, so it gives you a brighter, bigger snare when brought up.

[serr]

Originally Posted by vdubreeze

The camera mics are getting a room sound, and I assume had the auto limiting in the camera on, as it's pretty hard to record in an environment like that without it, even if you're not getting uncompressed audio. You would never hear what the engineers and drummer were saying if it wasn't engaged because it would mean turning the input way down to not overload. So the two aren't an apples to apples comparison. So it's a lovely, bright "castle" wall sound, nicely squashed, and brighter than the close mics, the same way that bringing in a room mics in a normal drum recording will usually brighten up the snare, or at least add a squashed snare that's not as flat as the close mic, so it gives you a brighter, bigger snare when brought up.

Now we're getting closer to what's really going on!

It is true that you can sometimes pickup useful content from such a mic. And if you don't have a particular important element of the sound anywhere in any of the stage mics, suddenly that camera mic is sounding pretty good.

They ARE better mics than they used to be too. And the on the fly compression is better than it used to be.

But if you have real mics on stage and they're in front of everything they need to be, kind of no contest. That "in front of everything they need to be" part can be elusive sometimes.

Louder of course always sounds better too until some distortion is so gross. No one around here is really tricking themselves into that though right?

I'm also pretty sure I've heard some CDs that were mastered to the extreme with volume war compression and bionic treble hype that sounded worse than an audience recording made with a dictation quality device. So that's another apples/oranges thing to add to the mix.

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i just hope that the professional mic they used there as "room mic" can reach the quality used by the camera mic

[karbomusic]

I don't think it's as much no contest any longer (as evidenced by that video - the fact it sounds as good as it does is tough to deny). I have mics and pres that are more than good enough for pro (API, Neve, Neumann et al) and you'd be surprised how well what one thinks would be crap doesn't sound like crap these days. I'm not saying run out and record you next record with a cellphone (though I think an engineer with skills could fool most of us) but in a live situation, those already minute differences are far below the noise floor at hand.

I quit taking my nicer setups to gigs, there isn't enough difference for it to be worth the trouble - to be clear though my camera mics are able to turn off the auto gain/limiter and have adjustable levels. A side note that due to distance and inverse square falloff there's probably a 12-15 dB drop in the drums compared to the people talking (assuming 30 ft'ish).

[cyrano]

I can't really see what mic is on the camera. But it isn't your average camera, so I'm guessing there's a professional mic on there too.

And what you're hearing is a concise mono recording that's a bit louder. No preliminary mix from a number of tracks that might have phase problems. Of course that sounds better.

Another reason to keep things simple. Why use eleven mics to record drums if one or two can do the job?

And having an awesome room te record in, helps an awful lot.

[karbomusic]

It's stereo FWIW. You have a very good point that it could very well be a DSLR with a PCM-D50 attached (or similar) for that matter.