Bass presence picked up with various mics?

[6079]

So far my only experience taping concerts is with a Sony minidisc M2m10 with the included stereo mics and an Edirol R-09 with internal mic, which seemed to retain a lot more low end and bass.

I may have an opportunity to tape with some more advanced external mics connected to my camcorder. I will not be able to test them very well before showtime. My question is will what I record sound similar to previous mics? I'm sure the quality will be better, but I don't want to be over my head with levels that are too high or too low.

This is a vague question, but it leads to a larger question. In essence, should any decent to professional mic retain about the same treble/bass hi-lo dynamics of whatever you are recording? As long as you keep the sensitivity of the mic within range, shouldn't the sound be about the same, aside from quality? I ask this because the Edirol had overwhelming low end and I'm just wondering what could be the explanation.

I guess a more direct question would be the difference between mics. I would assume it is a matter of quality and clarity. Have you noticed any large differences in treble/bass balance?

Hopefully that made enough sense. It's difficult to form questions from concepts you can't quite understand fully yet.

[A440]

As long as you keep the sensitivity of the mic within range, shouldn't the sound be about the same, aside from quality?

Think about what happens when you record. The mic picks up a signal. It goes into a mic jack, where it is boosted by a preamp. Then it is converted by an analog-to-digital converter so that it can be saved on the recording medium (minidisc or flash memory) as a bunch of 1s and 0s.

Every part of that chain is variable. Mics vary. Preamps vary. ADConverters vary.

The most important variable is undoubtedly the microphone. (Another variable is where the microphone is placed: high, low, close to the source, far from the source.) As with every other digital transaction, garbage in --> garbage out.

Every mic is different. Every mic has its own frequency response, some of which is described by specifications of how high and low its pickup goes--20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is the generally accepted range of audible sound--and some of which is described by more meticulous sellers with a frequency-response curve. No mic picks up equally along its entire range: It may have a peak at 500 Hz or 1000 Hz, it may have a trough at 2000 Hz, it may deliberately pick up less of the lowest bass. A microphone made for voice won't bother with frequencies that aren't part of the human voice. A microphone made for singers with rock bands will have a frequency-response curve that deliberately picks up much more from the frequencies of a singer than from the drums, bass, guitars and cymbals.

So you were comparing the built-in mic on the Edirol to the external mic that came with your MD. Apples and oranges. Was the mic that came with your MD the Sony DS70P? It doesn't pick up below 100Hz, which is why you got weak bass. But the preamps in MD units can't handle a lot of bass, so a full 20Hz-20000 Hz mic could overload it (there are ways around this).

Test your camcorder mic with your stereo--music with natural, acoustic instruments covering a full frequency range from bass and bass drum to cymbals. And while you're at it, plug it into the MD and the Edirol. With the same mic, you'll hear the variation between preamps and Analog-to-Digital Converters.

[greenmachine]

Omnidirectional mics (R-09) tend to pick up the bass more accurately when recording from a distance, whereas (particurarly inexpensive) cardioids (ECM-DS70P) tend to roll off and sound tinny. In some situations a roll-off is desired (boomy room, bassy mix, a cheap way to avoid preamp overload).