Naiant mics

[aitikin]

So I have a nice little bump in pay for my next check (extra work here and there) and was planning on picking up some cheap (as in price, preferably not in quality) mics. I've heard good things about the Naiants but I've never used them myself and was wondering which ones the TOMB liked the best (obviously opinions will vary, but that's beside the point).

As of right now, the only omnis I have are 414s and the only drum mics I have are some Audix Fusions which I'm okay with but not too happy with. This leads me to omnis or the D's.

Another thing I'm considering, but planning on holding off until I have a slightly better paying gig or more superfluous funds is taking a dummy head and putting some binaural mics in it, so the X-X ones won't be a bad call at a later date.

What's your opinion?

[Artifex]

Shouldn't the 414s do omni?

I have some older Naint mics that I use alot. They work very well for me. I'm sure the new ones are probably even better.

[chris harris]

Shouldn't the 414s do omni?

As of right now, the only omnis I have are 414s

[Zygomorph]

i have the naiant XT transformer-based mic.

the internal switches do in fact give you lots of tonal options, and i've been getting colors out of it that i hadn't ever gotten before with other SDCs. so 'tis a fun time.

however, while it was perfect for these femal vocals like, 90 percent of the time, whenever she'd put a bit of growl on, there'd be some sort of ripping harmonic distortion that was not entirely unflattering but not entirely welcome. it's probably due to the outrageous(ly fun) hi-midrange rise on the mic, the transformer saturating in a bizarre way... i don't know. just something to be aware of.

the really small size also lets you experiment with funny placement. such as inside the back of a guitar amplifier. talk about an "in-the-box" sound! (i wanted to see if i could somehow capture the sound-essence of glowing vacuum tubes.)

[Snarl 12/8]

Make sure your room treatments are in order before you go omni.

[aitikin]

The 414s do omni, but they're often used on something else. As for treatments, there are at least two locations I record in, one with great acoustics and which we've jokingly dubbed the Abbey Road of the Midwest, and the other is an old house, or other on location style recordings. Obviously the omnis wouldn't be first choice for on location.