M-Audio Luna?
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rockstudio
- gettin' sounds
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MASSIVE Mastering
- buyin' a studio
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If it's half as good as the Solaris, it's twice as good as almost anything else in that price range.
40% more mass to the diaphragm than the Solaris though... From what I hear, a little darker (to be expected) - Not necessarily a bad thing...
40% more mass to the diaphragm than the Solaris though... From what I hear, a little darker (to be expected) - Not necessarily a bad thing...
John Scrip - MASSIVE Mastering
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flanneljammies
- takin' a dinner break
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never even heard of the nova, so i don't know on that one. re: the solaris - that,s the bells and whistles (patterns and pad) version of the luna, right? if so, i might grab one sometime - i did indeed make the trade, and my main complaint is that the luna is cardioid only. i've had it a few months now, and this is what i've found so far.
vox - eh... works for some folks, sounds like crap on others, and i haven't figured out what makes the difference. me and my drummer have fairly similar ranges, but it pulls loads of detail out of his voice while mine ends up sounding like a blurry mess. then too, i've been doing all my "real" vox (aka times when i,m not trying to cover up the suck w/ telephone mics thru practice amps) with a 57 and a smelly sock for so long, NOTHING else sounds right - kind of like how some songs only sound right on your first guitar. the only female voice i,ve tried it on, it did well in one context, lost to her EV 58 clone in another. on the other hand, it handles backgorund vox very well - i recently used it as the "mid" in a fake m/s setup, and was very pleased with the results
drums - oh, so very yes. it seems to like being somewhere in the range between the drummer's left shoulder to on over past the floor tom - delivers a very nice general picture of the kit from this area, good enough that if you wanted, you could stick to just that with just a touch of close mic'ed kick&snare. it does make hihats sound a bit bright at times, but then too, the sabians i,m using right now are just plain bright. i,ve taken to draping a hunk of t-shirt over the hats, and that seems to do the trick. i've also paired it with an AT pro37 over the snare in an approximation of the john glynns thing, and had the drummer (who's been enough bands i've lost count) tell me it was the best sound anyone had ever gotten for him - and this with no eq, compression, any of the shit i used to try. Oh, and this thing is tough - it's taken four or five hickory hits with only one small dent in the back grill (tell me, please, how someone manages to hit the BACK of a mic they could barely reach from their drum stool when you asked them during setup to stretch their arm as far as it would go?)
acoustic guitar - i've been doing alot of this lately, and the luna delivers a nicely balanced picture from 3-4 feet back. just make sure you select the appropriate guitar - one one recent track, we played a 62 gibson, a roy clark, and a santa rosa, live, in a semi circle; and much as the proud gibson owner hated to do it, we got a much better sound when he broke down, swapped with the "lead" player, and did his rhythm part on the brighter roy clark (anyone else ever played one of these? it's gotta be a sears catalogue type thing, total el cheapo, but on the right song it's gold. must be that neck that feels more like a 2x4)... of course, as i'm discovering more and more, individual techniques had as much to do with that particular situation as anything.
electric guitar - i just don't like condensors on electric guitar. distortion always too bright and smeary, clean always too clunky, this mic is not the exception to that generalization.
field recording - i've recorded one live show since i got this mic, in a huge cavern of an old theater where everything depends on whether or not the band's sound fits the room. these guys, it did. but, not knowing what type situation i might be getting into, i played it safe and took separate lines from all the house mics, along with the luna and pro37 (my go-to mic when i'm recording there) both set up in the sound booth, so i'd have several options to sort thru later. i ended up using one or the other of the booth mics almost entirely solo'ed for most of the songs, and the only reason i didn't stick to just one or the other was to keep things a little interesting - as true room mics (we're talking 50, 75 feet back), the main difference i noticed was that each seemed to have it's own "type of grain," if that makes any sense.
so, well, there ya go - i think these things are 2 or 3 bills? probably worth it. but if you can find someone who thinks the somewhat functional mixer on your tape-mangling mt8x, and the 58 your drummer before last left behind when he quit, will serve them better than this mic that's "too distorted and bright" on their gospel/Creed vox stylings, well, i'd say it's a no-brainer.
vox - eh... works for some folks, sounds like crap on others, and i haven't figured out what makes the difference. me and my drummer have fairly similar ranges, but it pulls loads of detail out of his voice while mine ends up sounding like a blurry mess. then too, i've been doing all my "real" vox (aka times when i,m not trying to cover up the suck w/ telephone mics thru practice amps) with a 57 and a smelly sock for so long, NOTHING else sounds right - kind of like how some songs only sound right on your first guitar. the only female voice i,ve tried it on, it did well in one context, lost to her EV 58 clone in another. on the other hand, it handles backgorund vox very well - i recently used it as the "mid" in a fake m/s setup, and was very pleased with the results
drums - oh, so very yes. it seems to like being somewhere in the range between the drummer's left shoulder to on over past the floor tom - delivers a very nice general picture of the kit from this area, good enough that if you wanted, you could stick to just that with just a touch of close mic'ed kick&snare. it does make hihats sound a bit bright at times, but then too, the sabians i,m using right now are just plain bright. i,ve taken to draping a hunk of t-shirt over the hats, and that seems to do the trick. i've also paired it with an AT pro37 over the snare in an approximation of the john glynns thing, and had the drummer (who's been enough bands i've lost count) tell me it was the best sound anyone had ever gotten for him - and this with no eq, compression, any of the shit i used to try. Oh, and this thing is tough - it's taken four or five hickory hits with only one small dent in the back grill (tell me, please, how someone manages to hit the BACK of a mic they could barely reach from their drum stool when you asked them during setup to stretch their arm as far as it would go?)
acoustic guitar - i've been doing alot of this lately, and the luna delivers a nicely balanced picture from 3-4 feet back. just make sure you select the appropriate guitar - one one recent track, we played a 62 gibson, a roy clark, and a santa rosa, live, in a semi circle; and much as the proud gibson owner hated to do it, we got a much better sound when he broke down, swapped with the "lead" player, and did his rhythm part on the brighter roy clark (anyone else ever played one of these? it's gotta be a sears catalogue type thing, total el cheapo, but on the right song it's gold. must be that neck that feels more like a 2x4)... of course, as i'm discovering more and more, individual techniques had as much to do with that particular situation as anything.
electric guitar - i just don't like condensors on electric guitar. distortion always too bright and smeary, clean always too clunky, this mic is not the exception to that generalization.
field recording - i've recorded one live show since i got this mic, in a huge cavern of an old theater where everything depends on whether or not the band's sound fits the room. these guys, it did. but, not knowing what type situation i might be getting into, i played it safe and took separate lines from all the house mics, along with the luna and pro37 (my go-to mic when i'm recording there) both set up in the sound booth, so i'd have several options to sort thru later. i ended up using one or the other of the booth mics almost entirely solo'ed for most of the songs, and the only reason i didn't stick to just one or the other was to keep things a little interesting - as true room mics (we're talking 50, 75 feet back), the main difference i noticed was that each seemed to have it's own "type of grain," if that makes any sense.
so, well, there ya go - i think these things are 2 or 3 bills? probably worth it. but if you can find someone who thinks the somewhat functional mixer on your tape-mangling mt8x, and the 58 your drummer before last left behind when he quit, will serve them better than this mic that's "too distorted and bright" on their gospel/Creed vox stylings, well, i'd say it's a no-brainer.
Village Idiot.
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