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by hurryer 966 days ago
Good professional audio hardware is not overpriced. Sure, there are $15k microphones but you absolutely do not need those, a $1k one is top quality and not expensive if you use it regularly.

You are confusing it with audiophile gear.

Regarding Audacity, it's missing tons of features and it's UI is bad. Just like Gimp vs Photoshop. I did some audio production and Audacity is just not usable beyond the most basic operations, and even those are a bit of pain.
1 comments
orlp 966 days ago
> a $1k one is top quality

$100 gets you a SM57 which probably has been on more platinum albums than any other mic.

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seanw444 966 days ago
Exactly. After a certain point, you get diminishing returns. $100 gets you probably 85-90% of the way there, which is certainly more than enough. People forget that a good mic and a good DAW do not fix a bad take. The price of the tools is less important than their proper usage, and simply recording things well.

You don't even need an SM57. I know for a fact the iPhone mic and iPhone Garageband has been one artist's success.

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Slow_Hand 965 days ago
The SM57 is a great mic in some situations. A lot of situations even. But saying that an artist can use an SM57 or an iPhone mic on a hit record and is sufficient is missing the point.

Steven Soderbergh has shot several feature films on an iPhone and the movies were still great, but they're nowhere close to unlocking the full potential of visual expression that you'd get with more refined tools.

Artists who are serious about their craft will keep an SM57 and an iPhone mic in their color palette (Frank Ocean comes to mind), but that's all they are for serious practitioners: a creative choice.

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Slow_Hand 965 days ago
The SM57 is a workhorse of a mic. It's great in a pinch and probably a desert island choice. It's earned it's classic status for a reason and is probably on more records and stages in the last 40 years than anything else. Great mic... to a point.

That said, the ceiling of what's possible is far higher than what an SM57 can deliver. Not to diminish it. In some instances it's perfect, but one wouldn't have to look far to find better choices, depending on the context and needs of the record.

A Toyota Corolla (don't @ me, I'm not a car person) might be a low-cost, reliable choice in a pinch, but it's far from embodying what automobiles are capable of.

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hurryer 966 days ago
As a dynamic microphone, SM57 is only usable in the studio for certain kinds of vocals/instruments - the loud ones.

You wouldn't want to record an acoustic guitar ballad on it.

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