Focusrite Scarlett vs Clarett & SM7 - which has the quality for dynamic mics on acoustic guitar?

[Music] dearly beloved we are gathered here today to establish for ourselves the impact of preamp on mic choice primarily today through exploring the differences between the focusrite scarlett and the focusrite claret with particular reference to whether they've got enough clean gain to record dynamic microphones i'm in i'm going to assume you know a bit about these two ranges the scarlet is super cheap best-selling budget interface and all the rest of it the claret more than double the price and aimed kind of more professional end of the market i've been using the claret for uh quite a while now very happy with it but let's compare i did a video recently looking at affordable mics on acoustic guitar and it was apparent that several pretty cheap dynamic mics sounded really nice and i'm kind of comfortable recommending them as a serious option on acoustic guitar however dynamic mics including ribbon mics are often pretty low output which means we need a lot of gain from our preamps in this case the preamps which are built into the interfaces to get a decent recording level so this recommendation to use dynamic mics depends completely on the preamps that we have available to us if we have to max the gain and that's introducing a lot of noise then that recording to most people is going to sound comparatively worse than virtually any condenser microphone recording which by comparison is going to be loud and clear because it requires far less gain so we're going to record with four quite different uh microphones here uh two condensers and two dynamics and see how much difference there is we're gonna also include in this comparison the dav bg1 preamp which you may not have heard of but it's a deca engineer designed uh very high quality preamp used often in classical music and that sort of thing pound preamp for just two channels of preamp no conversion no headphone amp which when you put it alongside the uh the other two items you kind of get a sense of the where the money's going there um we're going to look at two microphones there's the octave mk12 which is a pencil condenser quite often used on acoustic guitar and the rode nt-1a which a lot of people have uh or are considering and it's commonly paired with the scarlet uh particularly uh they both require phantom power of course and they respond with a very healthy output so you're going to need uh or want good studio monitors and a quiet room or headphones to hear some of these [Music] differences [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so a quick word about this test the mics are not in exactly the same place each time and i think my playing position moves a bit too so there is some tonal variation but what we're not hearing is a night and day difference uh in terms of quality and noise to me they're actually quite similar now i know that the clara preamps are nicer sounding they have a little bit more solidity in the low end and the highs are a bit clearer i think overall they're just a little bit cleaner the scarlet is noisier though in this test um the overall noise is masked from the sounds coming from the computer and the light and so on um we'll look at noise a different test in uh in just a minute so let's look at dynamic mics these are the shaw sm 7b uh great on vocals but notoriously low in output and the sennheiser e906 which is uh used on acoustic guitar and percussion quite quite regularly love this microphone good on guitar caps it came out really well in the budget budget mic comparison i did the other day have a listen and see what you think of these [Music] [Music] do [Music] hmm i'm actually quite surprised at how the scarlet performed there um to me the things like the dynamics of the playing and the positioning of the mics particularly the distance from the guitar are responsible for much more of the sound than the preamps in these examples it took quite a long time to sort of set all this up and record you know combination every combination of four mics and three preamps and i have to say having spent the money on the dav and on the claret um i mean i only have the scarlet for like a live uh application if i'm honest i was hoping that the difference would be more obvious to me um now we do know that noise adds up when you start multi-tracking and that is going to be a factor particularly with the dynamic mics where we're needing to use most or all of the available gains so the scarlet does get quite noisy at the top of the gain range but it was fine in this example the dav gives 59 db of uh input gain the clara i think gives 57 db and the third gen scala 56 db the older scarlets i think mid 2019 they only offer about 50 db of gain and that is going to be a problem with an sm7 or a low output another low output dynamic mic so anyway so regarding noise i i did an experiment i wrapped the sm7 in a heavy acoustic blanket to try and kind of block out as much of the ambient sound as possible and i recorded it into each preamp at maximum gain at the start of each recording i played a tone in the room at fixed volume then i turned the tone off in logic i then boosted the recordings by 2025 db and then i use that test tone to kind of match the levels of each recording so i then split the recordings to show you the tone match section next to each other so you can see that it's the same the same volume equivalent and then just the noise so have a listen to this um yeah so as you can hear there is a big increase in noise with the the scarlet uh obviously this is a pretty ridiculous example but it just shows to uh it serves to highlight that there are significant differences in these products when you push them so i think somewhere in between we find some sort of conclusion the scala is totally usable for a few tracks of acoustic uh instrument or vocal uh recordings even if it's with dynamic mics if it's very exposed i.e like finger picking or quiet singing or spoken word then a condenser mic might be the better option with a scarlet i think if you record say two tracks of acoustic guitar a lead vocal and some backing vocals all on a low output mic and you start adding some compression and all the rest of it that that noise will multiply and be quite audible in the quieter sections of the song with the more expensive clara i think you'll be able to keep that noise quite a bit lower so essentially a better preamp or a cleaner preamp gives you more flexibility by being able to use whichever mics sound right rather than having to use the ones that happen to be a condenser you get to be more creative i think and make choices based on the tonal qualities of each mic and when you start using really high-end preamps it's amazing the results you can get out of the most basic of microphones the clara is worth it for this flexibility that it gives you the headphone amps are also way better which is so important not only for mixing but also for like monitoring while you're recording however the scarlet is not at all bad i mean five or ten years ago a product like this just didn't exist at this price so we're quite lucky i hope you found this video helpful or entertaining if you did please consider hitting the like button or subscribing to the channel but if you didn't find it helpful or entertaining then you've got to be asking yourself what you're doing here still haven't you maybe you did like it anyway i wish you all the best happy recordings and don't forget the gear just get on with it [Music] you

Channel: Jon Wright Music TV

Views: 1,825

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 7j_lG9V1bNs

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021