NEW Warm Audio WA-44 is fantastic!

today we're going to take a look at a brand new microphone from warm audio and yet again it is another Recreation of a very classic microphone and uh it's an interesting value proposition so let's get into [Music] it hey everyone I'm cool caparon thank you for stopping by for another video now I did just talk about how microphone videos are hard to make in a previous video maybe the last video you saw uh and this is no exception microphone videos are hard to make and in that video I said that I try to only do them if it's a unique value proposition if it's something that I've not seen before or if it is a truly like gamechanging unbelievable microphone so this definitely falls under the value proposition so what they have done here uh I'm just going to kind of unbox this right in front of you uh cool case and you got the label on the side that has your um your serial number and all your info on it and then if we open this case up you grab it here it's a it's a solid case oh that's a heavy microphone you've got your uh your Crown Royal style bag that we all use for these microphones and then when you open it here there we go there she is take a look at that that is um that is a really good looking microphone and it is shockingly heavy this is a very heavy Stout solid feeling microphone so the first impression when you open this is like oh wow this is it's impressive none of that really matters if it doesn't sound good so today what we're going to do is we're going to try it out on some vocals we're going to try it out as a mono overhead on a drum kit we're going to try it as an outside kick microphone uh and then we're going to try it as a pair of room microphones on a drum kit and then I'm going to jump into Pro Tools and I'm going to show you how I would process a big ribbon microphone like this uh for drums and uh I'm going to walk you through my steps of how I would mix this so let's get into it this is the uh warm audio w44 before we get into it as always there are links down in the description below for this microphone if you want to go see prices and specs and all that kind of stuff uh so let's jump in to hearing what this microphone sounds like now I was fortunate enough to have my good friend Haley verhallen over I've been mispronouncing her name for literally years even though she's my my own client and I've had her in videos before I feel so awful about this she just never corrected me so I didn't know but anyway Hale ver Holland one of my favorite singers here in Nashville uh I had the pleasure of having her over so that way we could hear what these this microphone sounds like through some vocals let's check that out go on go on this town been talking I'm hanging on every word of how you done me wrong I think it's kind of funny how you getting what you deserve so along with this microphone they introduced the warm lifter uh this increases this is Phantom powered and it increases the output of the microphone or increases the signal so that way you can run your mic PR a little quieter so that way you don't introduce as much noise cuz ribbon microphones traditionally have a fairly low output this one has a unique take on it though as it has a couple of switches on the front here so you've got a high pass and a and a high shelf uh to change the character of the microphone that's pretty cool so we're going to test that out on vocals go on go on this town's been talking I'm hanging on every word of how you done me wrong I think it's kind of funny how you getting what you deserve I know the preacher and bartender side with me even the next door neighbors thinking what I think was growing on the gra I know it's never tasted so sweet I was literally like someone brought you up and I said something they're like that's not how you said last name and I'm like my own client who I've had who I've had in videos my no it's not your fault at all well it's just funny cuz I got to the point where I just stopped correcting people because if you know one way and you don't know the other it's fine either way cuz I'm the same person that's true tell everybody you've been on a wild run lately tell everybody what you've been up to if you could yeah um so recently I well last year actually I got on to the Tractor Supply emerging artist program I got to work with Ashley McBride through that and open for Laney Wilson also got to record a song over at the Blackbird Studio it's called House Always Wins if you want to check that out and uh it ended with me playing on the Grand Old opery Stage with Laney Wilson in last October so that was so awesome so pumped for you now I just want to give a huge shout out to Haley and thank her for coming over to help me out with this video she's one of my favorite singers around one of my favorite singers that I've worked with so if you wouldn't mind hit the links in the description go check out her on her socials go check out the music there's a handful of songs that I've produced for she has a handful of other songs out as well please go check her out as thanks for her being involved in this and agreeing to help me out with this video I really really appreciate her next up we're going to go over to Lester Estelle's Place Lester is the drummer for Kelly Clarkson uh he's played with all kinds of people Big and Rich and like he was in a a rock band called pillar and like he's one of my favorite drummers in the world and he's one of my favorite people that I know I'm proud to call him a friend and uh he plays on tons and tons of songs for me when I'm actually producing for people so let's head over to Lester and let's take a listen and look at what these microphones sound like on [Music] drums okay so over here at my good buddy Lester's house hi hi uh we're going to do a couple things here so first up we've got it uh we've got this as a mono overhead because that's something that we do Lester does here and I like a lot like there's a Kohl's 4038 right there so we're going to stick it right next to it see what she sounds like and then we're also doing outside kick on this pass uh cuz I mean why not and then we're going to we'll do this and then we're going to switch it up and try it in a different position's there you go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so just for people that were wondering uh both the overhead kickout and when we were using rooms we were running through these Bae 1084s and they're flat with no EQ okay can people hire you for drums of course hit me up I'm around how how do people get a hold of you uh my socials or my uh my website is Lester Lester drs.com and all my socials are at Lester still so I'll put links down below best drummer on Earth no I'm not thank you thank you bro thank you bro appreciate it now when would you use a microphone like this now in my opinion uh I would use this on vocals for any sort of folky blue grassy um Americana um any sort of things that you want like the Vintage character any sort of lowii Pop it'd be really awesome on this would also sound great on acoustic guitar and electric guitar amps if you were going after that vintagey lowf kind of thing but to me personally where I would use it absolutely the most on is on drums uh we have always used a ribbon microphone as a mono overhead and it is very common for me personally to use a mono overhead in the verses of songs and then switch to the stereo overheads in the choruses of a song just a way to make everything just pop a little harder and when I'm doing that it's pretty often that I like to have a ribbon microphone in the mono overhead position and this does a couple things one in the choruses the drums get wider and bigger and more impressive sounding but I also talk a lot about how I want the frequency spectrum to grow in a chorus and so one of the ways that I do this is by different using different microphone choices like this for overheads for drums because a big vintage sounding ribbon microphone like this warm audio w44 is it it kind of has a rolled off top the top is kind of softer and so what this allows me to do is go from a mono softer overhead to like a full frequency spectrum full width overheads on drums now I do massage this a little bit to make sure it's not too shocking of a difference but this is the general principle so I love it on mono overheads um I also really love it on outside kick it's a very famous use case for this so we kind of out in front of the the whole drum kit um you can use it in front of outside kick if you want but kind of just the whole outside of the drum kit as a big thick gooey picture of the drum kit is very interesting and we're going to jump into Pro Tools here here and show you how I process this whole thing and then of course ribbon microphones on drum rooms are my favorite thing because you get the the pickup pattern on a ribbon microphone is figure8 which means it picks up the exact same amount of sound from in front of the microphone as it does from behind the microphone and so what this usually does is it makes your room microphones on your drum kit or any room microphone on acoustick or anything you would use a room microphone on it makes your room sound significantly larger than it actually is and it's one of my favorite techniques to actually use so whether I'm tracking with Lester which he plays on most things for me but whether I'm tracking with him or whether I am just tracking like at any other studio with any other drummer there are always always always room microphones or figure8 microphones I should say not necessarily ribbons but there's always at least a figure8 microphone on the room tracks and I generally prefer ribbons on those room microphones okay so let me show you how I would would process these in an actual song so we're going to take a look at the drums here and uh basically what we're going to do is the first thing we're going to do this is kind of the rough mix that you see here now these are as these drums are tracked they were tracked a lot of these tracks were with EQ and compression because that's how we actually track uh but the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to mute the subkick here because a subkick is in a similar ballpark as what we're going to use as this front of Kit microphone you can see see the front of Kit right here this uh fok 44 uh so here's what the drums sound like just on their own with a level job and the way that we track [Music] them really good solid sounding drums okay so the first thing that I'm going to do is we're going to process this front of kick so here's what that sounds like on its [Music] own here it's kind of dark kind of gooey but lots of subbase so we're going to do this with everything going at the same time we're just going to open up an [Music] EQ now the first thing that I'm going to do is we're going to switch this to linear phase because any time I'm doing any sort of work specifically with the low end of a kick drum I want to make sure that that phase relationship stays good with the other Kick Drum microphones so linear phase always and what I'm going to do because this is how I like to process it I'm just going to do a real subtle High uh low pass and then we're going to play around so here we go [Music] we're going to do a high pass pretty steep high pass and then we're going to [Music] boost yep then when we mute this back in super thick super thick super Punchy but just that sub that weight the weight of the drums just increases significantly with this uh now let's go to our mono overhead let's mute the uh the regular overheads and let's check out this mono overhead which is the let's mute that which is the 44 here so here's what just it sounds like a mono overhead [Music] we're going to put an EQ on this now this I'm going to go for the kiroff EQ cuz I like the dynamic processing in this a little bit better and I like dynamically processing uh my overheads so first thing we can see here is we got this resonance about you know 450 let's get rid of [Music] that next thing we're going to do I want to boost the thickness of that snare drum and I usually go just a little bit below the fundamental of the snare then we're going to high pass right below that cuz I don't really want the kick drum I don't want the bottom end of the kick drum coming through my overheads very much the next thing we're going to do is usually somewhere in this range the 2.5 to 4K range I like using a a dynamic EQ here you could use a multiband compressor if you wanted there's a bunch of different ways to do this but I find that it's easier to just use a plugin like this that kind of has it all in one and so what we're going to do we're going to start with 4K we're going to click the D here for Dynamics we're going to pull the range down to you know four or 5 DB we're going to pull the attack all the way fastest and the release all the way fastest and we're going to widen this slope up a little bit here let's take a [Music] listen now I only want that to kick in on the crashes no other time [Music] there we [Music] go we're kind of hitting on the snare drum so we're going to slow the attack down to try to miss the snare drum and still get the symbols [Music] there we go so something like that we're just touching the srum a little bit I like to try to avoid that with a center mono overhead it's a little bit more difficult but what I really want to do is control that kind of harshness character of when the symbols hit when he crashes I just want to tame that a little bit so here's [Music] without [Music] with now to me that's a little bit clear now if you wanted the more modern thing a little more Sizzle you just High shelf it to whatever taste you want [Music] and that gives you a more traditional sounding overhead but the interesting thing about ribbons is ribbons generally take EQ better than like a large diaphragm condenser you can really rip I mean I'm 8 and 1 12 DB of 9k sounds perfectly fine and natural to me uh so that's how I would do that let's listen to this in context of the whole kit oh that [Music] kick to me that's that's that's the [Music] sauce yeah that sounds great so if we were using it as a front of kick or front of Kit microphone that's how I would process that if we're using it as a mono overhead that's generally what I do to it let's move on though to using it as room mics um and I'm not going to change anything else uh but we are just let's see I'm going to turn the subkick back on because we do not have the 44 in front of the kit because we were using both of them for the room mics so uh let's take a listen to this so here's what the room mics sound like on their own we're going to mute the other room mics and this hallway and this Crush room uh yes here we [Music] go so that's what the room mic sounds like on its own let's go in with the [Music] kit now here's what I like to do with my room mics first of all I like to narrow them a little bit helps bring that kick and snare to the actual Center and also I have an entire video about depth in mixing and the further away you want something to seam the narrow it the narrower it actually needs to be uh I'll link that video down below um so Let's uh let's start eqing this here now for room mics for me it's pretty straightforward I get rid of the thump of the kick drum we High Pass like somewhere in here we pull down a little of that kind of 4K 3K 4K thing get rid of this kind of resonance at like 400 I feel like every drum kit has some version of this that's where I'd like it to be without [Music] that and then if we turn the auto gain [Music] on I like that way better with the [Music] kit mute listen how much personality comes just from that room mic let's turn it way down I guess we should probably turn the overheads back on that's kind of my bad okay here we [Music] go without the room and with the room to me that's the room mics and the overheads are really where everything comes together to where it stops being individual drums individual shells your kick your snare your Toms and where it becomes a cohesive instrument that's one of the things that I do I sculpt the kick in and the snare top and all the Tom microphones to give the Sonic character that I'd like them to have so however much thickness or crack or snap or how much top in or SI whatever all you want to say I dial in the close mics for that but the overheads in the room mics that's where I blend the whole kit back together again so that way it sounds like a cohesive instrument even though I've processed all those individual things to have the character that I want the drum kit to have so that's how I would process these in a mix that is the warm audio w44 now I think that this is a unique value proposition because the microphone that this is modeled after it starts at like $3,500 and goes up to like $6,400 um and I don't have them next to each other uh it's not something that I can really speak on without a side-by-side comparison how close it is but I think I think we've done this thing with warm audio enough that they are really really good at giving you 95 to 98% of the original thing at a fraction of the cost and that's what I think is appealing about this especially for drum rooms and overheads because could you hear the difference in a drum room in a mixed song I don't believe you could I I genuinely don't believe you could it's a fantastic perspective for a big gooey thick ribbon like this to use as a drum room microphone and I just I think that that's I think it's a home run I really do I really like this I really like it at the price point links down below for uh to go check this out uh and check out prices and all of that so be sure to hit the links in the description below but I just think it's a great value proposition and I think if you are getting into recording drums or if you want that lowii Americana Indie lowii poppy kind of thing this is a great option so uh I hope you guys enjoyed this video and thank you for watching and drop me a comment and let me know what you think and uh I'll see you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Colt Capperrune

Views: 26,122

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Id: 9H0Bz2oKs84

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024