Monday, June 11, 2012

Microphone Placement and Selection for a Grand Piano

Every once in a while a few audio technicians I know and work with get into a debate on what is the best microphone(s) to be used on a grand piano. For the most part, when we need to do live sound reinforcement we use two of Shure's SM81s.  We don't typically do any recording work, so we are somewhat limited in what microphones we have on hand.

Today we had a couple hours of free time and some extra ambition, so we recorded the same short section of a piano piece using 5 different microphones. Below are the recordings.

SM57



SM81



PCC



PZM



ME35



I'll let you make your own decisions on which one was best, and please comment if you have any suggestions!  You'd be helping out fellow audio technicians!