Tuesday, 13 Jan 2009
Roland CD-2e: The 2nd Day (3rd and 4th hours)
Well after futzing around with the CD-2e for another 2 hours or so I learned a few things:
1. I hooked up my Karaoke mic and hung it off the hanger my brother nailed into the ceiling wall so it was about 1 foot away from my mouth. The recording I was able to achieve with that sounded much much better vocally. The piano sounded just average with the piano open. Much better vocal/piano balance (remember I’m doing no editing after the recording so I have to get as close as possible to the final product). One of the problems with this set up is that the mic is very soft and you have to turn up the mic gain (sensitivity) on the CD-2e. This unfortunately increased the hissing sound from the recording thus canceling some of the benefit from using the ext. mic.
2. I tried using the internal mics again. This time instead of putting it to my 4 o’clock about 4 feet away, I put it right on top of the piano directly in front of me about 2 feet from my mouth. The resulting sound was excellent vocals. Varying the distances from my mouth directly in front of me yielded different reverb, loudness and clarity in the vocals. This was a great find because now I trust that the unit can capture both vocals and piano with great success at the same time. The downside is that the resonance of the piano caused some distortion in the recording, not sure if it’s making the CD-2e vibrate or it’s too loud or what. I closed the top on the piano and the result was no piano distortion but the piano was too muffled/quiet.
Overall I think the internal mics on the unit are excellent. With some fine tuning and positioning you can achieve good vocal/piano balance with the emphasis on the voice or the piano but it can only be optimized for one or the other
