I currently track vocalists in my fully treated control room with a couple high end condensor mics.
There is a small room (10'x12') next door that I'd like to use as a vocal booth mainly because with long sessions I get tired of wearing headphones and some vocalists like a bit of privacy.

I've recorded a couple sessions in that room and its a bit live but definitely not a cave.
I can either spend $500 on treating it and put more holes in the walls or buy an SM7b and have a V shaped gobo built and hope that all the advice floating around the internet is right.

Now obviously treating the room is the better option as it will allow me to use my condensors as well, but having an SM7b in my locker is never a bad thing. I'm not asking which option should I go with, but rather if the SM7B way is even feasible.

So does anyone have a comparison between an SM7B and a condenser in an untreated room?

 

If you are using a cardioid pattern and you can hear unpleasant reflection in your condensers, then you will probably still hear it in any other mic. I like large coil dynamic mics like SM7B, or Electro Voice RE-20. They have their own unique presence and clarity in lower midrange that works nice on some vocalists, male in particular.

 

A mix engineer who also records his own rock vocal schooled me to this mic. Since he doesn't want to run back and forth to his mic booth he uses the sm7b sitting right at the console and gets great recordings. Its a go to mic for me, I use it with my noisy tower sitting in the corner of the room and and don't have any issues. Really love the way this mic sounds overall, can get broadcast quality recordings.

 

BTW here is his vocal recorded on SM7b:
https://www.reverbnation.com/shotgunsugar/song/18857095-thief

 

Theres no doubt its a great mic, I'm looking for something like if a condensor and a sm7b are placed at the back of the room facing away from the speakers, and you play music, how much of the background does the sm7b pick up and how much does the condenser pick up? assuming that you've calibrated the gain on both so that a vocalist standing in front will be recorded at the same level.

I'll probably just rent one for a week and test it out myself.

 

Best thing to do! ps: it's a great mic.

 

1. No doubt it is a wonderful mic and has been used by many artists like our own CavEmp to that guy Michael Jackson to record thrilling, memoral tracks. The reason that it can work well in rooms that are not much treated or in a control room situation is due to its low sensitivity compared to active condensor microphones. I am not 100% sure of the specs so I can't quote you numbers, but to effectively get the most out of the SM7B you really nèed to feed it a bit over 55db of good clean preamp juice. Your preamp will be asked.to work hard, so it will take something a bit more than what a pre in most interfaces noisy top ends of power can feed it.You could buy a Cloudlifter or a Triton Audio Fethead to give you about 20db of almost colorless power to append what your interface gives you in order to be able to get a quality signal out of the Shure. This is a cost effective solution if you haven't a quality pre with at least those silent decibels of power to lay into it. Even if you do have stong quality preamps at your disposal, the CL or Fethead will enable you to use them in a way that offers you two choices. The first is to push the gain of your amp to make it work harder, thereby showing it's true colors, so to speak, or in conjunction with the CL/Fethead to have as clean as signal as possible while dialing down the gain of the pre. One thing to remember is that the polar patern of the SM7B is still cardioid, and though not quite as sensitive as its condenser brethren, will still pick up off pattern sound, albeit at a lower level. A fine microphone which displays a hyper cardioid pickup pattern is the Sennheisser 441. The pattern is tight enough to definitely use in a control room. It is a bit more expensive than the SM7B but is a fine alternate if you wanted to go this way. In the end you will be renting the Shure to see if it suits your needs or if spending the money on the room would be the better option. Only time and your need will tell.

 

Some clues are here http://cdn.shure.com/specification_sheet/upload/83/sm7b-specification-sheet-english.pdf

 

It's a total workhorse, It handles anything I have ever asked of it vocal wise and it's never let me down. Definitely one of the best microphones that I've picked up over the years. However as said already by yourself and above by e-minor; Definitely rent one if it's an easy option and then you'll definitely know if it is going to be the microphone you're after for that space you're thinking of deploying it in.
It's great on drums, bass amps, guitar amps along with any other application where a quality dynamic mic is preferable, They just don't break/never come across a broken one in all my years. Bullet proof build and along side MD series, RE series and D series; It's a dynamic microphone at the absolute best they can be really (Some of the neodymium designs showing up have really impressed) just in my very humble honest opinion.

All the best and to all as always

Dean

 

this thing worked wonders in my untreated room:

 

If you question if you have enough "clean" gain, just plugin any dynamic mic and look where the noise floor of your hardware is.
today's equipment should handle it easy, if it wasn't for interfaces with static noises these days.

I've mixed a lot tracks with this mic the past couple of weeks, love the Proximity effect on that thing.
I can really hear when a vocalist tries to swallow the mic, and like it.

To answer your question, I think it's totally possible.
and manageable with a temporary non permanent low cut (feedback will most likely build up around 60-100 hz)
and a headphone for the vocalist because it will be harder to hear yourself. and that's some db you'll still need to counter ringing

 

Last edited: Aug 2, 2016

It's been used as kwissbeats mentioned, Especially so by metal vocalist's in the control room with headphones and even without headphones and the monitor mix playing (The latter you can hear by listening to any Anthrax record with John Bush on vocals and usually Rob Caggiano part of the engineering, mixing and production, Everything including Sound Of The White Noise up to and finishing with The Greater Of Two Evils) and the former, The best example I can think of off the top of my head is Randy Blythe's performences on both Ashes Of The Wake and Sacrament by Lamb Of God (With Gene "Machine" Freeman manning the desk). Personally like I've mentioned along with other's, It is a really quality dynamic mic and for my own stuff along with a lot of the stuff I've worked on it's never failed to deliver the goods. For even more extreme metal examples, Anything by Cephalic Carnage is usually the SM7b with also a decent LDC also deployed depending on the track. I know/have met many hip-hop and similar people that are also big fans of the SM7b just like the SM57 (Which is another fine choice for peanuts and can be easily modified to sound awesome by removing the transformer, Known mostly as 'The TapeOP Mod', That gets it really quite close to the SM7b but you do need a good additional +12 - +15db of clean mic pre gain to really reap the benefits of that one along with switching the stock transformer for something of a much higher calibre)

I can't say anymore really, Everyone has said it already. All the best and to all as always

Dean