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Voice-over / Podcast Recording Studio Equipment Reviews & Tips If you are setting up a studio and want to contact me for advice or suggestions, please do and I'll try to advise - but please read these six pages before you do! Previous interesting questions and answers are on pages 5 and 6 of this article. I record voice-overs for all manner of things - radio, TV, phone lines, websites, store announcements, etc. and along the way I learn a lot about what equipment is useful and what is superfluous to requirements or overly expensive. The following rambling diatribe is a description of the equipment I use and techniques I have learned. I do not claim to be an expert, which is why I'm not selling you a book! I do, however, like value for money and so the equipment I buy will not break the bank. I only record voice-overs, but the information and equipment suggestions on these pages would also be valuable to those who record podcasts, audio books, and also community radio stations, RSLs, AM news/talk stations, 'home-based' internet radio stations, and more. Please note: These are independent reviews. I am not paid in cash or kind by any manufacturer nor given free equipment to test (NB manufacturers - contact me to make this happen and I'll remove this sentence!!!). I bought all that I review with my own pennies! Microphones
Shure SM57
Shure SM7B
Electrovoice CO4
Shure SM81
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The
Shure SM57 with the huge A81WS windshield (which cost
nearly half as much as the mic itself!) surprised me (photo below right).
It is not and has never purported to be a voice-over mic. Yes - you
see them on the US President's podium, but this is more for their ruggedness
than anything else. It is officially a mic for snare and other instruments,
and is essentially an SM58 (the classic vocal mic) with a different
head and slightly different response. The SM57 has a very different
and noticable tone to that of the more 'clinical' condenser mics above.
I have to say I bought my SM57 more for fun than serious voice work.
It will pop a lot without a windshield. Highly 
directional
- it rejects sound from virtually everywhere except the front. There
is a well known modification which involves putting the mic body in
boiling water to melt the epoxy glue that secures the output transformer
inside so that it can be removed which makes the mic sound more like
the SM7 (promoted by Shure as a radio / announcer / voice-over mic -
see below) but with 10db lower output (= more noise). I have been informed
that the SM48 is actually a transformerless version of the SM57 with
more distinct highs, so that modification isn't really necessary. The
large windshield has a sort of scouring pad material inside it, presumably
to give it better structure and a less muddy sound than if it were all
foam. It's a mid-grey rather than black, fits the SM57 snugly, and eliminates
all popping, however hard I try. It's also nice to know in the specs
that it is suitable for use when the wind is over 15 mph (which is rare
in my studio unless I've had a lot of sprouts for dinner). You sometimes
to see them on 1970s/80s rock concerts as the main vocal mics. They
have a different sound to the SM58 because they don't have the ball-type
grill - this means extended response in both low and high end. Don't
get me wrong - it's not a condenser, but in blind tests, many people
prefer the sound from the SM57 to Neumann U87s (10x price)!
I
often use the SM57 as my main voice-over mic for non-broadcast recordings
(i.e. phone greetings, store announcements, etc.). I never thought I
would - I feel I'm almost going back a step with my microphone arsenal,
and I know audio pros may be shaking their heads, but I really like
using it (so sod 'em!). The windshield helps - I cannot pop it, it sounds
nice and warm, I don't have to bother with acoustic treatment for these
recordings, and I don't feel I have to molly-coddle it like the C414
so as not to damage it. The thing is, ever since I've started using
it, I've been receiving compliments for every voice job I've done -
which never happened nearly as much when I was using condenser mics.
It hasn't got the top-end response of condensers, but us humans can
only hear so high, after all (and if you're recording an on-hold message
for a telephone, who the hell will notice?!). I do use it without windshield
more these days, and the recordings have a crisper high end because
of this. For radio ads, I use my AT2020 (mentioned later) so that I
sound as crisp as other voices in other ads who will all be using condenser
mics. 
American
readers can get an 
A
visitor to this website sent me an interesting email regarding the Shure
SM7B (pictured left) - a voice microphone seen in radio studios.
I knew they were dynamic and expensive here in the UK, but the visitor
informed me they were a lot less in the US. I thought that if it was
as good as the SM57 and specifically designed for studio voice work
(rather than for instruments like the SM57), I'd give it a try because
it would be more appropriate for the work I do - in theory it would
perform better. It has bass roll-off and presense peak switches, and
its frequency range goes all the way up to 20,000Hz, but it's not a
smooth frequency response graph and looks a lot
like the SM57's. The pick-up zone seems larger than the SM57.
It comes with two windshields - the slender one which is the same girth
as the mic body itself, and a larger one which is fatter but makes it
un-poppable (photo below). 
I
suppose in many ways the SM7B is a modern version of the SM5B (pictured
right) which was discontinued in 1986 yet still in active use in certain
American radio station studios. I assume they clean the spit off the
foam windscreen every decade or so...!
You
can see 2 x SM81s with A81WS windshield as guest mics in the photo at
the right. The presenter has an SM7. I queried this with Shure, as they've
not really been promoted as speech mics.