Spring is in the air and a young mans fancy turns once again to microphones! We have decided after trying out a LOT of mics that ADK are the best mic manufacturers at any given price point and we are going to start knocking on your door to let you know about them
The Audix D6 one of the large
range of Audix mics designed and made in Oregon in the USA and
it's an attractive looking large diaphragm dynamic mic wiith
a cardioid pick-up pattern and a frequency response of 30 Hz-15
kHz, making it an ideal choice for kick drum, bass cabs, and
other instruments requiring low frequency reproduction. It is
lightweight, compact and easy to position and looks the business
as a kick mic able to handle sound pressure levels in excess
of 144 dB with a VLM™ (Very Low Mass) diaphragm. The D6
has a one-piece body precision machined from solid aluminum,
finished off with a black anodized finish and will be just as
at home on the road as in the studio.
Recording
I’m really an AKG man when it comes to kick drums
and we have a D112 and a couple of old D12s in the studio and
I pretty well use them all the time. If I’m out I might
try a RE20 but I’m not a fan really and to me they always
make the kick drum sound kind of "bottley". Its hard
to describe but I can spot them a mile off. I did a live recording
for the Bogus Brothers at the Barbican in York and the in-house
engineer had a RE20 for the kick. I'd taken along a D112 which
I really wanted to use on the kick, so we set it up and got
a level but as soon as the show started I knew immediately that
the bugger had swapped it back to the Re20. I guess it says
that we all have our favourites. This Audix is the first new
dedicated kick mic I’ve tried for a while though I have
used other mics as one-offs when live recording like the 421
or even a 58. When I get a new mic I very rarely look at the
response curves as I just like to trust my own ears but I did
with this and it really made me smile. Its got a big lump of
boost at the bottom, a cut in the middle and a nice presence
lift at the top which is of course what every engineer ends
up doing by eq on a kick drum. But then it goes on to say that
it’s good for any instrument requiring precise low frequency
reproduction.....Hardly!
It's really imprecise but it does exactly what you want and
the first time I used it I put it alongside the D112 which I
put through my TL audio pre-amp then I eq’d it with a
bit of low boost a bit of mid cut and a touch of presence lift
until it sounded Ok and then I switched to The Audix. It was
there straight away without any Eq at all sounding just like
the eq'd D112!.
It’s a really recognisable and a current sound like the
Foo Fighters and Fall Out Boy, very clipped and precise. It
does say in the blurb that you can get great sounds every time
without having to do anything and it's true. For straight out
of the box, no messing it’s a joy to use. The Audix looks
and feels well made, it’s an attractive mic and it can
clearly take high sound pressure levels but it’s around
half as sensitive as the D112 which means that you need to give
it more gain. However there’s plenty there and loads of
headroom so it’s never really a problem. If it's used
with any decent preamp, noise isn’t a problem and infact
I think it’s a bit of a disservice to just call it a kick
mic. I’ve used it to record acoustic guitar which it did
brilliantly but when you look at the frequency curve you can
see why as its getting rid of all that boxy middle and adding
a bit of sparkle. Ok there's a lot of low end but you can always
roll the bottom off on an acoustic guitar so it sounded really
good.
I have tried it on all sorts of things and it’s not a
mic to use for everything or you’ll end up with a recording
with no mid range at all! But for the price it’s a great
mic and surprisingly versatile. I suspect that the tom mics
that Audix do have a similar response and I'd really like to
try those out on other perc like congas
It's the first Audix Ive tried and I like it a lot JS.
