?Okay, so you are ready to hop face first into the world of home recording. You've chosen a soundcard to record with and you've chosen your recording software. Now you are looking for a microphone. You are probably looking for a microphone that doesn't sound too bad. You don't expect to sound like Metallica or Michael Bolton anytime soon but you don't want to buy a microphone that is going to hold you back.

Well guess what! Your microphone isn't going to hold you back unless it's broken. If you have a functional microphone that actually performs the way that it was designed, your gear will be more than adequate to make a very good sounding recording.

The only thing holding you back from making great recordings is your recording engineering / mixing abilities. A great engineer could take a $200 soundcard and an $80 mic and come out with something that would blow your mind.

Focus More On Music, Less On Shopping

Yes, I know. When I type “shopping” it sounds like I'm referring to 13 year old girls wasting their time in the mall. Well, I have a feeling that the average recording newbie spends more time shopping than that 13 year girl when he should be burying his face in his studio monitors and recording and mixing like crazy.

There is so much gear out there that it makes choosing the “right” gear a real chore. In reality, the difference between this $100 mic and that $100 mic is so slight that there is no way a seasoned recording guy (like myself), can recommend one over the other most of the time.

I'm sure that if I lined up 20 microphones in the under $500 range, I'd probably love a few and hate a few. However, if you don't know the difference yourself, then it won't matter anyway. In other words, if you don't know exactly what it is that you love / hate about a microphone you may as well save your money for a while. When you buy more microphones down the road, you'll find that certain problems you used to have suddenly go away and you'll find new problems that come up. Over time, you'll develop a certain taste and if you are dumb enough to stick with recording long enough you'll be able to argue ferociously about how one mic is WAY better than some other mic even though to the average home recording beginner there is virtually no difference at all.

One Mic Won't Cut It

Serious professional producers and engineers have entire mic collections. They will have many $100 microphones and they will have several (maybe many) multi-thousand dollar mics. There is not one microphone that is great on everything. Dull things generally need bright mics. Bright sources generally need dull or neutral mics (depending on what you are going for).

If one microphone sounded perfect on everything, you would walk into live recording sessions and see 20 mics setup all over the room. There would be no need to buy more than one microphone. However, microphones are just like guitars. A Strat sounds way different than a Les Paul. Which is better? Well, that's subjective and generally depends on what tone you are looking for. The same is true with microphones.

Just keep in mind that since no one microphone is going to work on everything, it's very difficult to recommend one microphone to get started with.

Also keep in mind that I have no idea of your budget. An AKG 414 is a great all purpose microphone, but I'm not going to ask you to blow $500-700 on a mic unless you've bought some acoustic treatment such as rockwool, blankets, or whatever for your vocals. I wouldn't recommend you spending $500 on a mic if you are mixing on terrible home stereo speakers. I think you get my point here. Having a strong link in a weak chain isn't going to do you much good. And I guarantee you that on any given vocalist, there is probably a cheaper mic that sounds better than an AKG 414.