Recording tips/advice & general sound suggestions

[Kanthos]

I tried recording my alto sax tonight, and wasn't really impressed with the results, so I'd appreciate any advice from those of you who have done any live recording of acoustic instruments before. My setup is a SM-57 which I had pointed pretty much right at the bell (pretty much because I move a bit as I play; not enough to do anything really significant with respect to mic placement though). I was recording into Cubase via an Edirol UA-25 audio interface, recording at 24-bit, 48 kHz.

The two things I noticed with my sound were that it sounded a bit tinny and that the recording was very quiet. I think the tone was due in part to the fact that my own tone isn't fantastic and that natural reverb in a small room tends to enhance my tone a lot, and I wasn't capturing that by directly micing my sax. As for the recording being quiet, I'm not sure what caused that. The recording is pretty clear and noise-free; the mic picked up the key clicks on my sax quite well. I started iith the sensitivity low on my audio interface and turned it up until the peak light came on when I played my loudest. It wasn't a question of the volume of the sound coming out of my horn either; it was quite loud. But when I played back my track against the original in Cubase, I was strongly overpowered.

I'm much more of a composer than a remixer or performer, although I'm trying to be both of those, so any suggestions anyone can give are much appreciated.

I'm going to post the audio of my sax too, I just have to switch accounts so I can get into Cubase and extract it.

Edit: Here's the audio of just my sax. I'm not going to post the backing track unless I get an ok from the person I'm recording the solo for (and if you're reading this, I'll do a much better solo on the version I send you; this is more of a warm-up run to figure out my recording setup).

[Mia]

You need a condenser mic. A dynamic like the SM57 is powered by the sound pressure waves themselves of whatever is being recorded.

Condenser mics run from an abundant and steady stream of phantom power. This can be provided by mixers and preamps.

A half decent one will probably run you a few hundred $s.

Long story short though, if you use a condenser, the dynamics of your recording will be based on how loud or soft you played, instead of when and where you slightly moved the sax.

[analoq]

wrong, you don't need a condenser mic; dynamic mics are great for recording horns. above claims about dynamic responsiveness should be ignored as well as they are way overstated.

really, your pre-amp is what's going to make a big difference in how hot a signal you can get. the SM57 needs a strong pre-amp, and those dinky USB things tend to be underpowered.

that said, your recording doesn't sound bad. realize that the sound of your sax is different right out of the bell than what you hear while you're blowing thru the mouthpiece. just throw your bread and butter (compression, eq, reverb) on it and mix your other tracks accordingly -- you can make it work.

[Kanthos]

Thanks to both of you. It sounds like there are two ways to do this: get a condenser mic (my audio interface has phantom power) or get a preamp and stick with my current mic. I did get a fairly good dynamic range when I recorded (I was playing mostly on the loud end of my dynamic range); it just came in really quietly because the signal wasn't boosted. I only mentioned moving around to say that it didn't really cause any effect on my levels; I would expect that if I walked across the room, that would make a difference.

As for effects, like I said, I'm recording the solo for someone else's track, so I should find out who's going to apply the effects to the recording

Edit: Hmm, says my audio interface has a built-in preamp. I wonder if there was something else I did wrong then? I'll have to look through the documentation at home. Or maybe the UA-25 is just underpowered. I don't want phantom power enabled, right? That's only for condenser mics?