Need some microphone set-up advice...

[Greeny]

Just got a Shure SM58 to record vocals, amp and acoustic guitar.

I have it hooked up to my MBR with a female XLR to guitar jack lead.

But it's VERY quiet. I can hear it, but it's not like the onboard MBR mic.

What am I missing? Do I need a dedicated preamp or a different lead? Or a little mixer or something?

Help! 

[Greeny]

Just put it through the output of a Roland Cube amp into the MBR and it was nice and loud.

Looks like I do need some kind of pre-amp / boost.

What a palaver! 

[64Guitars]

I have it hooked up to my MBR with a female XLR to guitar jack lead.

Do you mean that you plugged it into the Micro BR's 1/4-inch Guitar jack? If so, that's why it's quiet. You need to get an adapter cable that will allow you to connect the mic to the BR's "LINE IN/MIC (STEREO)" mini jack (1/8-inch or 3.5mm). Even though the LINE IN/MIC jack is stereo, you need an adapter that has a mono (unbalanced) mini phone plug.

Alternatively, you could plug your mic into am external mixer or preamp and connect that device to the BR's LINE IN.

[Greeny]

Will experiment! Thanks 64 Guitars.

[WarpCanada]

Interesting, I have an SM58 and a BR600 and I haven't tried using them together.

So are these boss recorders capable of providing enough gain to work with a SHure SM 58 dynamic mic?]

I find even many modern Audio Interfaces have pitiful amounts of gain, and my cubase audio interface is a Steinberg UR22 and I find it's terrible with the SM58, and it's definitely not set for line level.   Some mics just need a lot more dB of gain.

These days I run all my dynamic mics into a behringer mixer and I actually compress and pre-amplify on there before I run into my audio interface, and it even lets me pre-eq my mic signals so I get a nice sounding monitoring signal for direct recording.

A modern portable recorder like those Zoom all in one dealies, would give you a very good mic preamp, eq, compression, and a channel strip of sorts, while recording. 

I guess what's great about the Boss unit is that it doesn't need all that, and frankly the little built in microphones on my boss recorder sound okay to me for demos.

[64Guitars]

Interesting, I have an SM58 and a BR600 and I haven't tried using them together.

So are these boss recorders capable of providing enough gain to work with a SHure SM 58 dynamic mic?

Yes, but it depends on the level of sound going in. If you use it to record drums or a guitar amp speaker, for example, it should be fine. But if you want to record soft vocals or acoustic guitar from a distance, then you might find that a dynamic mic isn't sensitive enough.

I just tried my Shure 580SB dynamic mic on my BR-864 and, although I had to crank up the input sensitivity and input level, it did seem sensitive enough for recording vocals. Although, I'm not a singer and never record with mics, so I may be misjudging how useful it would be for recording vocals. Also, I got a lot of noise/buzz but I think that might be my mic cable. Why don't you try your SM58 on your BR-600 and let us know if it's usable?

I find even many modern Audio Interfaces have pitiful amounts of gain, and my cubase audio interface is a Steinberg UR22 and I find it's terrible with the SM58, and it's definitely not set for line level.   Some mics just need a lot more dB of gain.

Here's a page from Focusrite which talks about the problem of dynamic mics not being sensitive enough in some situations.

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360006972159-Why-is-my-input-signal-from-my-Dynamic-Mic-too-low-

According to this review at SOS, the UR22 has 60dB of gain, which should be enough for the SM58.

These days I run all my dynamic mics into a behringer mixer and I actually compress and pre-amplify on there before I run into my audio interface, and it even lets me pre-eq my mic signals so I get a nice sounding monitoring signal for direct recording.

Yes, a high-gain external mixer or preamp is probably best when using dynamic mics.

[WarpCanada]

Okay I tried it and it's fantastic. Not only does the directionality of the Dynamic mic and its lower sensitivity lead to a clean recording with a very low noise floor, the SM58 sounds MAGNIFICENT into the BR600 direct and the BR600 has MORE THAN ENOUGH gain for vocal duties which is what it's for. 

You don't want a mic that picks up the room, if you're going to have a PA, or it's going to be feedback city.

The loudest parts at the end of the attached wav file demonstrate that although I don't have any gain to spare for quieter noise sources, for a close source (voice < 3", guitar less than 12" away or VERY loud guitar) this mic should sound magnificent.

If you wanted to mic a very loud guitar amp I think you'd be wanting an SM57 not an SM58.

If you want one microphone to get a good quality audio recording of your voice and your guitar, with some room sound, you want a condensor, and if you want a large element condensor then you're going to need a preamp with phantom power.

The BR600 does a lot, but it sure isn't an all in one preamp powerhouse. Sometimes you want a mixer.

Attached sample audio from BR600 with no processing other than wav to mp3 via audacity.

I mean I get what Greeny's saying it's not loud like the built in mic and it is HIGHLY directional and it wants to be right in front of your mouth or about two inches from your guitar.  The audio quality is great.  I can not get it to clip without turning everything all the way up and screaming in the SM58.  So wow.  But I don't think I could get a great sound of a choir with just one of these in a room.

I think if you wanted to get a lot of room sound the SM58 and the BR600  are a bad choice, and even with a good strong mixer, the dynamic mic is very directional, and the built-in condensors will get you your room sound, plus lots of noise. 

A preamp/mixer and a BR600 seems a very useful thing to have, especially since if you are going to have buckets of gain on a dynamic mic you're going to want hardware compression because the loud parts are now going to clip if you put 24 dB of gain on this mic.

If I was going to play a coffeehouse gig, I'd probably want the SM58 for my vocal mic, a pair of Behringer C2s  on my guitar, and that into a live sound mixer and would then take the line level submix  out from that and run it into my Boss.  That would be a magnificent "coffeehouse acoustic gig rig". 
Now I just gotta write songs to play at that mythical gig.




Anyways the sound quality on this SM58 is gorgeous. This things sounds like a lot more money than it costs.  That noise floor man. It's so clean you could eat dinner on this noise floor.

I will post tests of the pair of Behringer C2 capsules Santaclaus brought me for Christmas, with the BR600 as I think the pair of them will also do a great job recording piano.

[64Guitars]

Sounds pretty good. So I guess the BRs have enough gain to support a dynamic mic directly. That's good news for anyone who doesn't have a mixer or preamp available. Thanks for testing it and letting us know the results.

[Greeny]

The issue has been fixed, but not how I expected it.

Using the LIN mini-jack socket, I could only get the MBR to pick up the microphone signal on the EXT setting. It was very, very noisy. Full of electrical interference and absolutely unusable. I have no idea why.

So I bought a cheap mic pre-amp for £30 as a gamble to see if that could add / solve anything. Hooking it up to the LIN in was even noisier. BUT connecting the pre-amp to the MBR through the guitar socket works absolutely perfectly. Noiseless and perfect clarity. The SM58 is like a whole new world for me, although I'll kind of miss over a decade of singing into the silver brick.

I don't understand what's going on technically - the preamp line in and line out both have two options: balanced and unbalanced. I'm using the balanced option on both.

But it works.

:-)

[64Guitars]

Using the LIN mini-jack socket, I could only get the MBR to pick up the microphone signal on the EXT setting. It was very, very noisy. Full of electrical interference and absolutely unusable. I have no idea why.

The EXT input setting is the right one to use. It stands for External Mic, as opposed to the BR's internal mic which is the MIC setting. The LIN setting is for when you have something other than a mic plugged into the LINE IN / MIC (STEREO) jack, such as a mic preamp or mixer.

So I bought a cheap mic pre-amp for £30 as a gamble to see if that could add / solve anything.

What's the make and model?

Hooking it up to the LIN in was even noisier. BUT connecting the pre-amp to the MBR through the guitar socket works absolutely perfectly. Noiseless and perfect clarity. The SM58 is like a whole new world for me, although I'll kind of miss over a decade of singing into the silver brick.

I'm not sure what's causing the noise but I wonder if the LINE IN / MIC jack is dodgy. Does the noise change if you wiggle the mic adapter? Have you tried plugging any other line level devices into the LINE IN / MIC jack to see if they're noisy too? For instance, you could connect the Line Out from a hi-fi system or a CD player. If they're noisy too, then I think it might be your LINE IN / MIC jack. Those mini jacks are easily damaged.

I don't understand what's going on technically - the preamp line in and line out both have two options: balanced and unbalanced. I'm using the balanced option on both.

If you're connecting the SM58 to an XLR input on the preamp, the preamp's Line In should be set to balanced. But the Micro BR's inputs are unbalanced, so you should change the preamp's Line Out to unbalanced.