Mics for FX library

[Giò]

Hi guys,
I've always sampled and recorded only for my personal use (sound designing, music production).The other day I bumped into two guys that made a great collection of strange instruments from iron (percussion, bowed, plucked). They have very good and interesting timbres, they'd perfectly work as film fx and they could also be integrated in the music. So I thought to realize an audio library and try to place it on the market. I want to record some FX, some musical phrases and some isolated notes good to be loaded into a sampler. I don't aim to realize highest quality library ever, it should just be good enough to be placed in the market and be useful for film music and FX.

The instruments are in a pretty isolated cave with a great acoustic and I din't notice much noise coming from the outside. A mono recoring seems to fit well for all the instruments, except the bigger and nicer one where a stereo recording would provide an optimal result. At the moment I only own an Audio Technica AT2020. I would be happy if it could provide a sufficent quality, otherwise I can spend some money buying another mic. I do like the Shure SM7B and it could be perfect to use in my untreated studio, but I'm not sure if it can provide the necessary quality for this case. So please let me know your thougts and suggest me other specific mics to buy if you think I need them. Another option could be to rent a couple of mics for the occasion.

I'd also like to know what's the quality standard for libraries (kHz, bit) and if you know where I can offer the product once finished (small distributors, sites for self distrubution). As I said, this would be the first expirience in realizing an audio library so I want to keep it simple, but it would be nice to produce a good and usable library and have an, also tiny, ecomomic return.

Thanks in advance.

[himalaya]

You need stereo mics in order to capture the ambience, if need be.
I'd get a matched pair of Rode NT5s. These are very good for the price, and more quiet than your AT2020.

Budget for some extra accessories, like good windshields for your mics, which is a must. Don't even go out without these.


Record at 24bits to get bigger dynamic range. You should be fine with 44.1khz

[woggle]

I would record at 48K as that is the standard film sample rate and conversion down to 44K if needed is easy and excellent. On the other hand it will not make much difference really and high end products can be found at both sample rates

[yellowmix]

I would suggest recording dry as well so people can add their own reverb. SM7B is fine dynamic mic and would be able to capture it dry.

Also recommending 48 kHz for film. Downsampling is always better than upsampling.

[Tj Shredder]

In recording, there is a huge difference between 48 and 96 kHz. If you downsample from 96 to 48, the diffeence is not that high anymore, because applying digital filters does not affect the hearing range as analog filters do a lot... Depends also on the converters you take out in the wild...
But if you have a 96 kHz recording, you would deliver it of course as well... Think about a foley editor working on a 96 kHz session and she wants to import those sounds... I bet she would prefer the 96 version. No more work for you btw...

[Giò]

Thanks guys for your replies. Probably the better choice is to record at 96 kHz, many of the foley libraries I have follow that sample rate and I can always downsampling. About the mics, both himalaya and yellowmix suggestions make sense and fit my budget (cheers guys!). Wating if any other mic expert wants to contribute.

[himalaya]

You planned to use those samples in a sampler, hence that is why I said 44.1Khz will be fine, as the sampler will handle rate conversion on the fly. Many pro sample companies use 44.1Khz.

[Giò]

Yeah, probably my sentence wasn't clear. I wanted to say that I also want to record some isolated notes good to be used in a sampler, but the majority of the sounds are meant to be simple audio files you can load into your DAW.