Post by bobcarter on Apr 23, 2017 17:22:21 GMT
So I figured I’d give it a go, and one arrived in the post from Dawson’s a few days ago:
I was interested in the Irig Acoustic Stage...
...mainly because I was attracted to the idea of being able to use one affordably-priced unit for a number of instruments, both for recording and for occasional live use. In particular, although I can get a reasonable live sound using the Baggs Element UST that’s fitted to my Larrivee or the Fishman Neo-D magnetic soundhole pickup that I chop and change between other guitars, I wanted a solution that would pick up body slaps and taps for those times when you just need to hit something and also give a bit of that magic microphone “air”.
Yes, for about the same price (£99) I could fit one guitar with something decent (everyone says good things about the K&K Pure Mini, which I understand would be comparable price-wise), but the Irig can be easily moved about between everything from my Larrivee to my wife’s ukelele!
I was also encouraged by the reviews (not just the Acoustic magazine one, which was very thin and overly gushing, I think), which were all very positive apart from the almost-universal comment that the cable is worryingly flimsy (I’ll come to that in a bit).
The little carry case it comes with is handy (especially to protect the fragile cable) and the DSP unit seems solid enough.
I’ve been playing with it quite a bit over the last couple of days and I’ve tried it with two guitars, a Larrivee L-03RE (solid spruce/Indian rosewood), which has a Baggs Element UST and also brand new strings (hence a bit squeaky on the recordings), and a Turner 44CE (solid spruce/laminate ovangol), a fairly budget guitar which, while not bad for what it is, sounds quite boxy, and has ancient strings and no (working at least!) pickup.
I should say I’ve never used a guitar with an on-board mic or recorded at home with a top-quality mic (just budget condenser mics) so I can’t compare the Irig Acoustic Stage with any of the on-board mic/blender options available. On the other hand, those units are significantly more expensive than the little Irig, so it doesn’t seem fair to anyway even if I could.
Once I had it out of the box, I tried it briefly through an amp (my little Yamaha THR5A), which didn’t sound bad at all, and then moved on to some recording. Before talking about the recordings, I should just point out the Cancel Feedback button does seem to work fairly well. The mic did seem to feed back quite easily as soon as I pointed it towards the amp even at low volumes (the THR5A is not exactly loud anyway!), though not having used other on-board mic systems I can’t compare, but a couple of presses of the Cancel Feedback button did bring relief to my poor ears.
The mic clips on and off easily. I was initially concerned it might mark the finish (especially as two of the guitars I have have satin finishes so are prone to scratches), but it doesn’t seem to.
For the recordings, I used a Zoom R8, with the Irig DSP pack to mix the mic signal with the (when used) guitar pickup.
Bear in mind the recordings are with all EQ completely flat with no effects except a bit of reverb, so I’m sure could be made to sound much better with some tweaking.
The mic seems to give a good level of signal (though I know some of the test recordings are a bit quiet - that's my fault, not the mic).
The blurb from IK Multimedia and a number of the reviews I’ve read suggest that the preset Natural, Warm and Bright settings are perfectly usable and that doing the optional calibration makes little difference.
I’m sure this varies depending on how well your guitar matches the standard EQ settings, but for both the Larrivee and the Turner, I must say I didn’t find that at all. As you’ll see if you listen to the recordings, I found the Natural and Warm settings on both guitars very bassy and muddy, and quite unusable without some EQ to tame them. The Bright setting took away the boom but made the top a bit shrill and glassy for my taste, though I can see how that would be useful in a band setting.
Doing the calibration (which takes just a few seconds – just bar across all six strings and play chromatically from open up to the 12th fret) made a huge difference. The calibration sorted many of the problems and gave sounds that were much more usable. I found of the three, the calibrated Natural seemed best for me, and where that option was available (on the Larrivee), I found adding just 30% of the UST gave a bit more body back to the overall sound.
I’ve included several short sound clips to illustrate the differences, cycling through the three Uncalibrated settings and then the corresponding Calibrated version on both the Larrivee and the Turner. I’ve also included a crack at Thomas Leeb’s Akaskero (a work in progress, so excuse the ropey playing, especially when it gets to the body hitting section at the end) to show you how it sounds with a more percussive tune, which is on the Larrivee with Calibrated Natural setting and 70% mic/30% UST.
soundcloud.com/bob-carter-2/sets/trying-out-the-irig-acoustic-stage
With the Calibrated recordings, the results are reasonable for what can be expected, I think, certainly in comparison to the two budget condenser mics I normally use. There’s a bit of me speaking an introduction on each sound clip, and that’s just being picked up by the Irig mic, so you can hear that it does pick up some external sounds, but on the other hand when the cat started scratching the living room door halfway through a recording, it didn’t pick that up, so there’s maybe less chance of a take being ruined by unexpected intruders than if using an external mic!
About that cable, then, as I think it does need a special mention:
It’s very thin indeed. It doesn’t look like it would take more than a simple trip, tug or pinch to cause some problems, and because of the way it attaches to the innards of the mic, it does seem to get rather squashed just fitting the pickup to the guitar. Given the unit's intended purpose as a live tool, it seems a slightly odd choice, but I suppose they must have thought it though, especially as the original Irig Acoustic mic has been around for a while. Durability is a potential worry, but something I’d weighed up before buying it.
On the other hand, it’s extremely lightweight and a good length to be long enough to reach the DSP unit (whether you have it on your belt or guitar strap or on the table in front of you) without stretching but not too long that you’re likely to easily trip over it. I can see that having a more robust but chunkier, heavier cable could cause some issues too.
A note if that cable does break:
I assumed (as do some of the reviews I’ve read) that the Acoustic Stage is basically the old Irig Acoustic mic that’s been around for a while but with the addition of the new DSP pack. Since the mic itself can be had online for as little as £30 or so, you’d think that could be a fairly affordable option for a replacement if the cable did break. But before I bought it, I wrote to IK Multimedia to check, and apparently that’s not the case, at least not for the actual cable. Their reply was:
“The original Irig is TRRS and the one is a mono cable so the cable is different. It usually will not be fixed just replaced and I don't have a price it depends on if they consider it a warranty claim or not.”
So in the event of a breakage that wasn’t under warranty, it’s not clear if you could get a replacement at reasonable cost or whether you’d be buying a whole new unit.
Unless you could maybe just convert an old Irig Acoustic mic using a stereo to mono jack adapter...(update: I asked IK Multimedia again and no you can't, apparently, though I don't really understand why -their explanation was "the mic wouldn't talk to the preamp properly")
On the other hand, as flimsy as it looks, it’s no thinner than an earphone cable, and I can’t remember breaking one of those despite being significantly less careful with them than I’m planning to be with this, so you never know, it might last for decades!
Conclusion:
Overall, very pleased so far. I can see myself using it for recording and also live. It’s a great little unit and, provided I can manage not to break it, it’s doing what I hoped it would in terms of being an affordable and flexible way to get a reasonable mic sound out of a number of instruments.
I can’t see pros using one regularly on stage, mainly due to that concern over reliability with the cable as well as the pfaff factor of having a cable trailing out of the soundhole and a belt pack, but for folks like myself, who play live in sedate venues (no stage diving at my local folk club last time I was there anyway!) and like to do a bit of recording, but don’t want to go fitting expensive systems to every instrument they own, I think it certainly has a place. The addition of settings for nylon string is a good thought, too, so it’ll be getting some use with my Ibanez electro-classical, I’m sure.
If anyone else decides to get one, I’d love to hear how you get on!
I was interested in the Irig Acoustic Stage...
...mainly because I was attracted to the idea of being able to use one affordably-priced unit for a number of instruments, both for recording and for occasional live use. In particular, although I can get a reasonable live sound using the Baggs Element UST that’s fitted to my Larrivee or the Fishman Neo-D magnetic soundhole pickup that I chop and change between other guitars, I wanted a solution that would pick up body slaps and taps for those times when you just need to hit something and also give a bit of that magic microphone “air”.
Yes, for about the same price (£99) I could fit one guitar with something decent (everyone says good things about the K&K Pure Mini, which I understand would be comparable price-wise), but the Irig can be easily moved about between everything from my Larrivee to my wife’s ukelele!
I was also encouraged by the reviews (not just the Acoustic magazine one, which was very thin and overly gushing, I think), which were all very positive apart from the almost-universal comment that the cable is worryingly flimsy (I’ll come to that in a bit).
The little carry case it comes with is handy (especially to protect the fragile cable) and the DSP unit seems solid enough.
I’ve been playing with it quite a bit over the last couple of days and I’ve tried it with two guitars, a Larrivee L-03RE (solid spruce/Indian rosewood), which has a Baggs Element UST and also brand new strings (hence a bit squeaky on the recordings), and a Turner 44CE (solid spruce/laminate ovangol), a fairly budget guitar which, while not bad for what it is, sounds quite boxy, and has ancient strings and no (working at least!) pickup.
I should say I’ve never used a guitar with an on-board mic or recorded at home with a top-quality mic (just budget condenser mics) so I can’t compare the Irig Acoustic Stage with any of the on-board mic/blender options available. On the other hand, those units are significantly more expensive than the little Irig, so it doesn’t seem fair to anyway even if I could.
Once I had it out of the box, I tried it briefly through an amp (my little Yamaha THR5A), which didn’t sound bad at all, and then moved on to some recording. Before talking about the recordings, I should just point out the Cancel Feedback button does seem to work fairly well. The mic did seem to feed back quite easily as soon as I pointed it towards the amp even at low volumes (the THR5A is not exactly loud anyway!), though not having used other on-board mic systems I can’t compare, but a couple of presses of the Cancel Feedback button did bring relief to my poor ears.
The mic clips on and off easily. I was initially concerned it might mark the finish (especially as two of the guitars I have have satin finishes so are prone to scratches), but it doesn’t seem to.
For the recordings, I used a Zoom R8, with the Irig DSP pack to mix the mic signal with the (when used) guitar pickup.
Bear in mind the recordings are with all EQ completely flat with no effects except a bit of reverb, so I’m sure could be made to sound much better with some tweaking.
The mic seems to give a good level of signal (though I know some of the test recordings are a bit quiet - that's my fault, not the mic).
The blurb from IK Multimedia and a number of the reviews I’ve read suggest that the preset Natural, Warm and Bright settings are perfectly usable and that doing the optional calibration makes little difference.
I’m sure this varies depending on how well your guitar matches the standard EQ settings, but for both the Larrivee and the Turner, I must say I didn’t find that at all. As you’ll see if you listen to the recordings, I found the Natural and Warm settings on both guitars very bassy and muddy, and quite unusable without some EQ to tame them. The Bright setting took away the boom but made the top a bit shrill and glassy for my taste, though I can see how that would be useful in a band setting.
Doing the calibration (which takes just a few seconds – just bar across all six strings and play chromatically from open up to the 12th fret) made a huge difference. The calibration sorted many of the problems and gave sounds that were much more usable. I found of the three, the calibrated Natural seemed best for me, and where that option was available (on the Larrivee), I found adding just 30% of the UST gave a bit more body back to the overall sound.
I’ve included several short sound clips to illustrate the differences, cycling through the three Uncalibrated settings and then the corresponding Calibrated version on both the Larrivee and the Turner. I’ve also included a crack at Thomas Leeb’s Akaskero (a work in progress, so excuse the ropey playing, especially when it gets to the body hitting section at the end) to show you how it sounds with a more percussive tune, which is on the Larrivee with Calibrated Natural setting and 70% mic/30% UST.
soundcloud.com/bob-carter-2/sets/trying-out-the-irig-acoustic-stage
With the Calibrated recordings, the results are reasonable for what can be expected, I think, certainly in comparison to the two budget condenser mics I normally use. There’s a bit of me speaking an introduction on each sound clip, and that’s just being picked up by the Irig mic, so you can hear that it does pick up some external sounds, but on the other hand when the cat started scratching the living room door halfway through a recording, it didn’t pick that up, so there’s maybe less chance of a take being ruined by unexpected intruders than if using an external mic!
About that cable, then, as I think it does need a special mention:
It’s very thin indeed. It doesn’t look like it would take more than a simple trip, tug or pinch to cause some problems, and because of the way it attaches to the innards of the mic, it does seem to get rather squashed just fitting the pickup to the guitar. Given the unit's intended purpose as a live tool, it seems a slightly odd choice, but I suppose they must have thought it though, especially as the original Irig Acoustic mic has been around for a while. Durability is a potential worry, but something I’d weighed up before buying it.
On the other hand, it’s extremely lightweight and a good length to be long enough to reach the DSP unit (whether you have it on your belt or guitar strap or on the table in front of you) without stretching but not too long that you’re likely to easily trip over it. I can see that having a more robust but chunkier, heavier cable could cause some issues too.
A note if that cable does break:
I assumed (as do some of the reviews I’ve read) that the Acoustic Stage is basically the old Irig Acoustic mic that’s been around for a while but with the addition of the new DSP pack. Since the mic itself can be had online for as little as £30 or so, you’d think that could be a fairly affordable option for a replacement if the cable did break. But before I bought it, I wrote to IK Multimedia to check, and apparently that’s not the case, at least not for the actual cable. Their reply was:
“The original Irig is TRRS and the one is a mono cable so the cable is different. It usually will not be fixed just replaced and I don't have a price it depends on if they consider it a warranty claim or not.”
So in the event of a breakage that wasn’t under warranty, it’s not clear if you could get a replacement at reasonable cost or whether you’d be buying a whole new unit.
Unless you could maybe just convert an old Irig Acoustic mic using a stereo to mono jack adapter...(update: I asked IK Multimedia again and no you can't, apparently, though I don't really understand why -their explanation was "the mic wouldn't talk to the preamp properly")
On the other hand, as flimsy as it looks, it’s no thinner than an earphone cable, and I can’t remember breaking one of those despite being significantly less careful with them than I’m planning to be with this, so you never know, it might last for decades!
Conclusion:
Overall, very pleased so far. I can see myself using it for recording and also live. It’s a great little unit and, provided I can manage not to break it, it’s doing what I hoped it would in terms of being an affordable and flexible way to get a reasonable mic sound out of a number of instruments.
I can’t see pros using one regularly on stage, mainly due to that concern over reliability with the cable as well as the pfaff factor of having a cable trailing out of the soundhole and a belt pack, but for folks like myself, who play live in sedate venues (no stage diving at my local folk club last time I was there anyway!) and like to do a bit of recording, but don’t want to go fitting expensive systems to every instrument they own, I think it certainly has a place. The addition of settings for nylon string is a good thought, too, so it’ll be getting some use with my Ibanez electro-classical, I’m sure.
If anyone else decides to get one, I’d love to hear how you get on!
)
Jo whoever he is.
