Q: "What is the relationship between AKG's C3000B and the VS-2400CD (I see in Roland's literature that it's the recommended microphone)?"

A: When Roland first came out with Microphone Modeling in 1998, it gave thousands of V-Studio users the opportunity to take recordings made with inexpensive dynamic mics and make them sound like they had been recorded with more expensive, higher quality mics. A year later, Roland expanded Mic Modeling to include the popular AKG C 3000B as a source mic.

For Mic Modeling to work most accurately, the V-Studio needs to know the precise characteristics of the mic you used for recording. Roland engineers have "taught" (via software updates) the entire family of V-Studios the characteristics of the C 3000B. With that in mind, the V-Studio knows how to reshape a signal recorded with this mic to make it sound like a different mic.

For example, let's say you record a vocal track using an AKG C 3000B. Later, you're wondering what it would sound like if you had recorded the track using a Neumann U-87. Simply insert the effect for Mic Modeling on the Track, then edit the effect to set the source mic as the C 3000B and output mic to "87", the designation for a "popular German large diaphragm condenser mic".

With the C 3000B set as the source, you can model a number of different mics, including a small diaphragm condenser mic (the AKG C 451), a large diaphragm dynamic mic (Sennheiser MD421), large diaphragm Condenser (Neumann U-87) or even a Vintage Condenser (the Neumann U-47).

So adding a C3000B to your Roland V-Studio recorder can be like owning a closet full of some of the more respected mics in the recording industry. The Roland units can also work from other source mics such as the Shure SM57, SM58, or the Roland DR-20.

All of this raises the next logical question: Does mic modeling really work? Can one really turn a C3000 in to something like a U87? We'll dig in to that question a little more tomorrow. See you here.