The audio examples on this page accompany my review of the SD-3, SD-5, and SD-7 modelling mics from Universal Audio.
www.soundonsound.com/reviews/universal-audio-sd-3-sd-5-sd-7
I’ve provided a few examples of how the mic emulations sounded in my studio when used for close drum miking, and a couple of comparisons with the real mics when used on a guitar cabinet. All the files are mono and are just the sound of the mics going through the default settings for each model in the Hemisphere plug-in.
01_Drum Kit_RAW
In this setup I had the SD-5 mic positioned just inside the hole on my 22-inch Rogers kick drum, the SD-3 on the top of my Ludwig 400 snare and the SD-7 close-miking a 14-inch rack tom. For reference, this is how the mics sounded with all the software bypassed. Obviously, you would have overhead mics to blend in a real session but, hopefully, this provides a broad taste of what these mics can offer.
02_Drum Kit_Ex1
For this example, I used the DN-52 model on the kick drum, the DN-545 on the snare, and the DN-421 on the rack tom.
03_Drum Kit_Ex2
Here we have the DN-6 on kick, DN-4 on snare and the DN-409N on the Tom.
04_Drum Kit_Ex3
For the last drum example, we have a more vintage sound with the DN-12A option on the kick, the DN-409U on snare top and the DN441 on the rack tom.
05_Guitar Amp_M160
I own several of the mics emulated in the collections, and it was interesting to do a couple of direct comparisons when re-amping an electric guitar part. This is how my studio's beyerdynamic M160 sounded positioned just off the centre of the speaker cone on an Orange 4x10 guitar cab.
06_Guitar Amp_SD-7 RB-160
Being careful to ensure the UA SD-7 mic was positioned in the same location as the previous example, this is how the RB-160 emulation sounded.
07_Guitar Amp_SM57
I performed the same test but comparing the SM57 emulation. This is how my actual SM57 sounded capturing the same guitar part being re-amped.
08_Guitar Amp_SD-3 57
And this is how the SM57 emulation included with the SD-3 mic sounded in comparison.