recording audio in a home studio

[re:dream]

I'm playing around with the idea of getting a decent cardioid type mic to record audio in my home studio

Which is not a quiet place. It's just a room in an apartment block, and I live in a part of the world where there can be a fair bit of wind outside a lot of the time.

Is it a non starter? How much ambient noise can one of those absorber / isolator panels round a mike cut out?

[fishmonkey]

what are you wanting to record?

[h3rtz]

for studio purposes a large diaphragm condenser mic in general would be more appropriate than a dynamic one like the sm58. the better sensivity of a large condenser mic usually is a plus in a studio setting, but apparently not in your case. i have an audio technica at 2020 and i can hear my neighbor's dog fart on my raw vocal recordings. if u can hear it with your ears, it wil be twice as apparent on your raw recording. after processing and in the mix it can be irrelevant though. i also own a sm58 beta and never use it for recording for the sake of better clarity with the at 2020 believing that the background noise captured adds character to my recordings

the sm58 is more of a live microphone since it isolates from the noise around quite well leading to less feedback issues and such. in your case that might be just the feature that makes it working in your surrounding, depending on what you want to record. for vocals ok i'd say, for an acoustic guitar though probably not ideal.

edit: absorbers around your mic won't help. those are for preventing room reflections from the sound source you want to record. but if you have 1m2 spare space in your room, you could think about building a small vocal booth.

[Ryder17]

Depending on what it is you want to record, I don't think a little ambient noise is always a bad thing, just listen to some of tom waits recordings!

If you do go the dynamic route, i'd personally recommend an EV over and sm58 any day. Much more sensitive, much cleaner

http://www.electrovoice.com/product.php?id=85

[re:dream]

Want to record vocals mostly. My studio room is really tiny, so no space for a booth. I've treated the walls with diffusion panels so reflections should not be too much of a problem....

[rluk]

SM57/58 over cheap condenser that will record your crappy room and neighbours cat anyday.