SHELLY STEFFENS: My name is Shelly Steffens. I've been a front-of-house sound engineer for the last seven years or so. Today, I'm working at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. It's one of my favorite venues to go to to see independent musical acts from all over the world.

I love working here. I've worked here since probably 2004. Tonight, I will be mixing three bands, [SOUNDS LIKE] some fellow local acts to support your local music acts.

At the Empty Bottle we have two different drum mics that we would use or have the ability to use on any given night. One is a D112, AKG. If the drummer does not have a hole cut into the kick drum, I would maybe opt to use the D112 because it does have a bit of a high end presence. If you looked at the frequency response of the D112, it has a pretty flat curve in the high ends so the D112, again, works really well with a closed kick drum head because you can add a little bit of attack with that high frequency response.

You get a little bit more of a presence sound with that. It's a regular cardiod, it's not a supercardiod so it picks up a little bit more around the microphone itself. It doesn't have that very narrow pickup pattern. You aren't isolating the kick drum as much. You're not isolating the source as much with the cardiod. You have a little bit more pickup range around the microphone and around the diaphragm, and you aren't getting as much off axis colorization with this microphone.

I guess I would prefer the D112 on acoustic instruments, so like a cello or bass I would go with a D112 because it does have a more cardiod pickup pattern that's not so dependent on the direction of the sound source. So, if you're using a D112 and, say, you're mic'ing an upright bass with it, if that player moves around or [INDISCERNIBLE] which is pretty typical of someone playing an instrument like that, you might drop off very quickly or you might get a lot of off axis colorization if you were to use the Beta 52. If you were using the D112, you would get a lot more natural sound as a musician or as the sound source maybe changes position a little bit.

I know there's a cello tonight. I think I might use the D12 on cello but there's also a drum set tonight so I think I'll use at least one of the mics as a kick drum mic.