Two recordings, one microphone
You record a vocal part, listen back and find it dull and thick. You open an EQ, cut some lows, lift the highs, and the voice now sounds thin and still dull. The same singer, the same microphone, twenty centimeters further along and turned a few degrees, delivers a recording that barely needs any work. That difference is not luck. It is the result of three things you control yourself: which type of microphone you use, which polar pattern it has, and where you put it.
Once you understand that, you change your order of work. Not record and repair afterwards, but listen, move the microphone and only record once the sound is already right. An EQ can adjust a balance, but it cannot undo a room, cannot reverse comb filtering and cannot restore off-axis coloration.
What you will learn in this chapter
- You recognize dynamic, condenser and ribbon microphones and know what their construction does and does not say about their sound.
- You choose deliberately between omni, cardioid, super- or hypercardioid and figure-8, and you use their nulls.
- You explain the proximity effect correctly and use it as a tone control instead of being subjected to it.
- You control the ratio between direct sound and room with distance, angle and position.
- You recognize comb filtering caused by reflections and solve it with placement instead of EQ.
- You work with a repeatable position test that also works in a small, untreated room.
Who this chapter is for
For anyone recording anything acoustic: voice, guitar, percussion, an amplifier or a spoken recording. You do not need an expensive microphone or a treated studio. One microphone, an audio interface and headphones are enough. If you work with limited means in a small room, this is exactly your chapter: placement is the cheapest and most effective improvement there is. Concepts about the signal chain, gain and balanced cables that you are missing can be found in the free intro lessons of the previous modules.
The core idea in one paragraph
A microphone is not a camera that neutrally registers what happens. It is a sensor with its own directional sensitivity, and what it records is the sum of the direct sound of the source, the reflections of the room and the way its pattern weighs those two against each other. Distance, angle and position are therefore not practical details but the three strongest tone controls you have, and they work before the recording. In the following lessons you build that up: first how a microphone works, then what the pattern does, then what placement does, and finally a method that finds you a good position in five minutes.