hello my name is dave rat and today i want to check out microphones uh the way a microphone
sounds when you pick it up check one two uh hey hey you want two you can hear the various uh
two two two hey hey hey uh each mic has got its own sonic characteristics uh but there's more
to a mic than um the way that it sounds there are two other primary characteristics which
i believe should be taken into account when you're selecting the microphone
for the artist or application one of those is pickup pattern how well does the mic reject behind
it or uh where are the rejection path where what is the shape of the rejection pattern uh how much
rejection do you get so it's not only the shape but how effective it is and second secondly is the
distance from the mic what is the variation in level based on the distance from the source to
the mic i'm going to try and demonstrate uh both of those things here with this setup it's pretty
simple i've got a couple microphones some other mics to test a little mixing board two inputs
comes out of the mixing board into this analyzer here as you can see
it also comes out of the mixing board into the amplifier driving the speaker so we can
listen to what's going on and then i've set up a pair of little ipod headphones
into a pink noise source so let's give this like a little point source that'll allow us to hear
what's going on and it's uh should be pretty simple
and as you can see and where the plan i'm going to try and get these to the same volume
line close enough okay so now
we'll check the rejection patterns of these mics as they come around the side
we have fading off the side is lower
coming around back it picks up again
all right now we'll check the audix mic around front all right come around
the side notice how quickly it drops off it's almost we're still very close to the
front of the mic but we've lost a significant amount of volume
and come around the side
significantly lower around the sides and coming around back you became a seat on the
analyzer um this amount of rejection in the back is um useful for reducing the amount of room noise
that uh comes into the mic in ratio to the front of the mic so if you have two people if you're
seeing exactly the same volume into both mics the percentage of room sound that you're going to get
is going to be lower on the audit's mic than would on the sure mic sound okay so now let's look at
distance versus volume so i'll use my complex measurement system of three fingers
and here we're about one led over the white line two leds over the white line three fingers out
i'm one led under the white line there right here two leds under the white line three fingers out
and two leds over the white line
so each led is about 2 db there's about a three led difference that's about six db
difference uh that's a significant um that's a significant change that's four times the amount of
voltage or four times the amount of volume uh how about we take a look at here's a neumann kms 105.
now this mic is a condenser mic [Music] all right so try and match levels
[Applause]
close enough all right what's interesting about the annoyment is it goes even further look at that
off to the side of the pickup pattern it um almost sounds the same as it does in front it really has
tolerance to singing off center on the mic and as you back away from the mic it really doesn't lose
it only loses about two to three db two to four db
as you get to that distance coming so the asset is you get you get the room sound you get the
ability to work the mic it's very tolerant for uh performer motion coming around back though
significant pickup behind the mic so it's not going to be very tolerant towards
high level monitoring where you have actual wedges and ringing it out and uh
it's gonna want a feedback what else do we got how about a sennheiser 835
bring that up to a level
all right these are see if it's starting to drop off around the side coming around the side [Music]
and lower line all right so that's um
somewhere between the audix and the shore it's um oh checking distance
remember the audits was below this white line
this is above so what we're seeing with the sennheiser is that it's
uh more directional than the sure it's got better rejection behind it than the sure had
and it's a little more tolerant to distance so it's somewhere in between the two if you have
a performer that backs off the mic a little bit and you want some more rejection and you want a
little less room sound uh sennheiser 835 is an excellent choice for that let's do one more um
here's the article m5
now this appears to be a little more tolerant than the on7
we're not dropping off quite as quickly as we come as we bring the source around the side
yet we still have the rejection behind
all right that's it um selecting the right microphone for the application um you know really
depends on the performer if you have a performer that's going to sing at a distance from the mic
and they'll be off axis of the mic you know you want to lean more towards on the condenser side
these neumanns are great i didn't test it here but the sennheiser 865 is another great one that's
not as wide of a pattern as the neumann but i'm definitely open
and it'll give the performer some room to move around
the downside is if you have high volume monitors it's going to be tough for her to ring them out
you're going to get a lot more room sound and the audix om5 is a little bit even farther than that
it's um got even more rejection behind it it's um even less tolerant to backing off the mic and
then all the way at the other end of this at that end of the spectrum is the arm7 which is the least
tolerant to backing off the mic it's got the most rejection you're going to get the most gain before
feedback in monitor systems and the least amount of room sound whether that's preferable or not for
your application or needed that's what you get to decide but hopefully this information is helpful
you