The graph above represents ‘how much sound’ a microphone picks up, relative to the angle that the sound enters. I know some pedant will have an LSA about that. The first thing we need to notice is that this is not a perfect mathematical cardioid. Let’s look at my drawing of a cardioid shape above. You would be nullifying these vents, causing the pickup pattern to be altered and the otherwise-directional mic to pick up from the monitors!) (Note, this is why cupping a microphone with your hands causes feedback. By putting vents around the capsule you can introduce cancellations at specific points in the 3d space surrounding the capsule. The fun happens when you put the capsule inside of something, and you close it off mostly. That’s easy since a capsule floating in the air is going to be omnidirectional usually. Omnidirectional is just that: it picks up sounds in all directions equally. (Forgive my humour, I loved watching tokusatsu as a kid, especially super sentai and ultraman)įirst I need to explain what cardioid is, and what polar patterns are. I won’t be covering other patterns like figure-eight, ultra-directional, hyper-cardioid, super-cardioid or ウルトラマン pickup patterns. (It’s also the easiest for me to model in 3d). Why only cardioid? It’s both the most common, and I feel that it’s the most instructive. There’s a wide variety of patterns available, but I’m only going to cover the cardioid pattern. I’m going to explore the concept of utilizing polar patterns to optimize the use of various drum overhead miking techniques. By retaining the capsule’s position, but rotating it on any axis (with the center of the capsule as the origin), you can control ‘how much’ of each part of 3d space is picked up by the microphone. Microphone polar patterns have a big influence on what a microphone picks up in 3d space. In our previous episode we discussed microphone placement, and to do that I completely ignored microphone pickup patterns. Nothing is perfect, so why should you be?.Reading Part One is pre-requisite for reading Part Two. However I do strongly believe that there are systems that can be used with minimal tradeoffs (and likewise minimal artistic benefits). My claim is that if you are making decisions about microphone placement without being aware of the tradeoffs of each system, then you’re doing it wrong. I want to reiterate once again, since many people seemed to miss it, I am not claiming that any specific system of drum miking is wrong. #Ortf recording drums how toSo in this post I’m going to discuss various drum miking systems, their deficiencies and how to approach correcting them if necessary. There’s a missing piece of the puzzle though: Microphone pickup patterns. When using two microphones for a stereo array, distance is also an important factor with regards to amplitude. Microphone placement is very important with regards to tonality and time/phase coherence. #Ortf recording drums seriesI used to be obsessed with "wide" drum sounds but I mostly use a Blumlein setup now and it's plenty wide for me.In Part One of this series I discussed placement of microphones. It also keeps the overheads pointed more towards the snare and ensures that the two mics are as time-coincident as possible, which helps with keeping phase in check. It will help focus the overheads and you'll still get plenty of stereo width from the room mics. Continue adding mics until you've gone through each channel and found the best-possible polarity combination across all of the mics.Ĭonsider trying an XY/Blumlein over the kit if you're worried about phase. Add the next mic (s) to the snare/overhead mix and do the same thing: flip polarity on the newly-added mic, compare the low end, stick with what sounds fuller. Flip the polarity on the overheads and see if the sound gets fuller or thinner stick with whichever polarity setting sounds fuller. When dialing in the sounds, solo the snare and overheads while the drummer plays. Don't worry about the distance so much, just worry about what the mics will "hear." Walk around the room while the drummer plays and place the mics (particularly the room mics) where it sounds best in the room. Pointing some mics straight down, some towards the snare, and some angled away will cause more phase issues. It helps to have the mics are all pointed in roughly the same direction (like in the general direction of the snare for example). The goal is to get the mics to work together so that the phase relationship sounds good. First, accept that you will have phase discrepancies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |