5. Nailing Your Sound by Experimenting with Microphone Technique - a podcast by Clean Cut Audio

from 2020-01-30T10:04

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I've said in the past that the most important factors to your sound is your environment and your microphone technique. The two are linked together pretty closely, and one slight change to either can drastically affect your signal.

In this episode, we explore several different microphone techniques with the Shure SM7b, not to find which one is "right" or "best", but to explore what we like the most, and that's highly subjective. That's not to say we don't bust a few myths in this episode and demonstrate bad microphone technique, but the bulk of this episode is critically listening to several different distances and angles of microphone placement. This is something I've been extremely excited for because I often see people complaining about their microphone sousing like junk, only to find out later they're talking into it from 2 feet away. It's very powerful knowledge to understand that you are entirely in control of how your podcast sounds, and the most expensive microphone in the world in a bad room with bad mic technique will sound worse than the cheapest microphone in the world that's being used properly in a well treated room.

I'll still advocate for better equipment all day long, but, it's important to know that the low hanging fruit, and the easiest and cheapest thing to fix is your technique. Very soon, this episode will be accompanied by a video exploring some of the same topics, but really take the time to get yourself in a quiet room with either a great pair of headphones or speakers and really critically listen to the different mic techniques explored in this episode. Audio is all about experimenting and very critically listening to the results. Don't worry about good, bad, right, or wrong, just try something new and see if you like it.

My Signal Chain

Hardware:

Audio Interface: Apogee Ensemble

Microphone: Shure SM7b

Mic Stand: Rode PS1A Boom Arm

XLR Cable: Handmade...

Software:

IzoTope RX6 De-Mouth Click

FabFilter ProQ3

Waves LinMB

Waves Vocal Rider

IzoTope RX6 Voice De-Noise