Your singer kept losing herself
in the monitor.
So you bought her
a better microphone.
The box said supercardioid.
Tighter pattern.
More gain before feedback.
You put it on the stand,
put the wedge where it always goes,
on the floor in front of her,
aimed back at her face,
and brought her up.
It rang
before she was loud enough to hear.
The old microphone,
in exactly the same spot,
had given you more.
Here is the mechanism.
Feedback is a loop.
The speaker plays into the microphone,
the microphone feeds the speaker,
and at the frequency
where the sound comes back
louder than it left,
it builds into a howl.
The microphone's pattern
decides how much of the speaker
it hears.
A cardioid
is deafest straight behind.
One hundred and eighty degrees.
That is why the wedge
lives in front of the singer,
aimed at the back of the capsule.
A supercardioid
is narrower at the front,
but it pays for it.
It has a small lobe
pointing straight back,
and its deaf spots
sit at roughly one hundred and twenty five degrees,
off to each side.
So the place you put the wedge
for the old microphone
is the one place
the new one can hear it.
Same speaker.
Same distance.
Worse result,
from the better microphone.
The fix costs nothing.
Read the polar pattern
on the spec sheet.
For a supercardioid,
move the wedge off centre,
or use two,
angled in from the sides,
into the nulls.
Then ring out the monitor
with the microphone
where it will really be.
One more thing.
When a singer cups the grille,
the pattern is gone.
The microphone hears everything,
from every direction,
and it will ring
whatever you bought.
Show her where to hold it.
A better tool
used in the old position
can be worse than the old tool.
Learn where it listens
before you decide where it goes.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
Top comments (0)