About reduction of a noise when a plastic bag is covered on a ribbon microphone

Z

Zunda

New member
Hello, everyone.

I amplified the Apex 205 ribbon microphone by AEA TRP. The AEA TRP provides about 62db of gain and had a white noise of -68dbfs.

I cover a thin plastic bag on a ribbon microphone, when resting recording.
I amplified the Apex 205 ribbon microphone by AEA TRP, with the plastic bag covered.The AEA TRP provides about 62db of gain and had a white noise of -73dbfs.

A noise is a kind called white noise or hiss noise. As for my ear, any noises do not hear my room. An environmental noise cannot be heard also if it records with a condenser microphone with high sensitivity.

What is the difference of the noise by the existence of plastic bag covering of Apex 205?
 
Zunda said:
Hello, everyone.

I amplified the Apex 205 ribbon microphone by AEA TRP. The AEA TRP provides about 62db of gain and had a white noise of -68dbfs.

I cover a thin plastic bag on a ribbon microphone, when resting recording.
I amplified the Apex 205 ribbon microphone by AEA TRP, with the plastic bag covered.The AEA TRP provides about 62db of gain and had a white noise of -73dbfs.

A noise is a kind called white noise or hiss noise. As for my ear, any noises do not hear my room. An environmental noise cannot be heard also if it records with a condenser microphone with high sensitivity.

What is the difference of the noise by the existence of plastic bag covering of Apex 205?
Click to expand...



Oh I see it's a game question ..... the answer must be in the form of a question right?

What is 5dbfs? :rolleyes:
 
Part of it was room noise and the bag reduced some of it.
Actually I can't see how with that much gain you'd expect to not have room noise.
 
I appreciate everyone's reply.

I also thought that a part of noise was room noise.Should I try hard, because of to reduce room noise more?

Please excuse my limited English skills.
 
Are you mostly just trying to understand about the noise levels and trying to minimize it?
If that were the case the main things to do would be to try to isolate your recording area (even soft partions around the instrument and mic will help), work as close to the mic as practical, and then use only enough pre amp gain as needed (once recorded the total signal can be brought up in digital gain very cleanly.

The mic burried in a pillow might give a better test in reduction of the room ambient pick up by the way.
 
Why are you putting a plastic bag over the mic and then recording???

The bag will NOT do much to stop room noise or any sound...the mic will still pick up very well with the bag over it.
 
Quick anecdote (I might have told this one here before)...

I was tracking some guitars one weekend, didn't finish in one day, so figured I would pick up on it the next day.
When that happens, I simply shut everything down and cover some things, like mics w/bags, and leave it all where it lays for tomorrow.

Well...next day I was eager to record, and because I had a "tent" over the guitar rig...I never saw or remembered to take the plastic bag off the mic under the tent.
Tracks sounded great! :)
I then removed the bag just to compare tracks...and man, you would have been hard pressed to hear any difference...
...maybe just a s-h-a-d-e less upper end, but it would have been like a nudge on the EQ.

So yeah...plastic bags don't really have a major effect on the sound...though of course, you don't want to record with them intentionally...unless you're dropping the mic into the ocean to record whale calls. ;)
 
miroslav said:
So yeah...plastic bags don't really have a major effect on the sound...though of course, you don't want to record with them intentionally...unless you're dropping the mic into the ocean to record whale calls. ;)
Click to expand...

haha^^

It's just when I think plastic bag, I think your crinkly loud grocery bag lol. Obviously if there's no movement it'd fine, but if there is the slightest air movement it would move and make sound.



And just a weird question, I don't know too much about electronics. Could a possible static shock from a bag damage a microphone?
 
I appreciate everyone's reply.

I cover a plastic bag in the intervals of recording so that a wind may not blow to a ribbon microphone. I would notice that a noise reduces, when the plastic bag was covered on the microphone. Because it thought that my room was very quiet, I was surprised that the noise reduced.

I want to lower the noise level of the recording which uses a ribbon microphone. If a ribbon microphone is put close to a sound source, the signal to noise ratio improves, but sound is very boomy.

Please excuse my limited English skills.
 
The figure-8 pattern will pick up room noise, no matter how close to the source. Maybe try a mic with a different pattern, or be creative in limiting what the mic picks up from the back.
Maybe just leave that plastic bag on there...
 
Thank you for the all reply.
Because my room is covered of 6" glass fiber, it must be hard to pick up the sound from the back.
 
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