This is my first post in the 4 years of my membership. My reason for joining was to learn about live recording. Many years ago, I learned a lot from musicians when designing speaker systems for them. I soon discovered that such an endeavour was extremely different than that of a sound reproduction system which, ideally should not alter the sound. From a musicians point of view, the loudspeaker is part of their instrument and they, and only they, have the right to determine how that speaker should sound. I was humbled and if I may extoll my achievements, very successful.
This post caught my attention after listening to the two recordings. What I noticed is a low frequency difference in both recordings, some of these differences being affected by your distance from the microphone.
While the room itself can make or break any sound system, the phenomenon mentioned above may be due to a phenomenon called proximity effect. It's an enhancement of low frequencies that is dependent on the distance of the source to the microphone. Not all microphones are affected by this. There is a plethora of information on the net. Some microphone manufacturers may supply this with their microphones.
As can be seen by the Sound Absorption Chart provided by Mr. Keith Rogers, post #13, the effect of absorption below 125hz is extremely low, rendering the term "bass trap" synonomous to an oxymoron. One easy way to tame these bass peaks is with a 31 band graphic equaliser or better yet, a parametric equaliser. By far, the best way is an anechoic chamber or outdoors at least 50ft from any reflecting surface other than the ground. However, the latter two are grossly impractical and neither will tame proximity effect.
If using an equaliser, the best way is to attenuate the peaks and ignore the dips as they are dependent on room dimensions vs wavelengths. An analogy to boosting the dips would be stepping on the accelerator of your car while pressing harder on the brake; the car won't move. Some equalisers only attenuate; they do not boost but they seem to be rare.
Attached is a graph showing the effect of distance on low frequencies. This microphone is a Behringer ECM8000, primarily a measurement mic. Broadcast microphones, I believe, are very sensitive to this phenomenon, so much so that some late night radio show broadcast announcers would speak softly and very close to the microphone, resulting in a soothing and relaxing sound to the listener.
Robert
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