I`m getting a tin canny sound from my condenser mic

[presto5]

Anyone know some tricks of the trade here? I bought a MXL 992 large diaphram condenser mic and it sounds like I`m recording into a tin can....It got great reviews and seems pretty nice but I think I like my PG57 better. I know that is not supposed to be a good vocal mic. I dunno maybe its my voice..Havn`t really tried tweeking anything yet either...thanks

 

[tmix]

Well....
If you sound like a tin can...and your mic makes you sound like that....it is probably doing its job.

Ok...now that I have been a smart ass...
Most often the sound you describe is attributted to the room or space of which you are recording in.
It is possible since one mic is a dynamic with a fairly tight rejection pattern, and the other is a condensor with a pretty wide pattern that picks up the room, what you are hearing is a bigger picture of what is going on around you when you record.

A lot of people stick to dynamics for the very reason.

Treating the area you record in would help.
Trying the mics in a different enviornment such as a more absorbant room / large closet with the door open type thing may give you a better picture of how good the mic is.

Again..though...unless you can actually treat the area well enough to successfully use the condensor..you may want to stick with a mic more forgiving of its surroundings.

 

[gehauser]

How far away from the mic are you? Try miking at 6" away, with pop filter.

The MXL992 has a pretty wide cardioid pattern (see attached pic), but close miking should still take a good bit of the room sound out, and will add bass and fullness due to proximity effect.

 

[newcomputeruser]

technique

Anyone know some tricks of the trade here? I bought a MXL 992 large diaphram condenser mic and it sounds like I`m recording into a tin can....It got great reviews and seems pretty nice but I think I like my PG57 better. I know that is not supposed to be a good vocal mic. I dunno maybe its my voice..Havn`t really tried tweeking anything yet either...thanks

that is not a bad mike
so --- do you sing in a tin room or dumpster?

the result you hear is more the environment and you not the mike being tinny.
tht said, perhaps they didnt screw down the capsule inside and its vibrating in its mount.

i would suggest you take it apart and tighten everything up, but i am afraid that you or somebody else reading this might actually try that.

 

[Harvey Gerst]

Try singing into the backside of the mic. If it sounds better, you probably have the mic facing the wrong way - a pretty common first time error.

 

[moresound]

Try singing into the backside of the mic. If it sounds better, you probably have the mic facing the wrong way - a pretty common first time error.

You beat me to it Harvey ...exactly what I was going to suggest
It wouldn't be the first time.

 

[newcomputeruser]

tinny ?

Try singing into the backside of the mic. If it sounds better, you probably have the mic facing the wrong way - a pretty common first time error.

I can see the volume level being too low and maybe vary if the singer moves around, but does backwards make the sound tinny?

 

[Harvey Gerst]

I can see the volume level being too low and maybe vary if the singer moves around, but does backwards make the sound tinny?

Yes, it can, depending on how they achieve the cardioid pattern.

 

[newcomputeruser]

so how do they do that ?

Yes, it can, depending on how they achieve the cardioid pattern.

thanks. i would never have guessed that.

i can see on paper how to get the various patterns by themselves eg omni and figure 8, but how they combine those to cardioid, super, hyper, etc. is a big mystery.

and dont pay no never mind to shotgun mike patterns

 

[philbagg]

thanks. i would never have guessed that.

i can see on paper how to get the various patterns by themselves eg omni and figure 8, but how they combine those to cardioid, super, hyper, etc. is a big mystery.

and dont pay no never mind to shotgun mike patterns

NCU taking on Gerst now?

There's rejection from the back, so you're getting very little source sound and mostly room reflections. It's similar to the sound of standing a few dozen feet away from someone shouting in a tunnel.

Would you like me to provide mathematical calculations? I know you love it overly-complicated.

 

[newcomputeruser]

thanks but ...

NCU taking on Gerst now?

There's rejection from the back, so you're getting very little source sound and mostly room reflections. It's similar to the sound of standing a few dozen feet away from someone shouting in a tunnel.

Would you like me to provide mathematical calculations? I know you love it overly-complicated.

thanks for the offer

actually i like it simple but complete and accurate and on point not some side issue

the math i understand
its the practical building of a mike that i do not get yet

what i don't understand is how they build the thing to accomplish (or close enough) the theoretical math results

a pointer to a microphone *design* book would be useful
but a sentence or two about how they actually get the results
in practice would be better

 

[mattr]

To be honest I don't see how you can claim to understand the maths if you don't know what that maths is... ah well

a pointer to a microphone *design* book would be useful

The Microphone Book

That's a very good primer book... doesn't go into that much detail, but it at least touches on most of the important points in a reasonably concise way that you can then go away and research independantly if you want to find out more.

Obviously you can get a lot more complicated, i.e. something like this.

 

[newcomputeruser]

illogical assumption

To be honest I don't see how you can claim to understand the maths if you don't know what that maths is... ah well

The Microphone Book
...
Obviously you can get a lot more complicated, i.e. something like this.

what makes you think that i dont know what the math is ??
i have read several detailed papers from AES symposium with plenty of math.

what i do not understand is how to translate the math to a physical microphone instantiation.

like the guy at the photo club who talked about polarisers.
he gave me a quick answer. i said that i could do that with antennas but polarisers using optics would be a problem to me.

same things with mikes. I can do the math. I can't use it to make a real mike to match the math. maybe i need a better book on acoustics not on mikes.

thanks
will check that book out
i have a couple of books on order at the library to get and read
but i suspect they will be all technique to use mikes not how they are built even if they have more of the math stuff.

 

[mattr]

Well it just seems a bit of a strange claim because, apart from various fields of theoretical physics which can only be described using maths, people tend to try to understand the basic mechanisms and a kind of 'visual understanding' of something way before they try to model it and explain it mathematically. I don't understand the maths behind a hell of a lot of this stuff, but I'm fairly confident with a lot of my overall comprehension of the ideas.

You ask about polar patterns. Very basically (and typed quickly with lots of mistakes because I'm damn hungry and cooking dinner )...

Firstly, remember that sound travels in the form of longitudinal pressure waves.

Omni mics are pressure transducers - the diaphragm is sealed on one side (apart from a small vent to allow for slow changes in atmospheric pressure) - and so the diaphragm responds equally to changes in pressure from all directions.

Figure-8 microphones are pressure gradient transducers - the diaphragm is open on both sides and so responds to the difference in pressure on either side.

Cardioid patterns combine aspects of both of these. The diaphragm is 'partially' open at the back... vents / 'acoustic labyrinths' are used to mechanically delay the pressure waves reaching the back of the microphone, thus introducing a phase shift. Compressions or rarefactions reaching both sides of the diaphragm simultaneously will result in zero net force (e.g. sounds arriving out of phase will result in destructive interference).

For sounds arriving from the rear of the mic, the delay introduced at the back of the diaphragm will result in it arriving at the same time as the sound reaching the front of the microphone, but in antiphase, hence the 'rejection'. For sound arriving from the front the effect is more or less negligible, though this is related to how the proximity effect arises.

I did have some basic diagrams I sketched out for a physics assignment a while ago, but I don't know where they're saved on my computer at the moment.

 

[mshilarious]

Let's simplify. A pure, perfect pressure mic has equal response at all angles of incidence. The same pressure gradient concept will have response of cos(x). A cardioid is a blend of the two: (cos(x) + 1) / 2. You can realize that physically via a couple of means: electrically mix coincident pressure and pressure gradient capsules; or, build a capsule where the back of the diaphragm is neither totally sealed or totally open.

I wrote a little VST widget that started life as a multipattern/MS decoder, I decided it was fairly silly, but I did do a graphical depiction of the resulting polar pattern(s) using actual math, which was mildly interesting. I abandoned it when I decided I didn't like the mic it was supposed to go with . . . although the idea of coincident pressure gradient and pressure capsules is still interesting, especially if they are available on discrete channels . . .

 

[mattr]

although the idea of coincident pressure gradient and pressure capsules is still interesting, especially if they are available on discrete channels . . .

That sounds bloody cool, even if people have got by without it thus far So rather than committing to any one particular polar pattern during tracking, you could retrospectively dial in the exact blend of the two capsules during mixing, or even get creative and automate it to reflect the needs of the mix at any one point? Kind of like the polar-pattern equivalent of recording with a M/S setup so you can easily adjust the stereo width later on? Sounds suitably obscure, but I'm sure some people would find a use for it...

 

[mshilarious]

Kind of like the polar-pattern equivalent of recording with a M/S setup so you can easily adjust the stereo width later on? Sounds suitably obscure, but I'm sure some people would find a use for it...

That's right. There's no reason the traditional back-to-back cardioid capsules couldn't do the same thing, if designed that way, but there's something nice about having a true pressure capsule.

 

[newcomputeruser]

recent paper

Let's simplify. A pure, perfect pressure mic has equal response at all angles of incidence. The same pressure gradient concept will have response of cos(x). A cardioid is a blend of the two: (cos(x) + 1) / 2. You can realize that physically via a couple of means: electrically mix coincident pressure and pressure gradient capsules; or, build a capsule where the back of the diaphragm is neither totally sealed or totally open.

I wrote a little VST widget that started life as a multipattern/MS decoder, I decided it was fairly silly, but I did do a graphical depiction of the resulting polar pattern(s) using actual math, which was mildly interesting. I abandoned it when I decided I didn't like the mic it was supposed to go with . . . although the idea of coincident pressure gradient and pressure capsules is still interesting, especially if they are available on discrete channels . . .

recent journal of acoustics paper did a study of holes and slots in various arrangements on the back plate as well as otehr factors to try to see what was significant and what was not sensitive to changes.

oodles of math formulas for all sorts of things

 

[newcomputeruser]

there is a difference

Well it just seems a bit of a strange claim because, apart from various fields of theoretical physics which can only be described using maths, people tend to try to understand the basic mechanisms and a kind of 'visual understanding' of something way before they try to model it and explain it mathematically. I don't understand the maths behind a hell of a lot of this stuff, but I'm fairly confident with a lot of my overall comprehension of the ideas.

You ask about polar patterns. Very basically (and typed quickly with lots of mistakes because I'm damn hungry and cooking dinner )...

Firstly, remember that sound travels in the form of longitudinal pressure waves.

Omni mics are pressure transducers - the diaphragm is sealed on one side (apart from a small vent to allow for slow changes in atmospheric pressure) - and so the diaphragm responds equally to changes in pressure from all directions.

Figure-8 microphones are pressure gradient transducers - the diaphragm is open on both sides and so responds to the difference in pressure on either side.

Cardioid patterns combine aspects of both of these. The diaphragm is 'partially' open at the back... vents / 'acoustic labyrinths' are used to mechanically delay the pressure waves reaching the back of the microphone, thus introducing a phase shift. Compressions or rarefactions reaching both sides of the diaphragm simultaneously will result in zero net force (e.g. sounds arriving out of phase will result in destructive interference).

For sounds arriving from the rear of the mic, the delay introduced at the back of the diaphragm will result in it arriving at the same time as the sound reaching the front of the microphone, but in antiphase, hence the 'rejection'. For sound arriving from the front the effect is more or less negligible, though this is related to how the proximity effect arises.

I did have some basic diagrams I sketched out for a physics assignment a while ago, but I don't know where they're saved on my computer at the moment.

math and physics are not engineering
you can do all the theory you want
but if you cant translate that to reality to build something
all you have is paper with pretty formulas on it

analysing a mike does not tell you how to design and build a mike that will work the way your theory says it will

 

[mshilarious]

Look, NCU, I'll be blunt. Stop trifling with us. People are here trying to learn basics so we don't have time for your games. You know what you are doing, so either out yourself and act like yourself, or you're done here. Is that clear enough? Good.