henry_mullis said:
so I heard somewhere that you can get a better snare drum sound when you put one mic on top and then one on the bottom and change its polarity? How do you change a mic's polarity? And could you explain microphone polarity so that i can understand why you get a better sound.
Well, you have more control over the ratio of head sound to snare sound. Most of the time, a well placed single mic will work just fine, but some engineers want that extra bit of control between the sound of the snare head, and the rattle of the snare wires, so they use two mics on the snare.
The idea behind changing the polarity is pretty simple: the mic on top hears the head mostly, and when you strike a snare head, the initial sound you hear is the head moving away from the mic.
At the same time, the mic underneath (which picks up the wires of the snare primarily) also hears the head, but the head is moving towards the mic, the exact opposite of the top mic. You need to somehow reverse the sound of the bottom mic so that both mics hear the head moving in the same direction, or you'll get cancellations.
That's where the polarity switch comes in. Many mixers have a polarity switch on each channel; some don't. For those mixers that don't have a polarity switch, you'll need a special cable where you've changed the polarity on one of the XLRs, by swapping the pin 2 and pin 3 wires.
Use this cable on the bottom microphone to reverse the polarity and make sure it's well marked as a reverse polarity cable, so it doesn't get accidently used somewhere else.
