View All Students
Anthony Howell
This week was all about mics, which means there was no shortage of discussion. I was all ears and eager to take notes because it was all so useful. Did you know, ribbon mics in the 30's were tube powered and notorious for being very delicate? Well now you do. Also, it’s probably not common knowledge that new ribbon mics are designed to handle phantom power, which shows up on your ground line and is quite often provided by the mic pre, or the board, or the DI box. Another little bit of useful knowledge is that condenser mics won't work without phantom power, so let that rattle around in your brain. We also discussed mic placement. A good Rule for mic placement says that if you have a musician that can't play, and his guitar is out of tune, the mic or the placement of the mic will be very much compromised, similar to how an amazing performance will seem better even with bad equipment, acoustics etc. so it is always very important to keep “the good rule” in mind in studio applications. Another phenomenon Lionel explained to me, which I was unaware of is “Cross Talk”. I came to understand cross talk as a signal from one channel leaking into another; which shouldn't happen. Cross talk is caused by improperly implemented design, or wiring. It tends to be a case of proximity. For example: track 1 and track 10 probably won't cross talk. Shielding, insulation is key to avoiding cross talk in your mix. For example: somebody makes a great Neve board but it has bad shielding, or the circuitry is of low quality is a common way to create cross talk. In the coming weeks, Lionel and I will play around with mic placement so I can get a more practical understanding of how it works. Namaste.
