I like to satisfy my lifelong passion for cool-shit as frequently as possible. In the six weeks I’ve been podcasting I’ve moved from recording with a USB headset wrapped in kitchen towels, to a professional mic in a custom shockmount.

Just looking at that expensive pile of stainless-steel and plastic makes me feel like a proud father.

If you’re less willing to spend perfectly good shoe/whiskey/crack-money on crap that plugs in. Here’s the cheapest recording trick I know and it allows you to record without using a mic stand.

Mic stands do two things:

1. Hold the mic in position
2. Isolate the mic from vibration

You can do both without a mic stand if your careful. The key is that most professional mic cables lock on to the microphone they’re attached to, and that most cardoid mic’s are sensitive over wide angle.

What you need to do is hang the mic from its cable at the height you need. An angle poise lamp (switched off) is an ideal support for this – just use duct tape to make sure the cable doesn’t slip. The mic won’t fall off as long as the cable’s properly locked (ever seen Robert Plant swinging a mic around his head?) and it’ll pick sound up fine as long as it’s a little higher than your mouth. Imagine a 45 degree line from your mouth to the mic and you should be spot on (see the illustration at the top of this post for a visual).

Of course – the mic’s free to move around, but you’re not supposed to be banging into it so, unless you’re on a boat or having sex, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

The mic will be isolated from vibrations – like people walking across the room to pick up collapsed groupies – and your vocals will be sweet.

(Think I’m making this crap up? Look above the orchestra next time you’re in a concert hall – you’ll usually see an array of mics hanging from cables in the rafters.)

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A hard P is not the one you try to take moments after you’ve got an erection, that requires you lean forward until your head is resting on the wall behind the toilet if there’s to be any chance of piss meeting porcelain. A hard P is the ‘pop’ sound made by percussive constants like ‘B’ and ‘P’ when you speak into a microphone.

A pop filter stops pops by blocking the path between your mouth and your mic with something that lets through sound but not much wind (which means pop-filter pants for dads could be a huge product if we can get the technology to work.)

They’re easy to make or improvise (stretching a pair of nylons over a re-bent coat hangar is the classic solution). If you spend money on a commercial pop-filter you’re buying exactly the same nylon/hoop technology. It’s a rare example of something homemade which isn’t a compromise (unlike mom’s attempt to replicate McDonalds poison – too much like real food, or girlfriend given lap-dances – too little body glitter, wrong shoes.)

Check out this short guide to building your own, or this one – which is so involved it might just be worth spending the $20. Or this one or this one. All are good reasons for me not writing another.

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Yesterday I discussed how to choose a mic. Today we’ll talk about using one.

Getting a good sound with a mic is about simplicity. You want the cleanest sound you can, so you have maximum flexibility to manipulate it later on. As is often the way, good mic technique seems simple in principle, but turns out to be complicated and arcane – like cunnilingus.

The most important thing to remember when using a mic is to monitor what they mic’s picking up, not what you’re hearing in the room. As you don’t want the mic to record the sound you’re monitoring, which would create feedback, you need to wear headphones.

The best monitoring headphones are circumaural, and rest on your head, not your ears. If you use regular headphones you’ll hear their sound mixed with what’s happening in the room and it’ll throw your judgement off. For this reason I prefer to use in-ear monitors (think earplugs with speakers inside them) which provide great sound, and work like earplugs to block out all the sound in the room.

Now you can hear yourself, here’s what to listening for and how to fix it.

Pops

Pops happen when your mic is temporarily overloaded and the audio signal becomes a straight line. They’re most often caused by percussive constants like ‘p’ and ‘t’ which you can only say by spitting out a lot of air, often too much for a mic to handle.

The simplest way to reduce popping is to back off the mic. Usually that’s not an option because you need to stay close for good sound. In that case the next simplest solution is to change the way you ‘address’ the mike.

Most microphones pick up as much sound side on as the do straight on (it’s what allows mobile phones to work inches from your mouth and off to one side). If you move our mic so you’re speaking across it, rather than into it, you’ll pick up just as much sound but find it a lot harder to create a pop.

The last option is a pop-shield. A pop-shield is just a thin piece of material stretched over a frame and placed between your mouth and the mic. If you hit a percussive consanant the air you ejaculate gets diffused by the material, allowing the mic to record the sound without overloading.

It’s important to note that a pop-shield isn’t a wind-shield (which is normally a foam blob on the end of a mic). A wind shield does nothing to stop pops and is only really useful if you’re recording where there’s a wind. Obviously. Indoors a wind-shield’s not needed.

Distance

The distance your mouth is from a mic is important. The closer you get the more bass is recorded (this is known as the ‘proximity effect’, the further away the more of the room sound is recorded.

Being too close sounds muddy and a little gross, there are lots of wet mouth sounds you make when you talk that only a microphone can hear (listen to Podnography #2 for lots of gross mouth sounds). Being too far away makes you sound as if you’re in a tunnel and pollutes your signal with too much noise.

Finding the right distance is a matter of trial and error which depends on how loud you are, when you find it, it can be easily remembered by setting a pop-shield up at that distance and using it as a guide.

Breathing

If you’re using a head-worn mic it can be hard to set it up to capture your voice but not your breathing. If you’re a mouth breather try using your nose – other people do it all the time and it’ll sound, and look, better.

If your mic’s on a stand, the key is to only address the mic when you have something to say and keep your mouth away from it at all other times. That allows you to set the mic for maximum sensitivity without inadvertently recording the sounds of your digestion.

So that’s it for mics. In the next installment we’ll take a look at recording software, how to choose it, use it and what to look out for.

Part 1

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After just three weeks, the number of people downloading each Podnography show is about 10 times the number of people reading each SugarBank post.

This proves:

• More people like to use their ears than their eyes
• My prayers to the flying spaghetti monster have been answered
• That time I brought triplets to orgasm using my left lobe alone was no fluke

Though Podnography (which, amazingly, is defined here) doesn’t sound as good right now as it will, it does kick the ass sound-quality wise of 94.7% of podcasts out there (I could explain how I got that figure with graphs and science but it would probably just freak you out.)

As I like to tell people what to do, and because I’ve spent a lot of time in professional recording studios (back when I was playing keyboards in ‘Miami Sound Machine’) I’ve decided to share some of what I know so your podcast can have sound quality more like ‘So‘ and less like ‘The Teaches of Peaches‘.

I’ll start at the beginning with microphones.

Your choice of microphone you use has more influence on anything you record than anything else in the recording chain. They’re obsessed over by recording engineers and range in price from a couple of dollars to many thousands.

Don’t worry about spending a couple of hundred dollars on a good mic. Sound is analogue and has to be captured using an analogue device. A great mic will never become obsolete (a lot of the best were designed before you were born) and, well looked after, will last a lifetime. A great mic will get the best out of anything it’s plugged into.

Three factors affect how good a mic sounds:

• Technology
• Mounting
• Pattern

Technology

Mic’s use two basic technologies, there are others but if you’re using a ribbon mic to record your podcast you don’t need any help from me. How they work’s beyond the scope of this post but they’re know as dynamic and condenser (electret can be thought of as a type of condenser).

Dynamic Mics:

Dynamic’s are tough and cheap. They don’t need a power supply to work and they’re normally used in live situations, or where they’re going to take a beating. Very few studio recordings are made using dynamic mics (though Bono uses them a lot).

Most cheap mics are dynamic, and anything you buy which doesn’t need a battery or a power supply is dynamic. Everyone makes passable dynamic mic’s but I’d recommend Shure or AKG. They’re not the cheapest, but why spend $20 on a mic unless your podcast is worth less to you than five cups of coffee.

Choose a dynamic mic if:

• You want to spend as little as possible
• You are going to record on the move and want to travel as light as possible
• Your mic has to take a few hard knocks and keep going

Condenser Mics:

Condenser mics can be very expensive but in recent years a few manufacturers have started making very good, cheap, condenser mics. Today good ones start at around $100.  Rode and Octava both have excellent reputations and make great gear. 90% of what you hear is recorded using condenser mics – the sound is considerably clearer and sharper than dynamics are capable of. They are more fragile than dynamics, but only need the kind of protection you’d give a notebook PC. A lot of people use them on the move with no problem at all.

You won’t be able to plug a condenser mic straight into your computer. To get the weak signal from the mic to line level, which your computer needs, you’ll have to amplify it first. The box which amplifies the signal will also usually supply the mic with the power it needs to operate (known as ‘Phantom Power’).

Choose a condenser mic if:

• You have $100 or more to spend
• You want professional sound quality
• You record in your house or can look after the mic during transit

USB Mics:

A lot of people are USB mics/headsets to record their podcasts (e.g. me right now). USB’s the interface and these mics can use any of the technologies I’ve mentioned. Most of the money you pay for a headset goes into the earphones, not the mic, but you can get decent sound out of one with care. Spend as much as you can afford and avoid anything targeted at ‘gamers’.

Most USB mics, the kind that come without a headset and live on a plastic stalk, have been designed as the very cheapest way to get sound into a computer. Avoid them (with the exception of the ‘Blue Snowball’ which I’ve not tested but is from a great company and probably rocks. It does not have a plastic stalk.)

Choose a USB headset if:

• You have one already
• You want the simplest solution available
• You are recording at home and the acoustics are poor (i.e. hard floors and/or lots of windows and/or a big room)

Mounting

Mics can be handheld, stand mounted, head-worn or body-worn. Mounting’s important because sound is just a vibrations in the air, and unwanted vibrations sound like thumps and rumbles once they’ve been through your mic. Mics are mounted to pick up as much sound as possible while isolating them from their environment as fully as possible.

Handheld – like a rock star

Don’t do it. As the distance of the the mic from your mouth varies the volume will go up and down at random. Worse than that, you might be tempted to ‘eat’ the mic and ram it into you face like a member of D12. Save it for karaoke.

Stand mounted – like Howard Stern

The professional choice. This will provide the best overall sound quality and the most freedom from vibration. As you can get close to the mic only when you need to speak, you’re less likely to record unwanted burps and breath sounds.

Head-worn – like an aerobics instructor

By keeping the mic at a fixed distance from your mouth a headworn mic can produce very even sound quality. As sound reaches the mic before it has a chance to interact with your room, if your acoustics are poor (and if you record at home they almost certainly are), you can get better sound than you would from a poorly placed stand-mounted mic.

Body-worn – like a TV weather guy

Forget about it for podcasting. Decent ‘lavs’ (short for ‘Lavalier’) are expensive. The smaller a mic is, the better it has to be if it’s going to sound good. Instead of using a small cheap mic just shout at your monitor and hope your computer picks something up.

So go headworn or stand mounted, depending on your budget or location. If you must handhold a mic, pretend you’re a mic-stand and try not to move it relative to your face.

Pattern

Every microphone has a pattern which describes the shape of the area it can pick sounds up from. For recording a speaker in a poor acoustic you want a mic that picks up the sound in front of it, and ignores the reflections and echoes from the rest of the room. Mics that do this are described as being Cardoid or Hypercardoid.

(Omnidirectional mics pic up sound evenly from every direction and Bidriectional mics pic up sound from in front of, and behind, the mic evenly. Avoid these unless you know what you’re doing)

Now you know how to buy/borrow/steal a decent mic you need to know how to use it. Microphone technique is a skill that deserves a post of its own, which it’ll get in part two of this series. Happy mic shopping.

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