hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3331.txt

Episode: 3331
Title: HPR3331: Audio for Podcasting: Episode 1 - The Microphone
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3331/hpr3331.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 20:57:53

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3331 for Mundi, 10th of May 2021.
Today's show is entitled, Audio for Podcasting, Episode 1, The Microphone and is part of the
series podcasting, How Do It Is Hosted by Finch Sarah and is about 23 minutes long and carries
an explicit flag. The summary is Finch Shares Tips and Tricks on Producing Quality Audio for HPR
Episodes. This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com. Get 15% discount on all
shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15. Better web hosting that's Aniston Fair at Ananasthost.com.
Hey, what's good Hacker Public Radio? This is Taj and I wanted to do another little
episode. This is probably going to turn out to be more than one episode, dealing with
simply just audio and how to sort of work your audio to make it sound better. Now Hacker Public
Radio has policy that as long as it's intelligible that the audio is good enough. For me, I know
that that's not good enough, so I want to help people get to a point where they have a little bit
better audio than just it works. So today we're going to start at the very beginning of that
process. We're going to talk about the signal chain in the very beginning of the signal chain,
which is the microphone that you're using and how you use it and things you need to keep in mind
as you're using that microphone. Now, where I have any room to talk about this is that I actually
spent a decent portion of my career working in Pro Audio and that was either in a studio setting
or it was in a live setting and as much as people want to romanticize the audio world and think
that we're always mixing bands and recording albums, the vast majority of the work that I did
happened to be doing voiceovers or doing commercial audio where somebody was doing the script
to a commercial when we were putting it to that or educational presentations. These were all
things that we would do regularly. So a lot of what you were doing in the studio or live were
simply just voices and that was it. And most of Hacker Public Radio tends to be that. So what I
wanted to do is just kind of help people walk through that process to get a little bit better audio.
Now, I will say I'm going to try to keep this as simple as possible. I'm not going to use big
words and if I use a big word, I'm going to try to explain it. This should be simple enough that
anybody should be able to understand what's going on and be able to get better audio.
Now, I'm going to use tools that everybody should have access to. If you have a computer, you can
use Audacity. So all I'm going to use for all the things in the series are going to be Audacity
with the stock plug-ins. I'm not going to do anything special and we'll talk about how to change
the audio to fit what you want. So to begin with, we talked about the signal chain and so what that
means is where your sound starts to where it ends up and everything that it passes through in that
process. So the first part in the signal chain passed you and your voice would be your microphone.
Now, there are lots of different kinds of microphones and there's lots of different opinions
about microphones. I'm going to kind of explain the different types of microphones and you can make
a decision based on what I tell you. I do have recommendations that I think are pretty
solid, but if you want to go a different route or you have something different,
by all means, please use that. One of the truths of any kind of audio is you can only do
with what you have. So the way you record your audio and the quality of the audio that you record
initially is really going to determine how good your outcome is. So one of the things,
you know, they get set a lot is you can only polish a turd so much and it's still a turd. So if
your recording is really bad, you're not going to be able to polish it up too much. Now one of the
things I'd like to do in sort of this little micro series is take some recordings that may not be
the best and massage them to get better, but you're never going to get a really good high quality
recording and really good high quality audio without your initial recording being fairly high
fidelity. And so what that's typically going to mean is a dedicated microphone and really a good
quiet space to record. Now that's not to say you can't have a good recording without those things,
but really those things are going to give you the best chance in having good quality audio.
So let's talk about microphones. Really when we're talking about doing sort of this kind of audio,
there are three kinds of microphones that you're going to encounter. There are dynamic microphones,
there are condenser microphones and there are ribbon microphones. Under no circumstances should
anybody recording on hacker public radio have a ribbon microphone. If you do, you have a really
nice microphone and you shouldn't be using it for this. So that really brings us down to two
different kinds of microphones. You have a condenser microphone and a dynamic microphone. Now these
two different kinds of microphones do different things and it's always a trade off as to which microphone
you use for what things. If you go into a professional studio most of the time for vocal,
you're going to see a lot of condenser mics. Now condenser mics are very, very sensitive.
That has to do with the size of the diaphragm of the microphone which is a little part inside that
vibrates and that's what translates the movement of air into an electrical signal which then turns
it into sound for us to edit in our audacity that we're using. Now the nice thing about a condenser
mic is that very, very, very, very small element that is moving is really good at picking up high
frequencies and it's very, very, very sensitive. So sensitive that you have to be kind of careful with
these microphones a lot of the time. Most of them, actually almost all of them require extra power.
So you'll have to have a battery in it or you'll have to run USB to a computer or if you're using a
mixer you'll have to use what's called phantom power to power these. Now the nice thing is they're
exceedingly sensitive which means you can get very, very, very, very clean nuances of sound,
especially in the voice because the voice has a lot of nuance in it. It's benefit is also
it's downside because having that ability to pick up the smallest most minute detail means that
you pick up the smallest and most night new detail which is most of the time actually not what we
want. Unless we have a very controlled environment, a condenser mic is going to pick up a lot of
sounds that you may want to eliminate. So I would suggest condenser mics may not be the best.
As a matter of fact, right now I'm recording out a dynamic mic. I typically use a dynamic mic
mainly because I don't have the ability to really treat the room I'm in to have good acoustics
and to isolate sound that I won't be picking up with the microphone. Now for most people,
you may not hear this if you're not listening closely but somebody who really knows how audio
will hear these background noises or you'll hear the reverberation of the room. So condenser mics,
if you have a nice setup where you can isolate yourself and make sure there are very few reflections
off the walls and that you have good sound dampening material, a condenser mic is really good.
What I would suggest is a dynamic mic. Now a dynamic mic has a larger diaphragm or a larger element
in it which means it picks up mid-level and low range sounds a lot better. So you're going to get
a little more beefiness to your tone typically and it is not as sensitive. So that means a lot of
the things that you're going to hear in the room and the room sound tend to be eliminated and
that's really going to help you in the audio editing because you're not going to have to find sounds
in the room and try to take them out. Typically a dynamic mic is a very very small envelope that you
can stay in and get that sound and if something is outside of that envelope, it tends to not get picked
up very well. Now you are going to lose some quality making this decision. But dynamic mics are
just tend to be easier to control and easier to get a better sound out of. You need to know a little
bit more to use a condenser. So if you were starting out and you wanted to buy some equipment,
I would say go with a good dynamic microphone. Now the next thing you need to look for,
depending on what type of microphone this would also, this is going to be the same for
condenser mics or dynamic mics is the mic pattern. So you're going to see on the packaging of the
mic you buy or you should. If you don't, you probably bought a cheap mic that doesn't disclose
this information. But you should see a little diagram and it's a circle and it tends to have
little shapes and these are the patterns of the mic. And really what you're there's two different
kinds you want to look for, there's the omnidirectional mic which just like it sounds, the sound coming in
from all directions is equally important and it's going to pick those up equally well. So the
front of the mic and the back of the mic and the side of the mic all should register sound about
the same. These are pretty much terrible for what we want to do. Now if you're recording an orchestra
an omnidirectional mic is brilliant, but for a voice, typically if one person is talking, we want
it to address one way. So what we're going to look for are cardioid patterns and cardioid patterns
tend to look like little hearts and you can find super cardioid and hyper cardioid and cardioid
and these are all different variations on this pattern. But what tends to happen with a cardioid
mic is that the front of the microphone is the most sensitive. So you want to point the microphone
directly at your face. There will be some caveats to this later as we go forward. But really you want
that microphone pointed directly at you. As you move off axis, you're going to get less frequency
response and it's going to record less. So for example, I'm setting here. I'm on my dynamic
microphone. It's pointed pretty much directly towards my face. And what I'm going to do is I'm just
going to keep talking and move to the side. So I start here and I'm going to move to the side, move
to the side, move to the side, move to the side, move to the side, move to the side. You can probably
already tell that this isn't picking up nearly as well as it was before. So I'm going to move back
to the front and now I'm going to go to the other side. So move to the side, move to the side, move
to the side, move to the side. Now that's a cardioid pattern. It's mostly centered directly towards
me. And then on the sides, there's less coming into the microphone. So this automatically kind of
gives it a shotgun effect. It's more pointed towards you. So it's going to prioritize the sound
coming directly at it and not things from the sides. Again, if you have a room that's not well treated
or you're recording in a space that you can't really control the sound very well, this is going
to help because it's going to automatically just by design eliminate a lot of the sound of the room
and focus directly on you. So the next thing I'm going to talk about is how to use the microphone,
which sounds silly. Basically most people, rightfully so, imagine that you point the microphone at
your pie hole, you open your pie hole and you get a sound. And that is kind of the way it works.
But there are little tricks you can use to get better sound quality just on how you use the
microphone. So from here, I'm basically when I'm talking into this microphone, like I said,
I'm using a dynamic microphone, but a lot of these ideas still apply to a condenser microphone.
You want to be pay attention to where you are in regards to the microphone. So typically with
a microphone, you want to be really close to it. Now, what that's going to do is it's going to give
you a proximity effect. And so I'll demonstrate that a little bit. Right now, I'm about maybe three
inches from the microphone. I want to be usually about that close. If I get a little closer,
you should notice that my sound gets deeper, right? So there's more bass pickup and we call this
present. And then if I go back to where I normally am, it should lighten up a little bit. But as I move
further away and further away and further away, my sound gets a little tinier and a lot of the
bass rolls out and it's picking up a little more of the room probably at this point and it just
doesn't sound as good. So you really want to stay in about that three to four inch area for a dynamic
microphone condenser microphones. You really got to be careful this close. You have to have really
good technique. You may want to back out just a little bit more, maybe four to five inches on one
of those because you don't want to overpower the actual element in the microphone. Now, like I said,
I am talking pretty much directly into the microphone. And I said there was a caveat to this.
There are two sounds that people make and I just made one of them that are pretty common when
you're doing audio with a human voice. They are sibilant and plosives. Now, if you just say the words,
you probably understand what they are. A sibilant makes a hissing sound and a plosive makes a popping
sound. Both of these are really not desirable when you're even doing this. Now, there are some tricks
you can use in post-processing to post-processing. That's a good plosive word to kind of get rid of
these or at least tame them down. But there's actually some microphone tricks that you can use to get
rid of these. The biggest one is you should probably have some sort of pop filter. Now, a lot of
times you'll see the foam balls that you can put on a dynamic microphone. That's typically what I
use. It's pretty good. If you have a condenser microphone, you'll usually see a screen that is
in front of it. They basically serve the same purpose. When you get a plosive, it's because there's
a big gust of air that is coming across the element of the microphone and it interprets that
as sound because movement equals electrical signals, which equals sound. So you're trying to
eliminate that and having something there as a barrier to stop that airflow from going into
the microphone is going to get rid of a lot of that for you. Now, sibilants really trying to
control yourself on that is very helpful. But really, for both of these, you can do one simple little
trick with your microphone and your microphone placement to sort of try to eliminate these as best
you can. So if I take the microphone, I am pretty much in line with it. I am right in the center
of the cardioid pattern. So when I have a sibilant or a plosive, this is the worst possible place to
be. It is the best place for sound quality, but it is not the best place for those two things.
So one of the things you can do is take your microphone and just angle it slightly.
Yeah, somewhere between 20 to 30 degrees is where I found the sweet spot. Some people will say more,
some people will say less, but if you angle it off just a little bit, you're going to get rid of a
lot of that because the air now is not going directly into the element of the microphone. It's going
across it. And so you're going to get a little bit of reduction in that. Now, there is a compromise,
like I said, audio is all about compromise. You're going to lose some fidelity. But this is a good
compromise, especially if you have a good pop filter and you're training yourself to sort of
lay off of the sibilance a little bit, you're going to get a fairly decent sound without doing
anything. You don't have to do any post processing. It's really going to help clean that up for you.
Now, the last thing I'm going to say is if you're using a microphone and you're sitting at a
desk like I am right now, one of the things you need to be aware of is every movement you make
is going to transfer into your microphone. If your microphone is attached to your desk.
So if you have a mic stand and you have that mic stand on your desk,
you're going to hear every movement. If you type on your keyboard, that's going to come through.
If you accidentally bang your desk, it's going to come through. And these are all sounds that are
not very good for what we're wanting. So a good way to try to eliminate that as much as possible
is if you can get a mic stand or a mic arm that you can mount somewhere that isn't your desk or
isn't where you're sitting, something that is physically isolated. If you can't do that,
you can get some spring loaded arms that will try to dampen the movement as much as possible.
You're probably still going to hear it, but it will at least dampen it enough to where it's not
overpowering everything. Actually, I have one of those and I just hit the desk,
I'm interested to see how it sounds because I don't often do that just on purpose.
But a lot of times it will eliminate some of it. Some of the cheaper arms, when you do that,
you'll get this noise, which is actually the springs vibrating. So my Litch may vary.
You may want to, if it's something you want to do, you may want to spend a little bit of extra
money to get a good one. I have a cheap one here because I just happen to have it, so it worked out for me.
Okay, so now down to recommendations of what I think. If you're going to spend some money and
you're going to start what you should buy and why I think that. I'm basically going to recommend
two dynamic microphones. If you want to go down the condenser route, there are plenty of good
condenser mics and really a web search will tell you what's good and what's not. You don't have to
be an audio specialist to know that. Several reviews and maybe I'll come back with some condenser
mics, but I really strongly believe that most people should be using dynamic microphones
because they're not in a situation that's conducive to using the condenser.
Okay, so let me switch over here so I can take a look at what I want to talk about. Basically,
the first one, this is the worst kept secret in podcasting. If you know anybody who does any audio,
the dust podcasting, this microphone is going to come up a lot. It is the Samsung Q2U.
This is a very inexpensive microphone. Now, you have to understand, inexpensive is relative.
So while it's inexpensive compared to most microphones, most good microphones, it is a little
pricey. Right now, I'm looking at the podcasting pack that you can get. I'll put a link in the
show notes for this. Basically, it comes with a pop filter, it comes with a little stand,
it comes with cables and everything you need to get started. The nice thing about this is
for the money, this is an amazing microphone. It's a workhorse that lots of podcasters use.
If you've heard some live stuff from you random, you've heard these microphones,
you know, they're very, very good for what they are. They're not the best microphone in the
world, but they are great for what you paid for them. So the podcasting pack right now is,
I'm looking at it. It's $79.99 US. I don't think I've ever paid that for that for them. You can
find them cheaper than that, typically. Now, the nice thing about this microphone is it has two
different kinds of outputs on it. One is a USB output. So you can plug this directly into
your computer and record without any kind of audio interface, without anything. It should just
pick up as a sound card. I've used them in Windows, Mac, Linux, all three work flawlessly. No problems.
They also have a headphone jack. So you can monitor what you're recording. I would not
use that religiously. It's good to get an initial sound test, but really pass that. You need
to listen to the finalized audio. And it also has an XLR jack. And if you don't know what XLR is,
it is a cable that is pretty thick. And it's a circular plug that has three pins in it.
And this is sort of the standard in the audio industry. So you can take this mic that you bought
for podcasting and use it on your computer and you're fine. You'll never have to do anything
more than that. But if you want to get fancier and you want to use better equipment. And so for
me, my microphone goes into a mixer and an audio interface so I can tweak my audio just a little
bit more. You can go from this USB mode into sort of a pro mode and you don't have to buy anything
extra other than whatever interface you're using. So it's a mic that can grow with you.
This would be my number one recommendation if you're going to start out.
Now I'm going to make a second recommendation. And it's a similar mic.
This one, you hear a lot of people talk about this company and about how their equipment's not good.
I don't see it. I think this is a good mic. To me, this mic is actually a little better than
the Samsung. And it's actually the mic I'm on right now. So it kind of gives you an idea of what
it is. It is the audio Technica ATR 2100. And this is another microphone. It's a dynamic microphone.
It comes with a lot of the same stuff that the Samsung microphone comes with.
To me, this has a little bit more frequency response. I can get a little bit more on the low
and high end on this one. So it's just a hair better in my opinion. Now it is a little more
expensive. This one right now is $99. That is typically what I see them for. The Samsung,
you can find cheaper than that $79. But this one's typically around $99. US, of course.
But for me, that little bit of extra cost comes out in the audio. That being said, I'm somebody
who knows how to tweak that extra range out of it. For most people, I would say the same
since the way to go. It's the cheapest barrier to entry to get in. Now, you can record on your phone.
You can record on your Bluetooth headphones. There's lots of ways to use the microphone in your
laptop or anything like that. But going all the way back to the beginning, your audio is only
ever going to be as good as that initial recording. So my sort of hope is that if this is something
you want to get into and something you're willing to invest into, that you invest in getting the
proper equipment so you can get a good sound. There have been many, many, many, many, many times
where something has come up on Hacker Public Radio that I'm really, really interested in.
But the sound quality is so bad that I can't listen to it. And I hate that that's happening.
And I hate that for the people who spent the time recording it. And I hate that for me because I
lost out on information. So taking a little bit of time to work on our audio, I think we'll pay
off in dividends and we will all get better because of it. So that's all I have for this first
overview of how to get sound into your computer. Really? You buy a microphone, you plug it in,
and you can use audacity to record. And you can use other things, but audacity,
something that everybody can use. So that's probably what I'm going to stick with when I do this.
What I kind of foresee in the long term when it comes to this little series about audio is I
think it would be interesting to record different things on different devices in different areas.
And then walk you through what I would do to it to sort of clean it up and make it as good as it
can be, even as something as simple as, you know, taking my phone out to like someplace really
loud and see what we could get out of that and walk you through the steps to do that. So look
for that in the future. I think that's where we're going to go with this. But with that,
I will catch everybody next time.
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