Whats your signature sound?

History. Welcome the Pro Audio this week. These guys are professional and motivated with Tex the vo stars George Wisdom, founder of Sauce Elements, Robert Marshall, International Audio Engineers Darren Robot Roberts and Global Voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to try both Austrian audio making passions, her Sauce Elements, George the Tech Wisdom and Robo and aps international demos. Find up more about us check the pro Audio sweet dot com. Here you go, ready, welcome to another pro audio suite. We're your guests, Robo, Andrew and George and I'm Robert. And you can get a good deal on a tribe booth with PAP two hundred. And you should have Andrew and Robo do your demo by the way, and let's get on with it. Okay, it's actually trip AP two hundred. But yeah, jeez, yeah, yeah, you're looking so good there for a minute and you fell up the bloody the lost. I think your job safe pay Yeah he cooled as a job really now, George, you were telling us about an experience it once again at one voice with somebody who had a microphone that people were complaining about being broken. But it's kind of become his sound. What was the story. Yeah, he told me that, And again I haven't heard this Mike yet, so I would like to hear it. At some point I told him, hey, give me the audio and I should give him credit. I think maybe I shouldn't. Well, yeah, I know I should give m credit. It was Chad Fisher and he's worked with me in the past, and I think he just finished building a studio too that looked pretty impressive. But he said that he's got a four sixteen or forty one six is sounding odd according to folks that he's sent the audio too, that know the mic. He has said that we're concerned that maybe something is up with that. Mike, And I said, did you buy used? Was it damaged? Was it counterfeit? All those things could be true. He said, no, I bought it from, you know, one of the big companies, the big big companies. And I said, fascinating. Well, you could certainly reach out to them and ask them to give you another one and exchange it, or you could look at this as a unique experience and realize that this is the mic that you're booking on, and that people like the sound, and you may not want to muck with it. So I said, literally, just engrave your initials in that thing. And this is your mic. It's your unique sound. And if you want to get another one because you want to have a proper one or whatever, a regular one, go for it. But this is a unique mic for you. Don't don't mess with it. Does anybody else have a mic with a quirk or a character that they choose to keep using that you know? Yeah? Well, I was going to say I wouldn't mentioned the name because I wanted us to get sued or anything. But we've talked about this off air quite a lot. But a very famous American record producer has a a KGC twelve and an original C twelve which was sent to AKG for testing when they were building the capsule which has now become the Austrian Audio Capsule, the c k R twelve. Anyway, this famous record producers C twelve, which he absolutely loved, He loved, used it on everything was actually broken, but he had no idea that was broken. He just loved the sound of this broken microphone. That's the beauty of audio, though, isn't it is? That beauty is in the ear of the beholder and if he loved the sound that that Mike made, it doesn't make him any less or you know, anything else, just to sound he liked and that was his sound, So good on him. I reckon, if it sounds good, it is good. It is because nothing sounds the same. And it's funny. You know, people go, oh, well, I've got a U sixty seven, blah blahlah. It's like, does it sound like any other U sixty seven? Probably not? I doubt it very much. Yeah, I would. I don't know whether George has any experience with this, but I've had sessions with people who've said, you know, pick your amazing, you know, multi thousand dollar mike. It could be any of them. They go, I've got a such and such and you hear them in the room that they're in or where they've got it placed or whatever, and it sounds like shit. Yea, so well i'd rather back, could be quite honest. Have you got a four one six? Is the room? Yeah? Exactly? Yeah, you know it's like it's that's classic, but it's key. Yeah, the room's key. But it's also you know, it's like what compliments your voice, what defines yourselves sound? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you know, and if you're working, it's true, I make is a very personal choice. Yeah, the room is key, but the mic placement is key, and it depends a light on the kind of mike. I do find that the Shako one six especially is to get the placement really awesome, and the mic will change it sound quite a lot based on placement, whereas a large diaphragm condens or cardioid mike will not change nearly as drastically based on the placement. You know, it will certainly increase proximity effect if you get too close, but you can move quite a bit side to side, up and down without a huge change in the side falling in different places of the pickup pattern. Absolutely. I mean that's one of the things about forty one six is you have to stay consistently in front of it because it drops I mean, that's the whole point, as it drops off significantly as you get to the side. But the problem is that that's not linear. You know, it's colored, it's different when you get it doesn't drop off even right. Yeah, and it has this weird pickup nodes on the sides of the mic. If you look at the pickup pattern or in the back. If you look at the pickup pattern polar pattern I actually say diagram, you'll see it looks almost like a sword because it's long in the top, short, has a tail on the bottom, and these little you know, things that stick out on the side. So it's definitely an odd pickup pattern out of interest. So if you're setting up a forty one six, where do you if you can imagine the talent standing in front the microphone, where do you actually place the mic and what area of the person? Do you point the mic? At the nose just above the plosive line. I mean, the tip of the mic is right above the plosive line. But where is it aimia at the at the mouth basically, but just keep the diaphragm away from the gush of air that you know from the plosives. Because I've been there's so many different studios where that they You know, the forty one six is pretty well everywhere anyway in this business, and there is no consistency with the way the engineers set up the mic. Co See, every engineer's got his own sound too. Every engineer's got his own preference for where the MIC's aiming and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I mean it kind of. It kind of depends on where you are. If you're in a horrible sounding booth and just get into it and try to nullify the booth compared to like the ratio of your voice, and then you can just eq out the proximity effect. Because the forty one six is being a shotgun, has quite a big proximity effect to it. You know, it's still a different it's still quite not quite the big, big proximity effect that you're going to get from a large dial phone cardioid because you can get so much closer to the capsule, you know, well, because the capsule is way up the microphone in the four sixteen. Yeah, it's not near the tip. It's a pathway up the tube of the mic. Right, if you were able to virtually get your mouth there, then the proximity effect would probably be insane, Oh for sure. Well, if you use like a harder cardio order cardioid version of that mic, which would be the I guess they did make one, but the newer series, the MKH no the is it called the MKH eighty series eighty twenty eight thirty eighty forty eighty fifty. It's probably like a MKH twenty maybe or when one of those might be similar to that, or normally four any one of those pencil mics. The proximity effect is is massive, but you just be really careful to pop the mic because the capsules right there. Really it's really easy to to pop. I mean there's no there is no filter, there's nothing there at all. Like it's just like sounds a bit like you and I rob it. I feel it. Touretts and Turets Mike, Yeah, yeah, but it's funny. I've had you know, the forty one six. I've had them directly in front of me pointing as you said, you know, above these sort of fullhead kind of thing pointing to the mouth. I've had them pointing to the chest. I've had them coming in from the side, all sorts of different point yeah. Yeah, wow. I mean I've seen people who do the side thing and the sort of nose thing if you want, if you want to thin it out, you just kind of get it away from the mouth and a little bit more on the head and get a little bit bright for you. Yeah, but I'm not seeing the chest. Yeah, that was years ago. I remember someone pointing, and they and I that had it set up in front of me, and it was like basically probably about almost a foot away from my head and pointing down past my face. Excuse me, pointing at your chest. Yeah, that laundry is done. Yeah, and pointing at my chest must have been so woofy. It was certainly basic, that's for sure. I mean, that's that's the problem that you have when you know you have like a love of a lier Mike that's too far under the chin, yeah, and you lose all the the high end, you know, like they clip it on your you have to kind of clip a love of a leer mic a little bit lower down so you get some because if not, the chin creates an acoustic shadow of the asses and the other. I was in a booth today one of my clients at WHO Studio designed, and he has a forty one six and the U eighty seven, and he says, you know, sometimes I'll go to the U eighty seven because I just kind of get mike fatigue working on a forty one six all the time, you know, because of its tiny sweet spot and and all this stuff. And I said, hey, by the way, he's like but you know, sometimes I use that mic and I hear a little bit too much reflection off the console below and the display next to the mic, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, well, do you know about the secret microphone that's inside of U eighty seven. He's like huh. And I said, flick the little switch on the front to you to figure eight. And he tried it and he was like, whoa drop everything from this, Holy cow, that's crazy. And I said, now standing on the side and talk into it. And it was like he was flown away. I said, yeah, this is a whole This is an entirely different mic and a different sound from the U eighty seven cardio or the forty one six. This is really it's a third mic you already had, you just didn't know and try it out. It's a much softer sound with a bigger proximity. It's more ribbon, like a bit of dare I say, I mean the ribbon mics really cancel out the side because the problem with the the they what do you call it the figure eight on the on the U eighty seven is it's two capsules and they are a little bit apart, right, So they don't cancel out it all freequenses, but you get a ribbon mic. That thing is infinitely thin, and it really really really does just vanish to the side. I mean, but I'll tell you don't need it to fully vanish to be an advantage. If you have anything reflective below or to the side, it will pretty well kill out. It's great. It's just it's it just focuses the sound. I was like, check this out, and he was like, whoa, that's really cool. You've seen those diagrams where they go through the polar patterns and you can see them continue because people think of polar patterns is being discreet, but really polar patterns are continuum from omni to cardioid and then it goes to figure eight and then and and in there. You know, like your hypercardioiate is kind of between a figure eight and a cardioid for example, I think. And that's why the hypercardioate's got the node in the back, and so it's not you know, like a good two mike if you've if you've played with a good two mike, the polar pattern is a continuous snob. That's right. Yeah, And some of the better pencil mics are offered and what they call the wide cardioida and those are very natural sounding. They kind of have the naturalness of a more close to the naturalness of an omni with still some focus, Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, you can't avoid it. But yeah, it's like polar patterns are not one, two, three, there's there's an infinite number between the omni and but the thing I actually talking about polar patterns and stuff like that, if you if you have the US one eight and you get the dongle patches into the back, even better, you can play figure pack. Yeah, you can play with the polar patterns on a frequency basis with that polar pack you're talking about the pretty good the other part when you're using the two excels, but this is if you use the two capsules. Yeah, if you use the dongle, the Bluetooth dongle and use the app on your phone, it's it's not just like clicking from one pattern to another. You're just sliding from one pattern to another, right, So you can do a mixers so I'm talking about Yeah, yeah, which is what I'm talking about. But even better, you can record both of them and then in your daw after the fact, you can play with the polar pattern after you record. Yeah, but that's if you use in the two USB's, don't two, Yeah, the two axtul rs, and then you have to use the plug in afterwards. But the plug in different plug in. If you get the Bluetooth dungle that goes in the back of the mic, then you get a plug in that goes on your phone and it just gives you the polar pattern. Trust what it is. Yeah, the idea is that you know if the MIC's up on a boom pole instead of bring the thing backwards and for which you can do it from your phone. So the advantage of that multi pattern, you know, multi frequency polar pattern designers. You could have a booth with a problematic low end, and especially in a corner maybe it's the only corner that you can put the mic where you have enough space. But you can treat the low frequency with a say a figure eight. Get the mic so it rejects the weird you know, the weird bounce back to the side, and then in the upper frequencies you can open them up to a cardioid or a wide cardioid where it sounds more natural makes gives you a little bit more space to move about without having, you know, such a critical sweet spot on the microphone, and you can kind of you know, have the benefits of a figure eight where you need it, and have the benefits of a cardioid and a wide cardioid where you need them, and really play around with the polar pattern to fit your exact need instead of just having one polar pattern across the whole spectrum. And then you have to deal with the nonlinearities where you don't want them to be. It'd be good if you could actually use that thing post will preprint, so you could you could actually sit and forget and if you go to troubles all you can do it. I've never tried it. Well, well, you can just record both capsules and then you can put the plug in on there and design and go, you know, design it away, so if you're always recording both. In fact, you could even do it where you know, like you could automate the plug in so uncertain words, if you go really low you could you could even change the parameters if you're really going crazy. But yeah, you can definitely put that plug in on a post process and just but to do that and make use of it, you have to record both capsules separately, correct, you know you have to use the two xlrs. Yeah, but that's the whole point of that mike is that it is literally that flexible. Yeah. Yeah, I still like the I still like the app though that that I find really andy. Instead of clicking from one pattern to another, you can actually just slide across an infinite amount of mixtures of everything. Ye like the old classic tube mikes. Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Say it's a great mike, you know when you look at the price point, well absolutely. And also that you know we're talking about your your distinctive sounds. That Polar pattern thing sort of gives you the chance to make as well, doesn't that Really that's right. If you use the Polar Designer Bluetooth tool, then it's locked into that fifth setting that has a magic fifth setting that becomes your pattern. You literally you can set it. Yeah. Yeah, it's in the firmware, which is great, Like you can't do does it do it by the frequencies too? Or is it just by the It doesn't do it, So you have to use the plug in to get the frequency per frequency that's about that'd be amazing. Bake it in there and then you just have like your own microphone sound. But still, I mean, like like what I was going to say, the price point of the the eight one eight, and you look at it compared to like a U eighty seven. Actually a better mind to compare it to is actually the Annoyman TLM one seventy R. And I mentioned that one because that one's come up a little bit more often. One of my clients bought one a while ago and she hasn't used it yet, and she said, I bought it because Disney uses it, and she does a lot of Disney. So I said, I was learning why So I looked at the frequency response of the one seventy R and I saw it was definitely a lot more a flat response. It's much flatter, and so they want that really just uncolored sound. And but that's a multi pattern with more choices, you know. The U eighty seven just has the classic figure eight, omni and card. This one's got more inter you know, it's got hyper cardioid and a few other things. And it's still it's not a bargain Mike at one, two, three, four or five six. Now use that thing is two thousand dollars. It's it's more money used in the eight one. It's it's still quite spendy on the Noyan in the Noyman the lineup and the only thing that competes in annoyment on price would be the one oh seven. I think it's what it's called TLN one O seven. That's that's that's a single pie oh seven. I think that's the multi pattern one they have. They have a TLM series or is it a one oh four? The one oh seven is around at least use it's around thirteen hundred or twelve hundred bucks. I don't that's a multi pattern though, right Polder, I don't see. Yeah, it's the multi pattern. It's got a funky little digital controlled joystick on it. It's really odd on the back of the mic. Is that how it does its? Yeah, it's actually a multi function joystick and that controls the pad, high pass and polar pattern by flicking the stick around. And it's i'd say in terms of quality, it's somewhere in the one oh three to one. Actually might be more like the one out two in terms of what capsule uses and stuff. So Yeah, that's the only thing that's in any way similar to the one two, three, four five pattern. It's it's it's about the same price point as an eight one eight, but it's a little more. It's a bit more. It's fifteen hundred. Yeah, it's two hundred bucks more or so, you know, so bang for the buck is still it's outstanding, outstanding. Yeah, I'm just looking at the M one. I don't know if you guys have ever seen that looks like a butt plug. Have you been using those again? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Sorry, anyway we can stop him talking out of his eyes. Sorry, it was the first thing that came into my mind. Yeah, there's the out yep. We the pro audio suite next to Trim and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and next by Robo. Got your own audio issues just ask robo dot com. Text record from George and the Tech Winter. 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