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[Gary Bowling]

This is more just to share some general info and testing in case others find it useful.

I have a local group of audio guys that I do a lot of work with. FOH guys, studio engineers, musicians, etc.

We have been discussing how to reduce the bleed into various mics for live stage performances. The biggest problem being drum and cymbal bleed into other mics, particularly vocal mics. It's not that it's such a problem, just something we're trying to improve.

Various opinions and tales were shared, some good info, some old wives tales, and some head scratchers.

Long story short, we decided to take a number of mics and do some experiments to either verify or "myth bust" some of the ideas and information.

I'll give the bottom line results first, then some discussion about how we determined and what we did.

- Mic sensitivity among all the popular types of mics is basically linear. Maybe you could measure some non-linearity, but for practical purposes our tests showed them to be linear.

- Rejection of sounds from the sides and back are what changes based on the polar pattern of the mic. But not the sound from directly in front of the mic.

- If you're trying to reduce bleed from "back line" instruments into a vocal mic, you're only choice is to get the singer to be closer to the mic and/or sing louder. Back line instruments hit the front of the mic, no mic does any better (or worse) at rejecting background noise that hits the front of the mic. Singing louder and closer allows you to turn the gain down, reducing the back line volume and bleed. Nothing else!



The experiments. We have a venue that we know well and one of the guys is the FOH guy there, so we could use that venue for testing. Nothing special about the venue, a typical small stage venue. Not the worst acoustics, not the best. Some sound absorbing materials on the walls of the stage, reasonably high ceiling, and mid sized room. Basically the average stage.

We were able to use the venue during off times, they only are open Thu-Sat. We set up a rock band that plays classic rock and spent quite a bit of time testing. We had the band play the same song and try to sing/play at the same volume levels. Seasoned band and singers so pretty easy to do.

We would set up a mic, have the singer sing with lips touching the mic. Set the levels, and record to a DAW via the console (it's a console with direct USB recording capabilities).

Then we would have the singer back up to 4 inches from the mic and have the band play and sing again.

There is a section of the song with no vocals, which is where we captured the back line "bleed" level.

In trying 10 different mics, there was virtually no difference in volume at 4" or the volume of the back line bleed. Everything from cardiod to super cardiod to hypercardiod, dynamic and condenser mics.

Yes, the mics had different sensitivities, which required adjusting the gain with "lips touching" for each mic to be equal. But once that was done, the levels at 4" and the back line levels were so identical that any differences would be un-detectable.

Yes, volumes at 125 degrees, 180 degrees, etc. were all very different, following the polar patterns of whatever mic we were testing. But the volume of sound directly into the front of the mic from singer or back line drums (which were directly behind the singer) were virtually identical.


If your stage is big enough to put drums or other back line amps off to the side a bit. Then you can probably see a reduction in bleed based on the polar pattern of the mic. And certainly bleed and feedback from monitors can be reduced with tighter patterns. We purposely did not use monitors in this test just for this reason. But direct back line bleed and/or volume a few inches away from the mic was not affected at all by the type of mic used.

gabo

[Keith Broughton]

An interesting test and fairly predictable results.
That said, I have not run into anyone (so far...)who suggested that polar patterns had any effect on "backline bleed"
For monitor wedge applications, polar patterns can be of help if used correctly.
As you noted, singing closer to the mic is about the only solution other than, perhaps,  some of the early "dual mic cancellation" setups.
For me, it's tall plexi shields around the drums

[Patrick Tracy]

I never bought into that sensitivity @ distance thinking. The mic doesn't detect distance, it just reacts to pressure at the diaphragm (or velocity at the ribbon).

[Gary Bowling]

An interesting test and fairly predictable results.
That said, I have not run into anyone (so far...)who suggested that polar patterns had any effect on "backline bleed"
For monitor wedge applications, polar patterns can be of help if used correctly.
As you noted, singing closer to the mic is about the only solution other than, perhaps,  some of the early "dual mic cancellation" setups.
For me, it's tall plexi shields around the drums

I haven't run into anyone saying specifically "polar patterns" but I have had many people suggest to use "Mic X" or "Mic Y" to lessen the bleed.

Which sort of implies that they either believe that polar patterns or mic sensitivity effects it. But neither actually do.

Agree with the wedge monitor and plexi shield observations. I haven't tried the dual mic cancellation set ups, but want to do an experiment with that just for fun. Not sure I would use it regardless of effectiveness, but you never know.  If it's really good and a band wants to make a live recording, it might be useful.

One thing that was a bit surprising. The dropoff from "lips touching mic" to 4" was about 30db! In other words, a 0db signal with lips touching becomes a -30db signal at 4".

So in a small club, the message to singers is. Work and practice to stay up on those mics.

gabo

[Keith Broughton]

So, given staying close to the mic is a good idea, perhaps a test to see what effect different mics or polar patterns have on proximity effect.

[Dave Garoutte]

Generally speaking, the tighter the polar pattern, the more proximity effect.

[Chris Grimshaw]

I haven't run into anyone saying specifically "polar patterns" but I have had many people suggest to use "Mic X" or "Mic Y" to lessen the bleed.

Well, it ain't quite that simple.

Super/hyper/whatever-cardioid mics are rated such at a nominal frequency. It's like speaker impedance - 8ohm nominal means it might dip to 6ohm and then get up to over 30ohm. The mic might have a perfect pickup pattern at 500Hz, but what about the rest of the range?


FWIW, the EV N/D967 has the most GBF I've ever worked with, but I suspect that's little to do with the supercardioid pattern (although if you go through the maths, that does have the best rejection to the rear of the mic, integrated over all angles) and more to do with the fact that the outer grille is about 1/2" away from the diaphragm.


As a minor correction to Dave G's post, the pattern that's closest to dipole has the most proximity effect. In order from least to most: omni, sub/wide cardioid, cardioid, super, hyper, fig-8.

Chris

[brian maddox]

....
One thing that was a bit surprising. The dropoff from "lips touching mic" to 4" was about 30db! In other words, a 0db signal with lips touching becomes a -30db signal at 4".

This is the counter intuitive thing that i have yet to find a way to adequately communicate to singers. 

I think on loud stages in small spaces, the old "foam windscreen and sing with your lips touching the foam" thing beats mic choice, placement, and processing by a WIDE margin....

[Andrew Broughton]

Did you try this test with an OM7 or a Crown CM311? How about a KSM8?

[Andrew Broughton]

This thread probably should be moved out of the AV section, but while I'm thinking of it, how many of you have heard the famous story of Robert Scoville and how he got Tom Petty to stop singing into a 57 and into a KMS105 (or some other Neumann)?
As he explains it, it wasn't so much that he hated the vocal sound he got from the 57, and level wasn't an issue, since Tom basically eats that mic, but it was the off-axis tone that was the big problem. Petty's backline was (is?) so loud that Tom's vocal mic would pick up tons of guitar and other instruments, but when they hit the 57 off-axis, they sounded really bad. With the Neumann, the off-axis tone was similar to the on-axis, just lower in level, so when Tom moved away from the mic the backline sound through his mic was at least tonally acceptable.

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