Audacity Forum

Noise Gate.

Nice try. You're hitting all the high points.

There is a noise gate on a newscaster's microphone because they record on a loading dock. I'm not sure if it's actually a loading dock or not, but it certainly sounds like one. She has an aggressive speaking style and can talk over almost anything, but each sentence has a tail on it when she stops talking and it can be really annoying. Sometimes you can understand conversations and hear other noises going on while she's speaking. They had an interview with two very highly respected politicians and they couldn't gate everything. It sounded like they were constructing an Ikea sectional and ordering Chinese take-away during the interview.

The noise gate leaves the microphone open while you're speaking and if the noises are bad enough, they go straight through. If you adjust the gate to kill everything (possible on some gates), you sound like a robot with no expression in your voice. I've never found a printed way to illustrate that, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

People rent studios for a reason. You walk in, do the show and go home. Badda Bing.

Koz

Here's a very high quality MP3 of a Skype test I did with Denise in New Jersey. I'm in LA. My mic is the AKG C555L in my living room with no noise suppression and with traffic noises outside.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clip ... ressed.mp3

It's the whole eleven minute disaster.

Koz

This is me on a broadcast microphone.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/LRMonoPhase4.wav

Koz

Please note typing nearer the end of the piece. That's Denise, not me. Those noises are coming through the Skype channel, not my microphone. I have a picture of my setup, and I also have a comparison sound check between the SM58 and the ES58.

As we go.

Koz

This is how I got the podcast clip. No special soundproofing although I do have carpeting and wall to wall bookcases. You can just see the headset on the left.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/ ... dio_WS.jpg

Koz

Here's the direct comparison between a real Shure SM-58 and a no-name ES-58 on the same microphone stand. The first segment is the intro from one microphone and then I split them. So Left is one and Right is the other. In Audacity, you can split Stereo Track and make mono out of both of them so they both play through both speakers, or you can just fade back and forth between them.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clip ... 121217.mp3

Enjoy.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Here's a very high quality MP3 of a Skype test I did with Denise in New Jersey. I'm in LA. My mic is the AKG C555L in my living room with no noise suppression and with traffic noises outside.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clip ... ressed.mp3

It's the whole eleven minute disaster.

Koz

This sounds really good actually? Can the AKG C555L be mounted on a mic stand?

Can the AKG C555L be mounted on a mic stand?

Sure. You just can't use it that way. It's a headset and works by being an inch from your lips. Those hooky things go over your ears. The cable plugs in behind your head. It's more comfortable than it looks. You can mount it with the microphone boom on either side. It came on the right and my preferences is the left.

Headsets are very good for quality because you can't screw up the microphone spacing. It's constant. The mic moves with you. The microphone will plug into a wireless transmitter. They say so in the instructions. I don't even want to think about how much that would cost -- or even if they're still available.

I still haven't resolved the Phantom Power thing. They're not straightforward about the options. I know we had the battery pack because our application had no mixer and thus no 48v phantom supply. The battery pack is a B29L and if I get a second, I'll see if it can use the Phantom supply from my mixer and not need the nine volt battery.

Koz

My Rode NT-4 (stereo mic) works with the 9 V battery too.
However, the XLR connection is better. It is mainly because the battery powered variant uses a normal 3.5 mm stereo cable. Unfortunately, most sound cards do not believe that there is a stereo mic at the other end and they switch to line-in mode...

You may be able to get headset microphones other than this one. This is just the one I have hands-on experience with. I suspect you could get several different microphone types to work if you jammed them against your face like this one. That's the magic. Not the capsule design or the boom construction.

Your trick of having the microphone on the table would work perfectly -- in a studio.

Your goal is going to be finding one that sounds good and plugs into your mixer. Gaming headsets would probably work but they're all married to the pin jack in a sound card.

I also have a Logitech USB headset and those work well for a lot of the same reasons -- except they don't take a mixer. These are oozing into communications or Skype headsets, not theatrical performance. I have an A 00008.

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/u ... 0?crid=407

We use them for production video conferencing.

Koz