In the last segment, I stripped my recording chain down until there was nowhere left to hide, removing all the links in the chain that were there to fix my audio and that immediately exposed something uncomfortable: If I wasn\u2019t going to fix things later, then everything had to be right at capture<\/em>.<\/p>\n And that meant microphone technique was no longer a vague performance skill or a \u201ctalent thing\u201d. It was processing. Just earlier in the chain.<\/p>\n When people talk about \u201cprocessing\u201d, they usually mean plugins: EQ, compression, de-essing, noise reduction, that sort of thing. But all of those are reactive. They\u2019re responses to a sound that already exists, whereas mic technique has a huge effect on tone and is proactive. It determines what sound exists in the first place.<\/p>\n One thing I did not know until recently was that if you change your distance, angle, or height relative to the mic, you haven\u2019t just changed loudness\u2014you\u2019ve changed spectral balance, sharpness of consonants, proximity effect, and how the room interacts with your voice.<\/p>\n That\u2019s EQ, that\u2019s level, that\u2019s tone-shaping \u2014 just without a GUI.<\/p>\n Once I knew and actually accepted that, it became obvious that I couldn\u2019t keep treating mic position as something casual or intuitive. If it was doing real work, it needed to be repeatable<\/em>.<\/p>\n Before I could even think about \u201cgood tone\u201d, I needed the same tone every time<\/em>. Not roughly, not \u201cclose enough\u201d, but actually the same. This is because without consistency, you don\u2019t know whether you\u2019re hearing a meaningful change or just random variation. And I feel that\u2019s where most mic technique advice falls apart, because it tells you what sounds good<\/em>, but not how to reliably get back there tomorrow.<\/p>\n I realised I needed physical constraints\u2014not memory, not judgement\u2014so I built a setup where position wasn\u2019t something I decided each session. It was something the room enforced. Here\u2019s what that looks like:<\/p>\n And that means my mouth always ends up in the same place relative to the mic capsule.<\/p>\n Once that\u2019s in place, consistency becomes boring, and boring is exactly what you want because now, if something sounds different, it actually is<\/em> different \u2014 not just a side effect of drift.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019ve mastered boring, you might be wondering what happens to the audio, the art, the performance. You\u2019ll sometimes see voice actors moving around the mic: leaning in for intimacy, pulling back for loud lines, angling off for emphasis. That\u2019s a real skill. But it\u2019s also a performance in its own right.<\/p>\n It also doesn\u2019t work with my hardware, so let\u2019s take a little diversion about that. In fairly simplistic terms, but hopefully I won\u2019t say anything actually incorrect here.<\/p>\n There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of microphones. The property we are interested in here is their directionality, so there are directional microphones, cardioid is the term you might hear, and there are non-directional or omnidirectional microphones.<\/p>\n Because of road noise, air conditioners, creaking floorboards, I need a directional microphone for recording. That\u2019s non-negotiable, really, for any bedroom-recording setup. These directional microphones not only pick up sound mostly from in front of them, they also pick up sound mostly from near them. In other words, the distance between your mouth and the microphone has a huge proximity effect, and that means physical acting where you expressively move around like Andy Serkis or Benedict Cumberbatch would have your voice swooping and soaring all over the shop.<\/p>\n No, that is not going to work. My microphone, my wonderful microphone, demands that I keep my head locked in place in front of it. One day I\u2019ll learn how to make micro-adjustments to improve acting, but that is pro-level acting.<\/p>\n Does that make my audiobooks dull? Of course not, though I\u2019m bound to say that, aren\u2019t I? But acting for audio does not need to come from the body, it can come from the face and mouth, the control of volume, and the expression in the phrases. I think you\u2019d be hard-pressed to prove that my head was rigidly held in place when I record.<\/p>\n So, back to the main thread, I\u2019ve conquered boring, and that means I have repeatability, and repeatability is what lets me capture close to the target every time. If I need different tone, I\u2019d rather choose it deliberately and lock it in than try to perform it live every sentence.<\/p>\n Once consistency was solved, something clicked.<\/p>\n If mic position shapes tone\u2014and I can now hold position stable\u2014then I can change tone on purpose<\/em>. Not endlessly. Not randomly. Just by adjusting three things: Distance<\/strong>, Angle<\/strong>, Height<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n Everything else is secondary once the room and noise are good enough. At this point, though, I wasn\u2019t trying to pick a sound yet; I just wanted to understand what each lever actually did, without guessing.<\/p>\n I treated this like calibration, not creativity and I recorded longer samples while changing only one variable at a time:<\/p>\n One thing that surprised me when I actually did these tests was that my original \u201cstandard\u201d distance wasn\u2019t giving me the best tone after all. When I moved in closer, the sound got warmer and more intimate in a way I really liked.<\/p>\n That did mean changing the setup \u2014 the flat pop screen started getting in the way \u2014 so I dropped it and relied on the mic\u2019s own foam and careful angling instead. That was a good reminder that the right distance isn\u2019t a rule, it\u2019s something you have to discover by listening.<\/p>\n It also meant I had to adjust to measuring my mouth\u2019s distance to the microphone\u2019s foam shield instead, but that was easy enough: I brought the pop filter back into play, but instead of talking through it, the frame is set to touch my chin if I get too close.<\/p>\n Having settled on angle, height, and approximate distance, I then recorded a longer section with more subtle changes in distance, and listened back later, on different days, sometimes in different contexts. Because what sounds \u201cnice\u201d in the moment isn\u2019t always what survives fatigue.<\/p>\n What mattered was intelligibility over time, consonant clarity, and how tiring the sound felt after long listening.<\/p>\n By the end of that process, I had something far more valuable than a \u201cgood sound\u201d.<\/p>\n I had a baseline<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A position I could return to, every time, knowing exactly what I\u2019d get.<\/p>\n At this point, I wasn\u2019t chasing tone anymore.<\/p>\n And that changed the question completely. I was no longer asking \u201chow do I avoid bad sound?\u201d<\/em>, I was asking \u201cwhich sound do I actually want?\u201d<\/em>. And that<\/em>, is what the next segment is about.<\/p>\n If you want to know more, come and ask me over in the Slack community at podfeet.com\/slack<\/a>, where I and all the other lovely NosillaCastaways enjoy friendly, positive online conversations. Feel free to message me, Eddie Tonkoi, if you have any thoughts, questions, or techniques you’re using. It would be nice to share ideas.<\/p>\nMic technique is processing<\/h3>\n
Consistency before taste<\/h3>\n
Making consistency boring and reliable<\/h3>\n
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Why I can\u2019t do the \u201cperformance mic dance\u201d<\/h3>\n
The three levers that actually matter<\/h3>\n
Running controlled tone experiments<\/h3>\n
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Where this leaves us<\/h3>\n
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