Warm Audio WA-CX12 Manual De Instrucciones página 9

TIPS AND INSTRUCTIONS
SIGNAL INTEGRITY
In professional audio a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When it comes to microphone cabling, a quality
cable can make a big difference. Though not as critical as with instruments or dynamic microphones, a thin, poor
quality, or worn XLR cable can affect the sound of a microphone. With extreme age or wear, gaps can form in the
foil or spiral shield of a microphone cable, allowing RFI and EMI to leak through, or shield wiring can begin to make
intermittent contact with the signal wire. XLR pins can corrode after many years of exposure, or solder joints break
at the stress points inside an XLR barrel. Occasional cable testing and maintenance is good practice, and worn XLR
pins can often be given new life (pending they are still salvageable) by spraying liberally with a contact cleaner such
as DeOxit and worked thoroughly for several iterations. Generally speaking, it's best to stick to the minimum cable
length required for your recording application. For example, if a 20 ft. cable will work, little good can come from
using a 35 ft. cable. Though condenser microphones are far better equipped to survive longer or lesser quality cable
runs than dynamic and ribbon mics, audio can begin to attenuate (perceived as lower volume/weakened signal) or
become contaminated beyond a certain threshold.
When recording vocals, it's a good idea to use the highest quality pop filter you can acquire. This not only protects
the microphone; it protects the recorded tracks by keeping plosives (a clipping that occurs from sudden air pressure
on the capsule) to a minimum. Pop filters can also be creatively used in other situations where sudden air pressure
changes can occur, which include large loudspeaker movement, the sound hole of a kick drum, or the gap between
the two brass pieces of a hi-hat cymbal. As a general rule, a higher quality pop filter will have less audible impact on
the sounds passing through them; while less expensive, improvised, or foam windscreen type filters can sometimes
have a muffling effect on high frequencies.
Microphone placement is as much an art as it is a science. Placement takes a great deal of patience, attentive listen-
ing, and of course - experimentation. The more music you record, the greater instinct you will have for knowing which
microphones to first try for given situations, and how to place them.
One thing to keep in mind is that what a microphone "hears" will often be radically different from what a casual
observer hears when standing several feet back from where a microphone is. It's good practice to get down and put
one's ear close to a speaker cabinet or right in front of a bass drum's resonator head, and hear what that microphone
is hearing from its position. Get a sense for how different your source sounds close up, farther back, and from differ-
ent angles. Begin to move a microphone around very slowly and listen for the changes in sound that you get. Notice
how a small change in mic position can make an under-snare microphone go from bad to good.
Notice how moving a guitar cabinet mic further to the side of the center cone, or further off axis will affect the sound.
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