Plenty of podcasters go out and buy fancy microphones, only to use them improperly. This can be discouraging, especailly when they hear good recordings made with the same equipment and wonder what they are doing wrong.
I’ve been told a number of times that the sound quality of my podcasts rivals that of NPR. Yet, for almost all of of my interviews, I use microphones that cost far less than $100, and for Boston Behind the Scenes, I usually use a mic that cost me $15!
What’s the secret? Not fancy post-processing or editing, but simple microphone placement. This isn’t hard, but it ususally needs to be taught.
The simple lesson is this: put the mic to the side of the speaker’s mouth, and as close as possible without picking up unwanted noise. The distance varies from setup to setup, but a good rule of thumb is that a foot is almost always too far away.
Here’s a little demonstration video (I’m not a video guy, so go easy on me!):
January 18th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Excellent demo Adam! Do you actually have that mic attached to a pen? Cool.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Now featured on Vlog Soup
February 8th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Dude, your video crashed Firefox for me.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Thank you. Very helpful. How far do you place your iRiver/Giant Squid combo away from interviewee’s mouths?
April 17th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
The video is pretty accurate, placement-wise. I usually hold the mic 3-5 inches away from the subject’s mouth.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:05 am
yeah, that was cool, which type of microphone was that?
June 25th, 2008 at 12:54 am
An ounce of placement is worth a pound of fidelity.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Thanks for the great advice. But how do you properly place a lav mic - one that’s being clipped to the interviewee’s lapel? Please help!
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
That depends on the type of microphone capsule that you are using (Omni-directional, Cardiod, Hyper-Cardiod). Recommended distance is 3-6 inches from the talkers mouth. Some people clip it on the shirt collar, others place it on the 2nd button hole under the chin.
An alternative to the tie clip mount is to use an ear-set mount where the microphone is mounted on a wire boom that clips over the ear and positions the capsule just off to one side of the mouth. This positions the mic in a similiar spot to where Adam suggested but the mic moves with the talker and is out of sight which will help immensely with people that are ‘mic shy’.