Microphones

Want to get into pro-level recording? Then don’t get too hung up on picking out the right microphone, but pay attention to every step in the process.

The venerable experts of Bax Music could offer up a thousand-and-one fascinating facts about the microphone, but since no one has time for that, we’ve hand-picked just five!

One of the most common mistakes that creators make when producing videos is not paying proper attention to the audio. No matter how expensive your camera and film lights are, if the sound isn’t up to par, your viewers will probably feel like your videos are missing something. Want to know how to record dialogue more professionally? Then read on!

We totally understand. You’re a fitness instructor, not a sound engineer, but because you’re often teaching a large group of people, it’s worth knowing how to amplify both the music and your voice, otherwise you’ll find yourself yelling just so the people at the back of the room can hear you and your class is forced to grunt through their crunches and lunges in stony silence. Since you need to keep both hands free, a wireless microphone headset is the ideal solution, but which model is best? What kind of speaker or system should you back it up with? And where do you start if you want to branch out and make YouTube videos and livestreams? In this blog we cover everything to help you make the right, tailor-made choice.

Recording a solo singer-songwriter? How hard can it be? All you need to do is set up one or two microphones and hit record, right? Unfortunately, it’s not actually that simple. If you’re only using one microphone, you have next-to-no control over the balance. And, even though using two microphones is the smarter option, how do you deal with any phase issues? Of course, your singer-songwriter could be playing any instrument, but in this blog we’ll focus on recording vocals and an acoustic guitar at the same time.

Mic bleed is the bane of many-a recording engineer’s existence and can easily throw a spanner in the works for mixing engineers and producers. After all, hearing the hi-hats on a snare take or having guitars inadvertently mixed in with the vocals are issues that require a lot of time to fix. Want to know how to avoid, remove or even use mic bleed to your advantage? Then read on!

When using any wireless system, whether it’s for wireless microphones, a wireless in-ear monitoring system or a cable-free instrument system, then you’ll have to work with radio frequencies. These are inherent to the way these wireless systems work, since wireless systems convert audio into code before sending it through the air in the form of a digital packet, so it can be picked up by a receiver where the information is decoded and converted back into audio.

The shorter the distance between the source and the microphone, the more low frequencies are registered at the cost of high frequencies. This is what’s known as the proximity effect, and it applies to a lot of microphones. In practice, this usually means that the closer you close-mike your voice or instrument, the fuller it’ll sound. Read on and learn how to take advantage of it.

While removing cables from the setup gives you freedom to move around the stage, life isn’t made easy for wireless microphone users. With mobile internet and other wireless traffic only getting busier and busier, there’s little room left in the ether for wireless microphones. To solve this issue, Shure has developed an impressive, all-new system: the Shure GLX-D+ Dual Band Series.

If you’ve been flipping through our range of microphones, you’ve probably come across the terms ‘electret’ and ‘true condenser’. But what’s the difference? And are ‘real’ condenser microphones always better than electret microphones, like the name suggests? In this blog, we’ll explain it all.

Thanks to social media, it’s never been easier for bands to reach a huge audience by dropping studio-polished tracks on online platforms. That said, sounding good in the studio is one thing – sounding just as good or even better on stage is another. Stunning live performances are exactly what sets good bands apart from the rest, which raises the question: how do you make the perfect live recording of a gig? Well, read on and learn!

So, you play keyboard and you’d like to sing along. But is it even possible to plug a microphone directly into your keyboard? That depends entirely on your keyboard, but even if it does have a microphone input there are still a few things to bear in mind or look out for.