how they stop the mic from picking up noise of being put back onto the mic stand at live shows?
In: Engineering
“it depends”, but generally we don’t fully 100% eliminate the sound. we just do a lot of things that all play a roll in minimizing it. most of these things have other more important reasons, they just ALSO help with that noise.
high pass filters eliminate a lot of the low thud. this alone can be the difference between what you’re used to at your bands practice space, and what you hear on a modern pro level mix.
different microphones have different amount of handling noise. the most common mic at the middle levels (still an sm58) has a pretty terrible amount of handling noise. plenty of top tier pop acts are leaning towards different capsules these days, and lots of them have lower handling noise than what you may be used to at your local club/bar.
expanders. specifically ones key’d to vocal frequencies. super simplified, this makes the sound of someone singing/speaking into a mic the focus, and turns down extraneous noises also being picked up by the microphone.( PSE, 5045, cedar, WNS – if you want something to google)
mic clips. the thing on the top of a stand that actually holds the mic and makes that sound? they are not all made the same. the “standard” style mic clip is great for a mic that doesn’t need to be removed mid show. think a drum kit, or singer that also plays guitar and won’t be moving their mic. these are often made of hard plastic with a tiny bit of give. if i have a vocalist i know will be removing the mic frequently it will end up in a slightly larger mic clip, with rubber cushioning on the bottom. these are the standard clip provided with a wireless mic (one would expect a wireless mic to be walked around the stage more often) but they also function just fine with wired mics, and are my preferred choice when a lead vocalist wants a wired mic, but will also be moving it around a lot.
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