Are you looking for ways to improve your microphone’s sound quality? Are you struggling to make your mic sound better?
Whether you are on stage at a live event, in the recording studio, podcasting, or creating audiovisual content for social media, you need to get the best possible sound when using your mic.
For that reason, we have created a guide on how to improve microphone sound quality for getting the best sound possible. Without knowing about each of these nine tips, you might be missing out on some of your mic’s potential.
Here are 9 tips that will make your microphone sound better:
- Use Quality Cables
- Use a Quality Low Distortion Preamp
- Listen to the Sound Source Before You Mic
- Get the Cleanest Sound Possible Before Mixing
- Learn Your Mic’s Features and Capabilities
- Learn What Your Mic Sounds Like
- Understand Your Mic’s Polar Patterns
- Find The Best Mic Placements on the Stage
- Use the Proximity Effect to Your Advantage
Keep reading as we go into more detail on each one of these nine tips that will make a mic sound better and improve your overall sound quality. Let’s get started.
How to Improve Microphone Sound Quality – Tips to Improve Your Sound
When miking vocals, instruments, or any other sound source, you can do a few things to take full advantage of the mic’s features. Overlooking these simple things can make all the difference between getting excellent or mediocre sound. Here is what you need to do:
1. Use Quality Cables
If you hear unexpected crackles, pops, or static noise while performing live or in your recordings, you might have a cable problem. If you’re using a cable that is old or bent out of shape, it may adversely affect your sound.
Always test your cables before each performance or before recording at the studio. You don’t want to see a great take get ruined by cable issues!
Look for a mic cable with a flexible polymer strain relief. The strain relief is a thick piece of rubber that protects the wiring in your cables from getting bent out of shape.
You should also look for a cable with excellent shielding. Shielding refers to the layer of braided strands of copper, a spiral winding of copper tape, or a conducting polymer layer.
Shielding reduces the electrical noise and crosstalk between cables, and the most important thing is that they reduce RF interference while protecting the copper inside your cables.
The perfect mic cable should have enough shielding to block interference and deliver an excellent electrical connection between the microphone and the equipment to which you are connecting it to.
Another thing to keep in mind is that properly storing your cables can help them last longer. Always keep your cables neatly wrapped and resist the urge to throw broken cables back in with the good ones.
One last tip when it comes to cables is to use a right-angle cable connector if you need to place a microphone in tight placement situations. Some examples are when miking a guitar amp, a drum set, or where you want the cable to be less visually obstructive when you’re shooting video, taking photos, or when miking instrument on stage.
That way, you don’t have to bend the cable, which ends up damaging it, thus creating a signal problem in the form of noise and unstable signal flow.
2. Use a Quality Low Distortion Preamp
This is one of the most critical steps you can take to make your microphone sound better. Here is why.
“Mic level” refers to how loud sound is when it comes out of the microphone alone. Mic level is generally a very quiet signal, which is why you need a preamp to give it a volume boost.
A preamp will bring your audio up to “line level,” which is the signal level at which most audio equipment operates.
You need a low distortion preamp to make sure that your signal stays clean while it’s amplified. Low-quality preamps tend to cause too much distortion, which makes everything sound messy.
Modern audio compressors, interfaces, mixing boards, and other pieces of recording equipment are equipped with internal preamps. Although these preamps generally deliver a good signal quality with low distortion that is good enough for most users, it doesn’t compare to what quality external preamps can deliver.
The best preamps are external preamps. These will provide you with the best sound quality. For more information about preamps, check out our article on finding the best preamp for vocals and instruments.
3. Listen to the Sound Source Before You Mic
It is vital to listen to your sound source before you mic it. You need to know how much raw signal is coming out of your sound source so that you can appropriately amplify it, and depending on what you want to mic, the mic placement and EQ will be different.
When miking vocals, you should always listen to the vocalists before deciding how to set up their mics. Different singers can have vastly different vocal power depending on their tessitura, vocal style, and singing register.
If you are trying to mic wind instruments, you also need to know where the instrument is giving off the most sound.
For example, you should mic trumpet and saxophone near the instrument’s bell. Flutes, however, should be miked close to the mouthpiece or the center of the instrument’s body.
After listening to the sound source, you will know how to set the correct gain at each stage. Doing so will minimize noise and distortion, resulting in a clean and clear sound performance.
When you’re setting up your volume levels, make sure to “start out low and turn up slow.” Make gain adjustments in small increments to avoid damaging any part of your audio system.
In other words, you need to set the correct gain at the input of each amplification stage without distorting or clipping the signal.
4. Get the Cleanest Sound Possible Before Mixing
You should always try to get your levels right before you mix. When you mic in a live setting, your goal should always be to adjust as little as possible during the performance.
This ties in with mic placement, which we’ll talk about in a moment. It also ties in with your choice of microphone.
Different instruments sound better with different kinds of mics. For example, dynamic mics often work best when miking guitar amps, bass amps, kick drums, and sometimes snare drums. Dynamic mics can handle loud bass frequencies without causing distortion.
However, for vocals, acoustic guitars, and wind instruments, you will probably get the cleanest sound with a condenser mic.
Instead, if you are going for a more natural, vintage, and warm sound with a smooth mid-range response, miking vocals and instruments with ribbon microphones will give you the best results.
In short, the sound you end up with will be closely related to your choice of microphone in the first place.
5. Learn Your Mic’s Features and Capabilities
Every mic is designed with different features and specifications. As a result, you must treat each mic differently.
For instance, some mics are more sensitive than others. Some provide a better response on high and mid frequencies, while others are better for miking sound sources with lower frequency response.
Knowing the frequency response and response curve of the microphones you are using will help you get better sound because you will know which mic will work better for the sound source you are trying to mic.
Most dynamic mics offer a relatively flat frequency response in the mid frequencies and lack to provide high-frequency gain.
Another feature of dynamic mics is that they are not as fragile as other types of microphones. They can handle getting banged up a bit. Dynamic mics are also not as sensitive as condenser or ribbon mics, which is why they’re the best choice for powerful sounds like kick drums, snares, guitar and bass amps, and vocalists with strong voices.
On the other hand, condenser mics offer a smooth low and mid-frequency response combined with a crisp and clear high-end that sounds good on vocals or instruments.
They are more fragile and more sensitive than dynamic mics. They can pick up sound from farther away while keeping your sound clean. This is why they shouldn’t be used with loud sound sources to avoid distortion and clipping.
Ribbon mics are expensive and fragile, and they need to be stored and handled with extreme care. But they can also deliver a pristine sound if you are looking for a more vintage sound. They can also work great when used as overhead mics.
Ribbon mics, for that reason, are the best choice for recording live drums. If you don’t want to set up several mics on your drum kit, you can get a great sound with just ribbon overheads and maybe one dynamic mic on your kick.
Knowing your microphone’s features and capabilities will ensure that you get excellent sound because you will know the mic’s limits, and you’ll be able to use it accordingly.
6. Learn What Your Mic Sounds Like
Dynamic, condenser and ribbon mics all sound different. However, no two mics of the same variety are going to sound the same.
The four ways that different mic tones can be described are: bright, dark, warm, and cool. These words are just metaphorical, but they aptly describe how certain mics affect an instrument’s or vocal’s natural tone.
These differences in tone come from the unique way each microphone is manufactured, and the best way to find your favorite mic for certain instruments is to experiment.
Try setting up the same instrument (or vocalist) with multiple mics and see how the tone changes.
Condenser and ribbon mics tend to have more variation in tone since they are more sensitive in general. Dynamic mics are more predictable, but they do vary as well.
7. Understand Your Mic’s Polar Patterns
One of the major keys (no pun intended) to unlocking a microphone’s potential is understanding polar patterns. Polar patterns were first discovered by abstract mathematicians, but they apply to how mics pick up sound.
The three most common polar patterns are omnidirectional, bi-directional, and cardioid.
Omnidirectional mics pick up sound equally from every direction. No matter which way your mic is facing, everything should sound the same.
Bi-directional mics pick up sound equally from the front and the back, but they do not pick up as much sound from the sides of the mic.
Cardioid mics pick up the most sound in the front, slightly less sound on the sides, and virtually no sound in the back.
There are two less common polar patterns that you might encounter: supercardioid and hypercardioid. Both patterns are variations of the cardioid pattern.
These days, many mics are multidirectional, which means that they have the potential to be both cardioid and omnidirectional, or omnidirectional and bi-directional, etc.
You can change the polar pattern of your multidirectional mic by flipping a switch. A great multidirectional mic can be invaluable to your recording setup.
By knowing your microphone’s polar pattern, you can place it in the stage or studio to get the best results and avoid feedback.
8. Find the Best Mic Placements on the Stage
Few things affect your live signal more than mic placement. Back in the days before post-production effects, mic placement was all that engineers had to ensure that they got a clean recording.
When you’re placing your mics on stage, always be conscious of “bleed.”
Let’s say you have a saxophone player standing next to a guitar amp. You need to mic them both without getting too much guitar sound “bleeding” into your sax channel, and vice versa.
In this situation, you could keep your channels clean by using a bi-directional mic on your saxophone and a cardioid mic (with it rear-facing the sax) on your guitar amp.
When you get your mic placements just right, it will be much easier to mix your live performance.
9. Use the Proximity Effect to Your Advantage
The proximity effect is one of the most troublesome issues that audio engineers run into. However, the proximity effect does not have to be your enemy.
The proximity effect is the phenomenon where the closer someone is to their mic, the more the bass frequencies you hear.
When you don’t want your bass frequencies boosted, this can be a huge problem. You can try to cut out those bass frequencies using EQ, but that can lead to a hollow sound.
The best way to combat the proximity effect is to use it to your advantage. If you want a beefy sound from your kick drum, snare, bass guitar, or rhythm guitar, go ahead and close-mic it.
If you know that you don’t want a lot of bass frequencies from an instrument, use a more sensitive mic that you can place farther away from it.
Also, knowing how to correctly EQ sound sources can play an essential role in the overall sound you’ll get. I have prepared a full article with a more detailed explanation on how to EQ different sound sources; click the link to check it out.
How to Make Your Mic Sound Better with These Tips
Hopefully, these tips have helped you understand how to improve microphone sound quality. If any of these tips especially piqued your interest, check out the rest of our blog! We have plenty of posts that go in-depth on some of these concepts.