Why NOT To Use Cardioid Mics! - Mike Senior

Mike Senior's Expert Tracking & Mixing Tips

Cardioid mics are tremendously popular amongst recording musicians, but can also work against you. In this episode, Mike Senior explains some of the reasons why, and illustrates how omni and figure-eight patterns can often give more useful results.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:39 - Proximity-effect bass boost
04:44 - Spotlighting 
05:48 - Low-end response at a distance
06:40 - Off-axis tonal coloration
09:06 - Insufficient spill rejection
10:56 - Plosives and handling noise
12:33 - The hand-held LDC trick
14:11 - Summary

If you'd like to listen more critically to the audio examples, you can download a high-resolution 24-bit/44.1kHz WAV of this whole episode from the podcast support page for this show https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/why-not-use-cardioid-mics-mike-senior-podcast

Credits
This month's episode features recordings from David Tyo's 'Long Way Home'. You can check out more of David's great music here:

https://davidtyo.bandcamp.com/

If you'd like to try mixing 'Long Way Home' for yourself, you can download the full raw multitracks here:

https://cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/#DavidTyo

To read more about the low-spill figure-eight guitar-recording method, check out Neil Rogers's January 2014 'Session Notes' column:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/session-notes-thomas-rumbold-reds

For more general advice about microphone polar patterns, try this March 2007 article by Paul White:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/using-microphone-polar-patterns-effectively

Mike Senior Biog

Mike Senior is a professional audio engineer, regular SOS contributor, and author of the best-selling books Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio & Recording Secrets For The Small Studio. He runs the Cambridge-MT educational resources site (including the web's largest free multitrack download library) and hosts two monthly independent podcasts, Project Studio Tea Break and the Cambridge-MT Patrons Podcast.

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts