A gentle slope low cut without having to spend thousands of dollars to EQ

Many times the more expensive and better the equipment (including microphones) are, the more bass heavy and unnatural the reproduced perception to listener's brain is.


And of course the furthest the sound quality is from a commercial record.
For example:
Out Here in my Own - Gore, Gore, Cara from the Fame soundtrack


This is because of [Lowe, Morgan]:
Fletcher Munson equal loudness curves
Voice effort curves
Proximity effect
Bass reverberation of rooms (recording or reproducing)


A nice perhaps unmatched in quality trick is to use nature itself or the principle of superposition.


The trick of Lou Burroughs (Electro-Voice) as described in his book Microphones is used.


2 omnidirectional mics are connected out of phase.
Or electrically added out of phase etc.


This is described in more detail on previous posts.


By singing to one mic and adjusting the distance of the other, ambience is canceled and the distance between the 2 mics changes the cutoff frequency making for example bass rumble, voice bass or mid heaviness disappear while voice remains crystal clear.


Perhaps this so useful trick can be expanded and the slope of high pass filtering changed by controlling the level of the far off microphone.


In fact level change already takes place as the closer the furthest mic is brought the higher the direct sound level it captures.





The above hack was confirmed by chance while recording a demo on an Uher report 4200 (at 7.5ips tape speed).


One Beyer M55 mic was connected to channel input 1 and another Beyer M55 to channel input 2.


Channel 1 was recorded to tape track 1.


Channel 2 had been recorded to tape track 2 at the same time.


One mic was used close to singing voice.


The other mic was used close to a Yamaha PSS-14 little keyboard.


Now when listening to playback after many months, singing voice sounds bass heavy if the voice track is heard on its own.


But when both channels are sent to the monitoring speaker voice becomes great and clear. Some for the little keyboard.


It had been found latter on that by good chance one of the microphones had been wired out of phase.


When monitoring trough an external linoleum Pleiades Auratone 5C type speaker the difference in voice quality is sparkling.