Microphone

In a recent discussion on recording devices His Holiness Jayadvaita Swami introduced this device - the Zoom H2.

It has four built-in mics for 90, 120, or 360 degree stereo recording. It uses an SD card up to 4GB. It can record in mp3 or raw wav format at greater than CD quality. It can do post-recording mp3 encoding. You can rename or divide files on the device. You can pan and mix down the recordings, including doing 5.1 surround sound authoring. It has a built-in guitar tuner and a metronome. It can take an external mic.

Sweet!

Basically for all your kirtan and lecture needs, this is it.

Price: AU$299 on ebay.

(shoutouts to abrennan for the ebay link)

This is a short video I shot while modifying the Shure WH20 headset microphone to work with the Ashton AW200 wireless system.

I'm still getting the hang of shooting video, so please bear with me. I think this will help to reinforce some of the concepts, especially the difference between omnidirectional and unidirectional mics.

While we're on the subject of microphones and amplification, Ekendra prabhu published some relevant quotes the other day, including this one:

Haridāsa said, “You all know the glories of Lord Hari’s holy names. Therefore I have simply repeated and will repeat whatever I have heard from you. If one chants loudly, he gets one hundred times more benefit. The scriptures never condemn loud chanting, rather they glorify it. ‘If one loudly chants the holy names of the Lord, he obtains one hundred times more benefit than by chanting softly or remembering the holy names.’”

I've introduced a new category in the Kirtan section "Hardware". This is where we will cover all the hardware aspects of maintaining instruments, sound reinforcement systems, and harinam paraphenalia.

Tri yuga prabhu blogged about his awesome Roland Street Cube mod.

There he mentions that "(we) opted to upgrade the cheap headset mic to a professional Shure PG30 model".

I took that cheaper headset mic, an Ashton AWM200, away with me.

We already have a wireless headset set up here in Brisbane, but it's not the kind of thing that I can lend out, because no can afford to replace it if they break it. With this one I'm comfortable about people being able to replace it if they need to, so I can let it go out for Ratha Yatra etc.

However, when I got it back to Brisbane and put together a modded Roland Street Cube setup I discovered that the headset included with the Ashton AWM200 is omnidirectional.

Microphones: Omnidirectional and Unidirectional

A word of advice. There are broadly speaking two types of microphones: omnidirectional and unidirectional.

Omnidirectional (Latin omni = "all") mics pick up sound equally in all directions. They will pick up cartals, especially if the singer is playing them, and will pick up the speaker output and cause feedback. Omnidirectional mics are no good for sound reinforcement in kirtan. They are best suited for recording when you want to pick up the whole room and feed it into a recorder, not an amplifier.

Here is a diagram showing the omnidirectional pickup pattern:

You can see that it picks up sound equally in all 360 degrees of direction.

Unidirectional (Latin uni = "one") microphones pick up sound coming from one general direction only. They are subdivided into cardioid and super-cardioid. Cardioid mics have a wider range of pickup than the narrower-focused super-cardioid.

Here is the cardioid pickup pattern:

You can see that it picks up sound from one direction only.

Here is the super-cardioid pattern:

Notice that it's narrower than the cardioid pickup pattern. It doesn't pick up as much sound from the sides. This allows you to turn it up louder before you get feedback, and stops cartals leaking in, but demands better technique on the part of the user.

You can get a feel for a microphone's pickup pattern by holding it in front of your mouth and speaking or singing as you turn it. If it's unidirectional you'll hear it drop off as you move around to the sides, quicker if it's super cardioid. You can also move it closer and further from your mouth to get a feel for how pickup drops off according to the inverse square law.

Because sound travels out from your mouth in an ever expanding sphere, like a balloon being blown up, the surface area of the sphere increases exponentially. What this means is that sound drops off quickly as you move further away.

For kirtan vocals, without a doubt, you need one of the unidirectional mics. A super-cardioid will have greater gain before feedback - in other words, it will go louder before it starts picking up its own signal from the speakers and starts making a squealing sound. Because it has a narrower field of pickup it is not going to pick up so much of the cartals either.

Here is a good comparison of the three:

Top to bottom: Omnidirectional, Cardiod, and Super-Cardioid

Further Reading: Microphone Directional Characteristics at mediacollege.com.

A digressionary rant on Microphone Technique

With super cardioid the singer needs to use the proper technique, otherwise they'll go: "Why isn't this thing working?", when what is happening is that they're just not singing in the right direction at the right distance.

Cardioid mics are more tolerant of bad technique, but with some important trade-offs. Most mics I've seen in use are cardioid. I've noticed that a lot of kirtan leaders don't know how to use mics very well, and will sometimes put their mouth and the cartals at equal distance from the mic, not wanting to be too loud. This isn't humble, it's just bad technique that leaves everyone hearing amplified cartals, and causes feedback. You don't need to amplify cartals. In every kirtan, without fail, you need to reduce cartal volume, because people can't hear the mantra.

When your voice and the cartals are equally distant from the mic which one do you think it picks up? Both.

The singer will be too far from the mic. We'll have to turn up the gain to get some amplification happening. Since the singer's voice is so faint to the mic, the mic starts to pick up the sound coming from the speakers. The result is feedback. The solution is not to grimace and step away from the mic, it's to step into the mic and put your mouth two inches away from it directly facing into it. This will make the whole system work properly. Don't want your voice amplified, don't lead kirtan. It's a service and you have to do it properly.

Back to the Story

Anyway, I was pretty upset about the omnidirectional headset situation, thinking I had wasted Krishna's laxmi, until I remembered our Shure WH20, a wired cardioid headset that we bought back in mid-2005, but which hadn't had much use, because it's not wireless, and wires on harinam bite.

Inspired by Tri Yuga's "can-do" attitude and practical skills, I used my newly acquired soldering iron (which I needed to make the Roland Street Cube mod) to frankenstein the Ashton wireless connector onto the Shure headset. The operation was successful, and that cheap wireless setup just got a major quality upgrade and has become a valued member of the team.

I would never have been able to do these things without Tri Yuga's association. It's amazing what you can pick up in a moment's association. Take a look at my 2005 Ashton amp modification to get an idea of my previous level of skill.

Now we have two wireless, battery powered sound reinforcement setups, ergo we can have two simultaneous harinam parties.

As Yadavendra prabhu wrote me, in Srila Prabhupada's world-conquering bhava: "Anything successful - double it!"