RECORDING Field Notes - Rainy Day Microphone Adventures

When fishermen can’t go to sea, they mend their nets. When recording engineers have no sessions booked, this saying can translate into many things, such as testing microphone cables, tidying up, gear repairs or software updates.

One other potentially useful thing to do with studio downtime is to conduct audio tests, and since this issue’s theme happens to be microphones, that will be our focus here.

In the recording chain, the first thing sound typically encounters is a microphone. Getting familiar with the contents of your microphone locker can be both fun and revealing. The goal here is to provide some useful insight into your microphone collection, even if you only have a few options at present.