Wait, how is the presence of a deer somewhere in Rochester even notable?
I have never even seen a deer, the fuck I even know.
Understandable, as you haven't been to North America much. In short, there are deer fucking everywhere in most of upstate New York (where RIT is).
I should probably qualify that statement - I've never seen a dear, whole. I've seen and eaten bits of them, but they're hardly recognizable at that point. But still, I should go see a deer sometime. They sound cool. At least as nice to look at as they are to eat.
I've spent most of my driving life dodging deer that ran out from the woods.
Whenever I see a deer, I usually point a shout in excitement at the nearest person (who might still be several yards away.) At this point, the deer is mid-flight. That, or they're fenced in.
Biggest pet peeve, people who drive behind me on the freeway with their brights on. Literally get blinded every time I look in my mirrors. There is no good reason to be using your highbeams in a place as well-lit as downtown LA.
Do they even put high beams on cars in areas where there are no deer?
Well I drive quite quickly in the woods and I like to see the turns coming up, deer or no deer.
There's hardly ever a reason not to use highbeams when there are no oncoming cars. And if there are, you can use their headlights as a guide instead.
Yes there is. When it's daytime.
Yes, I was kidding Churbs.
I actually disagree with the always-use-high-beams attitude. It all depends on your vision. High beams DESTROY my night vision outside of their field, so when I have to turn them off for oncoming traffic I am basically blind. I don't use my high beams unless I actually can't see something I need to be able to see.
No, he just sounds like that sometimes. May have also been a result of microphone etiquette; basic mics + basic equipment = holding back when talking to avoid pops and clips.
Fun fact: One of the leading cause of tourist road accidents in the UK is drivers not knowing that here, flashing your brights means "Go Ahead" and not "Caution."
By which he means dynamic mics which have extreme bass response when you get close.
They're not crap, they're just not the optimal style for this purpose. :P
No, crap mics. Crappy dynamic mics that, in addition to the bass enhancing effect (which we and many radio hosts still use), killed some of the highs and had a poor frequency response. ;^)
My current condenser microphone as the SAME bass response. It's called the "proximity effect" and is a property of the microphone's directionality, not its mechanism. The old cardioid and the new hypercardiod both do the same thing, even through the former was dynamic and the current is condenser.
Proximity is used heavily by almost every radio personality in the world. The effect you're hearing in those old episodes is a mix of a crappy compressor, poor pre-amplifiers, and improperly calibrated mastering processes: not the bass boost of the microphone itself.
I figured it was something to do with running it through a compressor. I've tinkered around with recording in audition before and it sounds a lot like what happens when you do range compression on the wrong frequencies for a given voice. I don't really know much about it though so I was curious.
When I lived in Beacon, I once came home in the dusk to find a big buck deer standing on the front lawn of the apartment building. He looked at me and I got pretty close, and then he did the "danger" hiss and bounded away. Another time I came across a whole herd of them standing on the baseball diamond in the park at night. I would walk up, and then they would move away. It was cool. They really are pretty creatures.
Proximity is used heavily by almost every radio personality in the world. The effect you're hearing in those old episodes is a mix of a crappy compressor, poor pre-amplifiers, and improperly calibrated mastering processes: not the bass boost of the microphone itself.
That is probably true. However...
Dynamic mics are notorious for poor preservation of highs. Condensers are often used to get a more even range that does preserve the highs. This is what I learned in Recording Technology. As far as I have been taught, that's standard. The proximity effect has to do with bass response, not preservation of highs. Dynamic mics are less sensitive to very small vibrations than condensers because of the mechanisms they use for turning sound into signal.
I'd qualify that modern high-end dynamic microphone frequency response is, for the human voice, equivalent to condensers in almost all applications. I could swap one of my dynamic mics into the current show and no one in the world would know the difference.
Those old episodes were recorded with RADIO SHACK QUARTER-INCH SHIT-MA-PHONES. ;^) The differences you hear in old episodes are due to the cheapness of the microphones, not the fact that they're dynamic. It was further exacerbated by the fact that we had no compression inline, and thus had to leave a lot of headroom on already noisy and shitty microphones. Removing the noise in post added artifacts and left an odd frequency curve.
While there was a huge gain in quality when we dropped the Radio Shack mics for real mics, there was literally no perceptible difference in the quality between when we used the SM-57s (dynamic) and when I switched to my beta 87A (condenser). The frequency response is effectively equivalent (which I can actually prove from the masters I still have archived). The only real benefit is the tighter pickup pattern for better isolation. I still use the SM-57s for various things.
So yes, while dynamic mics traditionally have a worse frequency response, that difference at the higher end is negligible in almost all vocal applications. All of the quality differences you hear in GeekNights are due to other factors.
Comments
I actually disagree with the always-use-high-beams attitude. It all depends on your vision. High beams DESTROY my night vision outside of their field, so when I have to turn them off for oncoming traffic I am basically blind. I don't use my high beams unless I actually can't see something I need to be able to see.
Also, we shouldn't forget their primary purpose of letting people know about speed traps.
They're not crap, they're just not the optimal style for this purpose. :P
My current condenser microphone as the SAME bass response. It's called the "proximity effect" and is a property of the microphone's directionality, not its mechanism. The old cardioid and the new hypercardiod both do the same thing, even through the former was dynamic and the current is condenser.
Proximity is used heavily by almost every radio personality in the world. The effect you're hearing in those old episodes is a mix of a crappy compressor, poor pre-amplifiers, and improperly calibrated mastering processes: not the bass boost of the microphone itself.
Dynamic mics are notorious for poor preservation of highs. Condensers are often used to get a more even range that does preserve the highs. This is what I learned in Recording Technology. As far as I have been taught, that's standard. The proximity effect has to do with bass response, not preservation of highs. Dynamic mics are less sensitive to very small vibrations than condensers because of the mechanisms they use for turning sound into signal.
Those old episodes were recorded with RADIO SHACK QUARTER-INCH SHIT-MA-PHONES. ;^) The differences you hear in old episodes are due to the cheapness of the microphones, not the fact that they're dynamic. It was further exacerbated by the fact that we had no compression inline, and thus had to leave a lot of headroom on already noisy and shitty microphones. Removing the noise in post added artifacts and left an odd frequency curve.
While there was a huge gain in quality when we dropped the Radio Shack mics for real mics, there was literally no perceptible difference in the quality between when we used the SM-57s (dynamic) and when I switched to my beta 87A (condenser). The frequency response is effectively equivalent (which I can actually prove from the masters I still have archived). The only real benefit is the tighter pickup pattern for better isolation. I still use the SM-57s for various things.
So yes, while dynamic mics traditionally have a worse frequency response, that difference at the higher end is negligible in almost all vocal applications. All of the quality differences you hear in GeekNights are due to other factors.