How To Prevent Microphone Feedback

so i'm gonna start this thing off with a little guarantee if you watch this video front to back and you follow these tips you will never have microphone feedback again what's up people welcome back to the channel thank you so much for joining me so today we're going to talk all about feedback and i'm going to geek out a little bit i'm going to get into like the science of it i'm going to explain it in layman's terms when i break this down and you really understand how feedback works you'll literally never have it again and that's just one less thing to worry about right and let's face it in today's world we could all use one less thing to worry about so the first thing i want to talk about is what feedback actually is and you know the easiest way to do this is kind of reverse engineer it how do we make feedback well the easiest way is you guessed it take your microphone point it at your speaker and the closer that mic gets to your speaker the louder the noise gets right this is because feedback is kind of like a mirror effect only with sound like you ever put two mirrors in front of each other and it just goes back and forth to affinity you know it looks all crazy the same kind of thing happens with your microphone and your speaker if you point your microphone at your speaker your speaker emits some kind of a noise right that noise goes into the microphone goes back through the system and out the speaker back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth and it creates that feedback and it gets louder and louder louder louder because it kind of snowballs right it's like a snowball effect and that's what creates that terrible noise that we all try and avoid so that's essentially what feedback is it's just your microphone and your speaker talking back and forth just only that's not how it sounds it actually kind of sounds like one of the greatest movies of all time moving right along so now we know what feedback is and what causes it let's talk about how to prevent this the first step to preventing feedback is where you place your speakers and where you place your speakers depends on your speaker's dispersion pattern now i highly recommend that everybody should know what their dispersion pattern of their speaker is every speaker has one for this example in particular i'm going to talk about a 90 60 dispersion pattern because most speakers have that right if you have a regular top that's the pattern it probably has you can find this out in the owner's manual or if you just google your speaker and look up the specs and whatnot but the large majority speakers are 90 60. this changes by brand you know or depending on what type of speaker it is especially if it's like a column array or a line array that changes it all together but generally speaking it's a 90-60 so we'll talk about that now to help explain this i'm gonna use my ipad for the first time i feel like a sports analyst i'm pretty excited about this i just thought of it okay so here we go so we're gonna bring it up here on the screen now let's talk about a 90 60 dispersion pattern let's say we have two tops right each top we have speaker one speaker two now the 90 refers to like the horizontal pattern right so if we're looking from the you know ceiling down right we're looking from the ceiling down 90 degree dispersion pattern is gonna look like this right it's a it's a quarter piece of pie that goes all the way down just like this and that's how it dispersed right so each one of this this is a quarter piece of pie oop nope that's a half nick wow quarter piece of pie quarter piece of pie so that's how it disperses so this is a 90 degree dispersion like this to prevent feedback in this aspect you want to be using your mic kind of right in the middle or right around here right you don't want to use it in this dispersion pattern or not too close to it that is right obviously if you use it over here you're going to be okay you're not too close so essentially with this first number it's all about how wide you spread out your speakers you know you don't want to go too wide where you know it's just weird and you can't hear nothing in the middle here but you want to spread them out wide enough where you have some space in the middle here to use your microphone without you know being in the middle of this dispersion pattern make sense now let's talk about the 60 right so we got 90 by 60 we'll talk about 60. the 60 is the vertical dispersion pattern right and that's all about how high you put your speakers so you got a top right here on a stand right it's on a little stand right maybe you got a scrim on your stand you dress it up right you guys scream people all right we'll put a scrim on this one all right nice we'll hide those legs nice little scrim maybe maybe you put a little thing over top your speaker you know a little white thing a white scrim over top a speaker dress your speaker up like a ghost huh maybe do that all right we'll do that okay so we got a little that's that's a white scrim all right the speaker's a ghost here we go the dispersion pattern of this is 60 degrees so essentially it's a little less than a quarter slice of pie like this and it just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going so this is the 60 degree vertical so in regards to this like i said it's all about how high you put your speaker so if you have your speaker high enough and here i am standing here using the mic it's not going to affect anything because i'm not in this dispersion pattern if the speaker's too low and you bring it down low here then the dispersion pattern is going to be low here and i will get feedback does that make sense now if you're wondering about where to put your subwoofer generally speaking you want to have it in the middle if you're using like one sub and two tops right that way it's nice and even if you're using two subs then you know you want to put them underneath the tops just like you know two stacks like you see a bunch of people do that's the best way to do it you know as far as feedback most subwoofers they don't really you know have anything above 120 hertz so you're not gonna get feedback from a sub you know unless it's i guess it's a really shitty sub or something you shouldn't get feedback from the sub the tops is where the feedback really comes from so you have to worry about that but if you want the best sound you know middle or underneath each top now i'm not saying you have to like bring a tape measure to every gig and like measure everything out and be exact or whatever just know it generally you know because it'll help you like let's say you're setting up in a corner right it's like a weird room and you're setting up in a corner so you're gonna have one speaker here and then one speaker here well just know that like if your dispersion pattern is 90 degrees you're going to be going this way and then this speaker is going to be going this way and if you're right here in the middle you are dead center and you're going to get nothing but feedback you know so like with that being said you kind of want to might spread this out maybe put the speaker here you know put this speaker here spread it out a little further that way you still have a middle part to use your microphone you know like this is when this knowledge comes in handy when you're setting up in tight spaces you have speakers pointing certain ways just keep this in mind if you understand this you know and and know this and know your speaker's dispersion pattern you'll very quickly all right i definitely can't face them together that's going to be a nightmare you know what i mean so i got to spread this out and you'll you'll kind of you know learn little tricks and learn how to kind of spread out your speakers so you can prevent this all right so we know what feedback is we know where to place our speakers based on the dispersion pattern so we can you know use the mic in the pocket and not have to worry about any feedback that way now let's talk about how to set the knobs now i'm lucky enough to have a great relationship with everybody at rcf and they have some really really smart people over there that really know how to like explain this stuff in layman's terms so shout out to jim at rcf like he helps me out with like you know all my technical videos and because i'm always trying to like you know i don't want to get like super geeky where you guys don't understand like i want to explain it where it's like oh wow it makes perfect sense and jim is great at this and he really like brought the light how game structure works and everything so let's talk about this now in regards to the gain and the volume look at it this way okay your gain is like a door as you open up the game door more and more you'll get more and more unwanted sounds to come through so the key to setting your mic the right way is setting the gain ahead of time the right way where you're only getting your voice right or mostly your voice and not other stuff as you open up that game door more and more that's where you have the potential to pick up ambient sound to pick up a hiss an electronic sound something from the speaker something from you know an incandescent light bulb whatever like it is very very sensitive so the more you put up the gain the more unwanted sounds you're bringing in so the key to it is setting the gain properly when you get to an event when you get to whatever venue it is you want to set your gain ahead of time where it's just enough right the door is just enough open where your sound your voice comes out perfect but it doesn't let in you know or minimally lets in other stuff right once you have that set you use the volume to make it louder right the gain is the door to what is coming in there what the mic is picking up the volume is how loud it is so with this being said you set your gain one time and that's it you do not want to touch your gain after that for the rest of the night you already have it set this will prevent all feedback because you're only letting in the sounds you want to let in and that's it the volume just makes it louder it's that simple it's the volume so you could turn the volume all the way up as long as your gain is set right you're not going to get any feedback you're going to be fine so many people ride their gains during the event and that's when you're going to catch feedback you know when you're trying to get more volume you that's when you're going to catch feedback you know because you're letting in unwanted sounds and that's where it gets crazy and if it's too much and it goes back and forth like the mirror effect so keep that in mind when you're adjusting your gain and volume set the gain ahead of time leave it there and only adjust volume from then and that's it if you need more power if you're not loud enough turn up your speakers okay and if that's not loud enough you just need better speakers or a better microphone i mean that's really what it comes down to now speaking about speaker volume when you're setting the volume on the back of your speakers you know it really depends on what kind of speaker you have and the cool thing about rcf and you know one of the many reasons why i think rcf is the best speakers on earth like buy a long shot is they're made in a way where most of their speakers you can literally put to the max like on the in the back you i literally have my volume at the max like my hdm 45s volume is 100 at the max my subs i think like 75 80 i keep them at like almost all the way up because you know their amps are so good in the way like they're wired i don't know the technical aspect but like it has minimal electronic noise minimal like just it's just a clear sound you can just crank them to the top and then use your external mixers or whatever you're using as far as mixers for the headroom you know to get more volume other speakers aren't like that you know so you really want to adjust the volume of your speakers to the point where you don't have too much hiss you know as loud as they will possibly go until you hit some noise essentially this gives your external mixer the most headroom possible all right so we know what feedback is we know where to put our speakers right so we can prevent it we know how to set our knobs the last thing i want to talk about is the actual microphone what kind of microphone you use definitely helps avoid feedback for sure now i'm a short guy so i'm going to talk about shores i really don't know about you know sennheiser's any other mics but you can look up what kind of microphone it is because it's all basically the same thing but i'm going to talk about the two most common shore mics and the difference between the two and something you should really consider when you're buying your next microphone the sm58 is the standard right super popular everybody knows what you're gonna sound like on the sm58 you can kick it down to flight of steps it'll never break it's the most iconic microphone that sure makes and a large majority of djs use them and they're solid but there's one little issue i have with them they have a cardoid pattern so if this circle is your microphone right you're looking down at your microphone this is the microphone a cardoid pattern goes all the way around right all the way around picks up everything around so if you're talking into the mic like this right if this is you uh if you got a square if you have a square head and this is you talking into the mic and talking here it's going to pick you up from here but it's also going to pick up anything from over here so it's not really that great of a mic i mean unless you eat it unless you get real really close like this and that's why you'll see a lot of dj's mcs that use sm58s they'll have the microphone literally like they're eating it like right on their mouth because that like prevents a lot you know you're only getting your voice i guess that's the best way to use it but still not ideal especially with toast because you have the best man maid of honor whoever given a speech that day where do they hold the microphone 9 out of 10 times their belly button well if you have a circle pattern like this and they're holding at their belly button they're barely picking themselves up and they're picking up everything else so you got to crank everything all the way up and all you do is get ambient noise and a little bit of sound and it's a super pain of the ass you've probably experienced this well instead of using the sm58 i highly recommend spend an extra 60 or 100 bucks right because as far as shore goes you know all their microphone systems come in either way get the beta 58 head the beta 58 has a little blue thing around it right and this is a super cardoid which means it's a way more directional microphone so instead of you know picking up everything all around here right a supracardoid if we look at our microphone right here this is our microphone a supracardoid is just right here it's just super directional whatever goes in there so if you're looking at the microphone from this try and draw this without looking like a dick uh if you're looking to microphone this way it only picks up here it doesn't pick up anything around here so it's super super directional because of this if you're doing a toast right and the maid of honor is holding it by her belly button she's still holding it up so the only thing that's picking up is straight up to her mouth so you're gonna get less ambient noise and it's gonna sound ten times better same thing when you're emceeing if you just hold it right here you don't have to eat it you can hold it right here it's picking up less noise all the way around it that way it's going to be a clear sound it's going to be less and just more whoever's talking on the microphone which is what you want and the best part about these two different kinds of microphones is there's not a huge price difference at least for sure so i'm assuming their competitors are the same like just spend the extra couple bucks and get the super corridor trust me it's a night and day difference and it's basically the reason why i'm able to kind of still keep my speakers behind me but still spread out so i'm kind of in my uh dispersion pattern you know because i'm sure one of you guys are going to say that you're oh dude your speaker's behind you why are you set up like that you know because i don't want to monitor and i like to blow out my ears and whatever i'm weird that's just the way i set up so it's really not ideal but i'm able to get away with it and still go on the mic because i have a beta 58 microphone so that's how big of a difference it really makes trust me get one you'll thank me later but that's it people i hope you found this video incredibly useful share it with your friends let's prevent feedback around the world let's save everybody's ears together one set of ears at a time as always i appreciate all of you for watching seriously thank you so much this youtube channel really is growing and it's all because of you like i want to thank each and every one of you like i don't know i don't know why i'm making a speech right now whatever i'll see you guys next video peace out

Channel: Nick Spinelli

Views: 128,000

Keywords: how to prevent microphone feedback, how to prevent feedback, preventing feedback, mic feedback, microphone feedback, how to, audio feedback, live sound systems, feedback control, sound system, sound system setup, gain structure, proper gain structure, feedback sound system, wedding DJ tips, DJ tips, pa system tips, how to set your knobs, adjusting eq, shure microphones, shure sm58, shure beta58

Id: GISdJKWhEls

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021