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May 2012

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"Try them out. Then learn to trust your ears."

by Brad Duryea

Several years ago, I was teaching a college audio engineering class where, for the sake of experimentation, we sat out all 17 microphones the studio had that were suitable for vocals. I had two vocalists with different vocal styles go through and sing a line on each mic, and we recorded all 34 takes. Then we did blind evaluations. One of the more expensive microphones sounded the best on the first vocalist, but it was the cheapest microphone that sounded the best on the other. When we just picked what sounded good, rather than what we might have assumed would be the best choice, we got great results. In other words, learn to use your ears. It’s a timeless maxim of audio: if it sounds good, it is good.

So where does that leave us?

There are a lot of great live vocal mics, and it’s hard to make recommendations. There’s a reason why there are so many reasonable choices—mic “A” might sound great on one person and lousy on another, and the opposite can be true for mic “B.” It’s about personal preference and finding a mic that complements the vocalist.

If you want a quick solution, buy the most common live vocal mic in the history of sound reinforcement: the Shure SM-58. It’s a great mic, and you’ll probably be quite happy with it. However, if you have the time (and I highly recommend you make the time), try as many different offerings as you can. You may have a vendor willing to let you demo some options; you might try renting from a production company; or you may find another church in your area willing to let you borrow some. You simply have to listen for yourself.

If you already have different mics available at your church, take a few minutes sometime to try the different ones on your vocalists. I promise you it will be a worthwhile experiment.

What makes it a “vocal” mic, anyway?

The most significant detail that sets live vocal mics apart from others are their internal windscreens (also known as pop filters). These reduce plosives, those nasty pops from p’s and b’s, that are so annoying. Also, unlike typical studio vocal mics, they are “front-addressed,” meaning you sing/speak into the top. This is intuitive, of course, but studio vocal mics are usually addressed from the side.

Vocal mics can work well on instruments, too. But “instrument” mics, without windscreens, can be more responsive to plosives and, therefore, may perform poorly on vocals.

You can also usually remove the grill on a vocal mic for cleaning. This is highly recommended for sanitary reasons. Consult your microphone’s literature for recommendations on cleaning it and the internal filter, too.

Wired vs. wireless

I recently worked an event where the wireless coordination was very tricky. One of the ways to keep everything behaving better was to put the background vocalists on wired mics. It doesn’t look as good on TV, but it meant the wireless microphones for the worship leader and pastor were more reliable. It would have been even better to go with wired mics for the worship leaders, too, but that was aesthetically unacceptable for this event.

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Brad Duryea is an audio engineer at Lakewood Church in Houston.