Assignment 05 Record and Compare

Practical Experiment
Description: For this assignment you are expected to perform a set of small experiments as explained below. Your goals include evaluating qualitative differences between different microphones and different microphone positions.

Instructions:
The experiments on this assignment can be performed in studio F, or your your home studio. You will need to make sound on an instrument, voice or with a loudspeaker, so try to book a time when making noise is ok.

You will new two microphones and necessary equipment (mixer, audio interface, etc) to get sound into your preferred audio recording app. Please make sure that each microphone is recording into a separate audio channel.

If you do not have access to a musician/instrument. Consider recording yourself singing with a microphone 10 to 20cm from your face and then play back the record into a loud speaker, and perform the rest of the experiments treating the loudspeaker as an instrument.

Experiments:
Record a short musical phrase (same phrase, same performance qualities) with various microphone positions:
1. Both close, on axis (microphone pointed at the instrument)
2. Both close, off axis (microphone not pointed at instrument)
3. One far, one close on axis
4. The other far, the other close on axis
5. Both far on axis
6. Both far off axis

For the report:Post photos of your microphone placements, and recordings of each of the combinations.
How do the different microphones sound different from each other, if at all? How do each of the positions sound? How does the sound change when the microphone is on or off axis? How does the sound level change? How do the frequencies of the instrument change? How does the sound change with distance?