4.1 H H T 4 4 0 F F LEXX
H H a a n n d d h h e e l l d d T T r r a a n n s s m m i i t t t t e e r r
4.1.1 W W orking
Distance a a nd
Proximity E E ffect
4.1.2 A A ngle o o f
Incidence
Refer to fig. 11
on page 4.
4.1.3 F F eedback
Refer to fig. 12
on page 4.
4.1.4 B B acking V V ocals
Refer to fig. 13
on page 4.
4.2 C C K 5 5 5 L L L L avalier
Microphone
Refer to fig. 14
on page 4.
Note:
32
4 Microphone Technique
A handheld vocal microphone provides many ways of shaping the sound
of your voice as it is heard over the sound system.
The following sections contain useful hints on how to use your
HT 40 FLEXX handheld transmitter for best results.
Basically, your voice will sound the bigger and mellower, the closer you
hold the microphone to your lips. Moving away from the microphone will
produce a more reverberant, more distant sound as the microphone will
pick more of the room's reverberation.
You can use this effect to make your voice sound aggressive, neutral, in-
sinuating, etc. simply by changing your working distance.
Proximity effect is a more or less dramatic boost of low frequencies that
occurs when you sing into the microphone from less than 2 inches. It
gives more "body" to your voice and an intimate, bass-heavy sound.
Sing to one side of the microphone or above and across the micro-
phone's top. This provides a well-balanced, natural sound.
If you sing directly into the microphone, it will not only pick up excessive
breath noise but also overemphasize "sss", "sh", "tch", "p", and "t"
sounds.
Feedback is the result of part of the sound projected by a speaker being
picked up by a microphone, fed to the amplifier, and projected again by
the speaker. Above a specific volume or "system gain" setting called the
feedback threshold, the signal starts being regenerated indefinitely, mak-
ing the sound system howl and the sound engineer desperately dive for
the master fader to reduce the volume and stop the howling.
To increase usable gain before feedback, the microphone element of the
HT 40 FLEXX handheld transmitter has a cardioid polar pattern. This
means that the microphone is most sensitive to sounds arriving from in
front of it (your voice) while picking up much less of sounds arriving from
the sides or rear (from monitor speakers for instance).
To maximize gain before feedback, place the main ("FOH") speakers in
front of the microphones (along the front edge of the stage).
If you use monitor speakers, be sure never to point any microphone di-
rectly at the monitors, or at the FOH speakers.
Feedback may also be triggered by resonances depending on the
acoustics of the room or hall. With resonances at low frequencies, prox-
imity effect may cause feedback. In this case, it is often enough to move
away from the microphone a little to stop the feedback.
1. Never let more than two persons share a microphone.
2. Ask your backing vocalists never to sing more than 35 degrees off the
microphone axis.
The microphone is very insensitive to off-axis sounds. If the two vo-
calists were to sing into the microphone from a wider angle than
35 degrees, you may end up bringing up the fader of the microphone
channel far enough to create a feedback problem.
1. Fix the microphone to the supplied lavalier clip or to the optional
H 41/1 tiepin.
2. Clamp the microphone on your clothing as close as possible to the
talker's mouth.
• Remember that gain-before-feedback will be the higher the closer the
microphone sits to the user's mouth!
AKG WMS 40 FLEXX