OK, I’m a complete idiot, I remember reading a post about making sure your microphone is not pointed backward. The Rode NT-1A is cardiod directional. As an aside, the NT-1A came out in 2004 and there was an older NT-1, but the currently named NT-1 is actually later and is in its fifth generation ($240 at Amazon and $249 at Sweetwater) and its main claim to fame is a complete flat frequency response. The NT-1A is designed to be fa4r form flat and to favor vocals. It rolls back the bass at 80Hz, there is a low mid peak at 150Hz that rises to 6dB at 13Khz. So get the NT-1A if you are doing vocals.So I was just thinking I should read the manual to make sure and sure enough, it says, don’t put the letter at the front, put the gold dot!
Argh, that makes sense, you don’t want the product labels and warranty in the front. So I had to turn the whole thing around. Hard to imaging how screwed up my podcasts have been as a result.
I redid the OBS tuning for this and got some different results, but mainly the sound is much more risk (obviously):
- Focusrite Scarlett Gain. Now it should be at 3 o’clock so basically the mike is more sensitive
- Microphone gain on MacOS and Rogue Amoeba SoundSource at 100% as before
- Gain. 0db as before
- Noise Suppression. RNNoise as before
- 3-Band Equalizer. Wow what a difference flipping the microphone around makes now instead of sounding really thin, my voice sounds great with the built in bias of the microphone. So in effect, I’m getting a bass roll off and then a mid peak and then a shut down at the top. I kind of like a little bit more bass, so left High and Mid at 0dB and then Low at +3dB.
- Expander. Ratio 3:1, Attack 1ms, Release 100ms, but the changes are Threshold still at -60dB, its a very quiet room, but the Output Gain is now 20dB, so the soft sounds are much better handled than before
- Compressor. Ratio 3:1, Attack 1ms, Release 100ms, and Output Gain is 0dB but now the Threshold is -12dB as loud is much louder
- Limiter. No change at -0.1dB and 60ms Release.
I feel pretty stupid right now, but I’m thinking about getting an NT-1 (since it is more flat) which is supposed to have a more neutral sound for my other setup. I’m only using the Logitech Brio mike there and that’s starting to bother me!
