@ 2:17 The perforations are air vents to let sound in from the "back end" of the mic. The phase difference between those waves and the ones from the front is what makes the mic cardioid. If you completely cover the holes you change it to (near) omni. Making it less sensible to plosives, but more prone to feedback. A classic is grabbing the mic just under the "head" and leaning over the wedge monitor. FEEEEEEDBACKKKK Interesting experiment.
A very interesting video. I enjoyed watching every second. You really put a lot of work into your research. God bless you for being a passionate, studious, and diligent individual.
Totally makes sense there Dave. When we consider a "pop filter" has the opportunity to disperse air plosions between the mic and filter. But it's all about the dispersement of energy when it gets to go through the filter, then post filter, it's much easier for the air gap to naturally disperse energy but not sacrifice frequency. "Cool, Cool!!"
I had a few rock and progressive bands and we needed the dreaded sm 58 because of the presence they created to cut through the ensemble. The main vocalist learned a special type of hesitant pronunciation and mic distance control to get around the problem, without realizing it at first. Trying to deal with the actual cause is admirable.
Agreed. When doing live sound, I encourage the singers/speakers to project across the top of the mic, with it near their chins and pointing up. This also prevents it from blocking their faces. As a singer and voice actor, I practice without a grill or windscreen, to develop the pronunciation skill that you mention, holding back on the plosive consonants.
My experience is that proper mic technique is whatever the singer wants to do the get the look and feel they desire or makes them most comfortable or happy with their performance. And A great sound engineer will the the singer the best mic for the job or their quirks or whatever is needed to get a desirable sound.
@@DaveRatworking in church sound, I am often responsible for training the "Talent" how to use microphones, and I generally use the Starbucks Coffee Cup analogy. It's Life Itself, so it must stay right below your lips, and NEVER EVER EVER dump it out! (Pointing it at the floor wedges between verses is a common bad habit lol)
Cool and that will definitely help or work. And yes taking sound away is never quite the same as preventing the mic from capturing it in the first place
Great fun video! The old studio trick was to have a pencil in front to deflect. I've a modded Oktava ML19 cardioid ribbon that was designed initially for speech and it used to have a curved concave strip of aluminium right in front of the ribbon which I assume was to deflect plosives which are bad news for the ribbon!
When you took the grill off B and revealed the "round hawk" I thought of the old Don King parodies on SNL. Interesting video, thanks for all the hard work to do such thorough testing.
I had this understanding that those mesh screens basically work to turn the turbulent flow of plosives into more laminar flow. And it's been rumored that even NASA at some point made laminar flow by just stacking packs of drinking straws after the fan to create laminar flow. So the mesh screen is "simplified" version of that principle of having multitude of holes in line :)
Great Dave, Miself just have one of these 'foam ones' to put on mics (you can buy in diff colors🎉) and cut a tiny very small bit of gaff tape and put that over it from side to side. Just like the "pencil trick" over the grill of a large diagram or (even over the popscreen) Some singers just feel better with a 'handheld' All for the best Take ❤
Great one Dave .Was just up in Owen sound at a friend's house trying to get my buddies audio set up ..We got it n big trouble because his son had set up his effects console for a specific sound .Let's just say don't push the red button !
The disks are kind of like the design of the windscreen on the KMS105. This testing is something I like because I have always said let the mic do the work and this is a way to do that. If you have the response you need out of the gate, you get a better mix faster. We spend hours and hours tuning speaker systems, why not spend more time working with the mics in this way.
I just bought the official windshield for my SM58 and forgot about it :D I mean, it's not that often I expect needing that, but it's in my bag for that moment I DO need it. Same for the official SM57 wind shields...
Again an absolute stunning video from you. I celebrate it. Thx a lot. To me, bcs of working on different shows w different artists here in Germany and Europe, where people tent to use a lot of different types of mics like sennheiser, akg, Beyerdynamic, Neumann beside the SM58, I’m using a dynamic eq, set to be active only at a certain level and changing it according to the pop frequency of the used mic. It works inaudible but effective. But it’s a wonderful mod for some artists from the US I’m touring with, who definitely swear on their SM58. Thx a lot. Greetz, @xel
As Lewitt found out when comparing their own pop filter that is magnetically held in place on their microphone mounts to other pop filters _(and the fact that when the Lewitt LCT 1040 came out, its filter was farther away than on all their previous microphones),_ the distance the pop filter has to the microphone is essential. It's easy to test if you got your own pop filter. Start making pop sounds with the filter touching the microphone grill, then move it farther and farther away to find the distance needed to make them effective. I use the Hakan P110 pop filter which is excellent. It's thick, but still needs a distance to the microphone to work properly. The air needs space to move away form the microphone (to dissipate, like you said), so placing it straight on top of the microphone is going to be difficult. I understand you didn't want to alter the exterior of the microphones since no tests with that was done. I am curious to how the effect of parts of the Hakan P110 filter cut up and placed inside of the microphone grille of the SM58 would work vs. your mod.
That p110 filter seems to be just open cell foam. As you mention, the farther the filter is the less dense and intricate it needs to be. When dealing with very small distances the intricacy and complexity of the filter design increases and the effectiveness decreases. For applications where an external filter is viable, there are many good options out there. But for applications where the singer is holding the mic moving it around a lot and the visual aesthetics are very important, such is not increasing the overall size of the windscreen creating more blockage of the face to cameras, then creating an internal unseen windscreen becomes very valuable and useful
Interesting you mentioned the Lewitt pop filter. I have the 440 Pure and noticed using my Stedman gooseneck pop filter was more effective and therefore I trust it over the Lewitt magnetic one. If the 1040 was released after the 440, then it means that I don’t have their optimal magnetic pop screen.
In the film world, we all know that disrupting the wind with a layer of (faux) fur then giving it room to diffuse (air space) is key. The Rycote BBG comes to mind for something like a 58 (not sure if they make one for that mic)
Yes and exactly. Yes and for handheld mics and rock shows, we Don't have the luxury of using those advanced tools and the look and lip feel are very significant factors that that make internal and unseen pop protection valuable and necessary.
True and also some designs are better than others and with me just mucking around for a bunch of hours I was able to improve The pee pop projection of the most popular mic in the world. With some actual computer modeling and engineering I think it could be bumped up quite a bit more and fully encased inside the existing shell
From my experience and the testing that I did, as you increase the absorptive density of anything you put in front of the diaphragm it reduces the high frequency response. If you leave air gaps around whatever barrier you place there, the plosions are not affected and just go right around the barrier be it felt a heart disk or dense foam. If you do not leave air gaps around the barrier, then you create a chamber that increases low frequency boom and alters the polar pattern as well as reduces the frequency response HF
When I see the purple desk in the field or on you're background I know im in safe hands. I've enjoyed the videos so much as well as the folk commenting. This set of comments with people dissing the 58 and your opinion did make me laugh out loud. You obviously did FOH for one of the biggest bands ever. Im no RHCP fan as such but I've always mixed what's on the stage and paying me. You should try getting Pooch or Big Mick on for a chat sometime to discuss the 58. Metallica switched vocal mic's but put the 58 capsule in the stage mic. I can't remember the model number they pretend to use on stage, let's call it the elvis mic. It's a 58 inside the shell. Appreciate the level of skill your system techs have guys. Cheer Dave Rat. 🐀
Pooping puppies A takeaway is “get an OM-7”. Also, there are eq plugins that have use multiband compression. Presonus base eq now has one that you can set the range +\- (in this case reduction) and response trigger amount (in db) as well as the Q amount. I’m with you on stopping the air at the mic diaphragm 👍🏼 - but there are now EQs that mitigate very well.
Loved the P rap and the patented P-pop creator™. That was funny! 😎😎 Whenever I see a 58 used in a million live performances, I'm baffled at they can possibly sound that good. To me the 58 is really kind of dull with a ton of warmth/mud. I wonder if just removing a ton of low end to just make it sound better also had the impact of reducing the pops significantly, whereas say a beta 58 is brighter and you wouldn't eq it the same and maybe wind up with more pops. Maybe interesting, but I thought your putting the audix filter in there made it sound a little more like what I think an OM7 sounds like. Just throwing food for thought at you even though I'm sure you already considered all of that. Loved the video, super interesting, well thought out, and funny! BTW, you had a little segment talking about doing sound for Yngwie in one of the zoom calls which was just hilarious. I can't find it now, but I think that would be worth posting public, and I don't think the artists would be offended either. It was really funny how you told that story. It was regarding the 6 Marshalls on 10 and the 2 or 3 svt's on 10 and the keyboardist expecting his floor monitors to keep up and how you worked around that and then "poof"! Cheers, and hope all is going well for you!
Very interesting! I've always not liked the plosive amount from 58s, I prefer audix om series as they seem to have less plosive and a more airy high end in my experience. nice to see there's a noticeable difference in the mod!
Maybe audix om5 or om6 is worth a try . Also Telefunken M8O is more expensive but I have seen singers that like 58 transition well to it. Much of the challenge is lip feel for the musician as well as the problem with 58 and background noise is also what allows singers to sing farther from the might and still hear their voice.
Ever just taped a pencil to the outside of the mic, centred on the diaphragm? Love that trick for the studio but naturally doesn’t lend itsself to live, but perhaps there’s a 3d printable cap for the top of the mic grill someone can invent?
My experience is a sound engineer has shown that " lip feel " his extremely important to many performers. Additionally " the look" can also be extremely important to many performers. I kind of looked at this as a project to see if improvements could be made without altering lip feel or look
I’m super surprised that with 3D Printers being so prevalent these days, that there hasn’t been some 11 year old somewhere, who has solved this problem for us, yet…
I press the space bar. I set the averaging time just fast enough so that I could capture the blast and then hit the space bar before it dropped. I just added it out all of the dead space in the videos
What we could do in terms of a solution is to design a piece of CNC cut foam rubber which fits over the SM58 screen, and the foam rubber holding a pop shield. Yes. Not hard to make, methinks. Aluminum foam might be good as well. Wire would also probably be ok. Could likewise just redesign the windscreen and grille, and sell a 3rd party upgrade which replaces the silver grille golf ball. Antimicrobial - solid silver or chromium finish, and the ability to attenuate the cardiod back entrance by adjusting a dial would be neat. I will furnish the thread some drawings, gimme a minute and a half hour and some head scratches.
That first modified mic seems to have about 10db less p pop. Maybe if we get something that works, Shure will take it and run. Perhaps someday we will see a SM58ool (no p in it) or something...
Dave, I would really like to hear your thoughts on the old feedback reduction technique where two microphones are taped together, you sing into the top one and the bottom one is out of phase. Is this a way to reduce or eliminate feedback without having to ring out problem frequencies? Also, what feedback reduction methods are used at modern big shows? I would think at that level, there are too many problem frequencies to be able to ring them out without harming sound quality. Thank you.
In a big show done by someone like Dave, the system, speaker placement, mic placement, monitor design, and everything else is going to be designed from the ground up with feedback prevention in mind, in other words, not putting speakers directly in line with the polar pattern of microphones, as well as having the singers trained on proper mic usage to get lots of gain before feedback. If you have singers running around in front of the speaker stacks, you may have more problems, but if they are staying close to the mic and you have gates set up to close when they aren't actively singing, you can probably survive lol You may also have feedback eliminator processors, or built into the system processor, to notch out actively feeding back frequencies. And yes, I would probably check the system, or Ring it Out in a new room, just to see if there are any particularly live frequencies or speakers or sources that might cause an issue, and then work through eq or changing positions to resolve the issue. For instance, maybe a microphone for a bass cabinet is feeding back because a monitor behind the microphone is reflecting off the front of the base cabinet, but you can move the bass cabinet or turn it away from the monitor to remove the problem. Other times you can remove the microphone from the particular speaker. Like maybe don't put that bass cabinet mic into that monitor channel. I have even had to constantly pan a wireless mic on a high energy speaker so whenever he walked in front of the speakers on one side, I would pan the mic to the opposite side, avoiding feedback while maintaining average room volume lol But that was a result of system design issues, or the "talent" leaving where they were supposed to be is more like it...
The dual mic issue is that if you sing into both, the sound goes away, or at least drops a lot and sound all phasey and crap. Sing into one and some sound gets into the other and it also sounds somewhat phasey and crap. So the sound is super unstable and audibly poorer quality requiring the singer the be very mic aware. Try it, then try and get singers to do it. Solutions with quality and finesse will get you gigs and better sounding shows. This i believe will have the opposite effect.
I have a theory that plosives do not follow the inverse square law in the same way that regular sound waves do. I've noticed when doing corporate sound, when someone is speaking into a microphone that is too far away from their mouth, that the plosives are much more aggressive. I think it's because you're using so much preamp gain to make up for the distance to the source, that you're amplifying the plosives with the rest of the noise floor. Conversely, I notice if you speak into a microphone with your mouth right against the grille, the plosives aren't as noticeable. Even though the plosives are much more likely to hit the diaphragm, they're not being amplified as much with the rest of the noise floor since you don't need to use nearly as much preamp gain. Would you be able to test that? Plosives at different distances vs pink noise at different distances? Do they stay at the same relative level or not?
I tried to do exactly that by doing smart measurements of the pink noise up close and the plosive measurements at the end of the long tube that was not sealed on either end
I believe you're absolutely correct about plosives surviving distance better than the speech itself, at least within a short distance, I noticed this too and also noticed that the plosives are not travelling at the speed of sound, but considerably slower, it could be as simple as how quick your mouth/lungs are capable of accelerating a blast of air during normal speech. Also playing into this is that the plosives seem to be much more directional than the speech, you can move the microphone out of the stream of plosive air by putting it off axis and almost completely eliminate the plosives but maintain a fairly good level of audio. I tend to disagree with your theory about the preamp gain though, I don't think this is relevant at all unless the preamp is actually clipping, gain is not selective in that manner. You could test this by using a Y-split on your next corporate lectern job and have a high gain input lower gain input.
@@chickenfizz the point about the preamp gain has to do with level matching as the source moves away from the transducer. a person holding the mic 16" away needs much more preamp gain than someone speaking into the grille, if you trim them both to the same input level.
@@mogwix on second reading I see what you're saying. Not that the gain itself is responsible for unfairly choosing to amplify the plosives in favour of the wanted speech, but that the wanted speech has become comparatively quieter with distance than the plosives.
@@chickenfizz Yes exactly. I wonder what it is about plosives. They must be like those air cannon toys that "shoot" a puff of air across the room, or maybe they move like smoke rings ... could be an interesting bit of fluid dynamics.
Great video, Dave. I do take one issue though. Where is the frequency response and plosive tests for an SM58 with an external, foam pop filter? It seems essential to understand how it, as well as your modifications, compare to one another. It is, after all, the reference for existing plosive mitigation. For curiosity sake, you might also include a flat, gooseneck mounted studio pop filter as well.
Yeah I didn't do the external windscreens or the nylon stretched over a paddle that they use in studios because I figure that big, ugly and cumbersome solutions fall into a different category than hidden solutions that don't change the lip feel or look of the mic.
@@DaveRat I totally understand. Still, it would be nice to be able to compare the actual reduction of a foam windscreen to your modification. I guess, in the end, it only matters if you like what you were able to create.
Agreed and yeah my experience is that phone windscreens do such a good job that plosions are no longer an issue. If I dive into this further that would be a great measure of success is to approach the results that foam wind screens can get
@@fantasticsound2085the issue is, you won't be getting a rock star to be singing into a mic with a Radio Shack foam sock on it, so for this conversation it's not any more an option than putting them in a recording studio with a pop filter on a shock mounted condenser mic lol
@@DaveRatso if a foam windscreen can reduce it almost completely, what could we do to get a similar effect if we went slightly external? What if we 3d printed a new screen for the 58 that was just slightly larger, but allowed for a thicker layer of foam inside, or maybe even a 3d printed baffled arrangement to redirect plosives? How much larger would we need to go to get similar results, and would it still be small enough that it would be acceptable? Maybe it could be taller like a tophat, instead of spherical, so it wouldn't block the face anymore, but would be like your stacked disks, protecting only from axial plosives? Or make it like a line array, maintaining the side to side width, but taller, and then curving out on one side, so you have more thickness on axis, but also on the "back side" of the mic (audience view), so that it's not blocking the face any more, but whether the air flow is straight down from the top, or coming into the back side, it's still got more thickness, but not changing the profile the audience sees. You might have to work with singers to get them to keep the mic in line with the airflow, but it would be a minor adjustment. With the ability to 3d print capsule housings, it would be easy to test different shapes and designs, and then when you find one that works, make a metal version, but a printed plastic version, maybe with a metal insert to screw onto the mic, might even be tough enough for stage use, as long as they aren't throwing it around lol
Adding an external windscreen easily solves the issue. As does the nylon stretched studio paddle. But also, many to most singers don't want foam on lips and/or the extra big size and unsightly look of a foam windscreen. Yes, we can solve the problem by making it big and ugly, but that's no fun. The beauty of an unseen solution is a much more desirable.sdventure
I would argue the principal part of the plosive problem is simply incompetence on the part of the person using the microphone. I propose using absolutely NO high pass filter in the performer’s path. Let them hear the problem their misuse provokes and perhaps, just possibly, they might pick up a precious new practice.
Well in situations of mic cupping I would agree with you to some degree, The issue of plosives seems to be most prominent in situations where a person is speaking at some distance maybe 6" to 1ft from the mic perhaps for a political event or House of worship or corporate event, and a cardioid mic is used which reduces low frequencies at distance due to proximity effect. Compensation for the lack of low frequencies is made and even the slightest puff of air is almost impossible to avoid by the person speaking. And those slight puffs of air create resonant micro booms that are very annoying. Subwoofers on an auxend and high pass filters can help mitigate but to really solve the problem without impacting smooth natural low-end vocal response, the plosives need to be addressed at the source
Performing a rudimentary investigation of pop-shielding the SM58 and similar mics, I turned up this product called the "Popper Blocker", and this CZcamsr covering the commercial product: czcams.com/video/jlUKKti6am0/video.htmlsi=WOBI-BgfqonfEQRn So you can kinda just shove some extra material inside the dome. I propose developing a pop-shield specific to the SM58, possibly an alternative windscreen, and even a new system for mounting an SM58 element, particularly those made for wireless systems could be easily modified to form a new model housing which has been hardcore-modified to get that SM58 sound but with a much stricter and more rugged enclosure, with some extra acoustic features.
I could be totally wrong on this, but it seems to me the best route to go is an external filter. Keep the stock windscreens, but add a "bozo nose" foam over top. Those to me do a much better job at diffusing the extra burst of air pressure on the plosives. It's a cheap and easy solution, short of adding in a nylon stocking and rubber band to hold in place. The more expensive added step would be to also to swap out the audio transformer inside the bottom half with one made by Tab Funkenwerk, the AMI T58. It's a $90 USD modification and gets the frequency curve of your SM57/58 close to that of the Shure Unidyne 565SD or 545SD.
Absolutely and yet external filters create visual and practical issues that self contained unseen solutions avoid. There are often bigger ugly solutions that work work better
Agreed and ideally could be no plosives or ugly windscreen. Striving for ideal solutions even when they don't already exist can be a fun adventure and sometimes end up as a cool product to have fun making and selling. Dad said, making plosive proof grills for another manufacturer's mic is not on my list of adventures. But possibly could inspire manufacture to do something, wouldn't that be cool if shure stepped up in fixed it!
@@DaveRat Do you have access to Shure's fairly new Dualdyne mics? I wonder how much of an improvement they are over the SM58 that they claim there is? 🤔
The plosive pop gun. What a clever man. Seriously. I want one. With an A weighted response. I want one that does impulse response sampling and measures sound levels. With a cable tester. And a laser pen, one that measures distances and tells you the delay time would be nice. rta/peak display. And a smartphone holder. And a butane jet lighter for soldering and heat shrink. And a torch. And a walkie talkie. And a fitting for a holster for a real firearm - gigs in africa are serious. Fit it to the side of the mixing console, innit. In lime green. All mounted in a plastic AK47 with a rubber rat deadcat like a silencer. Yes. Can you make a run of them? I think we need them. Especially Ukraine. And a bayonet.
"this thing is a work of art" 🤟 are you familiar with the work of john otway? here in a slightly more sedate couple of numbers, but he later earned a deal with shure after his sm58 featured prominently in a number that involved him head-butting it repeatedly. at gigs, the mic would end up almost unrecognisable but mostly still functional. czcams.com/video/Z6oQ4oRH_nc/video.html
Am I the only one who actually made an uwu noise uncontrollably when I looked at the graph in smaart at the graph of the fly gun? I love how rounded it looks! Please tell me that is the actual curve, and not just an artifact of the speed of the measurment.
A bit of both. The FFT measurement works results in the low frequencies needing longer time frames so a short burst will get overly smooth with an FFT measurement. This will look different than an RTA measurement. Pat said the frequency content will drive the curve and variations will show up but they will increasingly smooth at lower frequencies
You know the best plosion reduction technique for a 58? Throw it in the trash and buy an OM5 or V7. I seriously can’t wait until the 58 finally loses traction. I will praise the day.
OM7, V7 are easier with plosions. But I just can’t get me enough of the warmth of the 58. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Though I agree that it’s a good time right now to explore other options
I share your opinion about the 58s. As for traction, that ship has sailed. The selection of better vocal microphones has never been broader but singers remain surprisingly reticent to change.
@@simonclepkens7862 I don’t see how polar pattern makes them irrelevant, a tighter pattern should in theory make their plosives worse but they aren’t. They both have WAY better gain before feedback and bleed rejection than the 58 for the same price.
I'm sorry you are wrong. About the frequency response on, a, SM-58. Sorry, no. The frequency response does not stay, the same. You are wrong there. And here's why. That you didn't take into account. Every unidirectional microphone has proximity effect. That get fairly pronounced on a SM-58. And if you put on their little optional, Foam Pop Filter. Well? It's going to keep your lips. Another 1/4 inch further away. From the grill and the diaphragm. Of that SM-58. And in so doing. It still reduces the Proximity Effect. Though not by much. But a little goes a long way. So you're not correct there and. And. The difference becomes even more pronounced. If you put the large oversized, rather long, Foam Pop Filter on a SM-58.. When you then might notice. It'll compare almost unmistakably. From the SM-7's. That cost $300 more. But it's the same capsule. The real difference in the sound is your distance of your lips to the diaphragm. In that case. You really can't get closer than 2 inches from the diaphragm. That makes it even more huge difference. In both low-frequency, proximity effect and overall output level. And so I'm really surprised to hear you without this, additional information I mean this is not rocket science you know. And that does make a sizable difference in the sound. Because you see. My specialty is in doing, Live Broadcasts, Live Recordings. And I will usually insist. We put at least the extra standard small optional, foam pop filter. On the SM-58's. It makes a huge difference, huge. So I don't know where you're getting your information from? And quite frankly I like the larger oversized foam pop filters. But won't usually find that on a vocal PA microphone position. So then you use the smaller foam pop filter. It makes a huge difference. Believe it. I mean I would live to any of you. I'm a history making multiple major music award nominee. RemyRAD
The test for P pops was done with an air gun and the mic at the end of a long non sealed tube. I used the tube to keep the distance from nsistant and also to eliminate proximity effect for the p pop measurements. The pink noise tests were done close mic'ed. This was to capture the process ximity effect. Additionally, what you don't see in the video is air gun tests done close and pink tests done far. I did not include those test because they don't provide additiona significantl useful info. The p pop issue happens when close to the mic and is even more of an issue when far from the mic. Foam windscreens are big, ugly, and change the feel of the mic to the singer lips, so I did not include using them. Adding internal disks reduced p pops both near and far as shown with the air gun for far and voice for near.
Perhaps that's too simple of a perspective? When the original SM58 was designed, sound systems did not have the power and low frequency capabilities that they do now. Due to the popularity of the mic Shure is remiss to upgrade the mic to accommodate its current usages. So yes it comes down to engineering, The original engineering with a set of parameters which are no longer relevant in many situations and the further engineering that I'm performing in order to improve and modernize this classic mic and solve a very well-known issue that plagues many users
@@DaveRat Actually, Shure did upgrade the SM58. They released it as the Dualdyne series. I don't know how much better it is compared to the 58 and I'd be interested to see and hear the difference.
@ 2:17
The perforations are air vents to let sound in from the "back end" of the mic.
The phase difference between those waves and the ones from the front
is what makes the mic cardioid.
If you completely cover the holes you change it to (near) omni.
Making it less sensible to plosives, but more prone to feedback.
A classic is grabbing the mic just under the "head" and leaning over the wedge monitor.
FEEEEEEDBACKKKK
Interesting experiment.
Yes, agreed if I recall I may have done polar pattern tests in this vid?
Cool cool
A very interesting video. I enjoyed watching every second. You really put a lot of work into your research. God bless you for being a passionate, studious, and diligent individual.
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Totally makes sense there Dave. When we consider a "pop filter" has the opportunity to disperse air plosions between the mic and filter. But it's all about the dispersement of energy when it gets to go through the filter, then post filter, it's much easier for the air gap to naturally disperse energy but not sacrifice frequency. "Cool, Cool!!"
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I had a few rock and progressive bands and we needed the dreaded sm 58 because of the presence they created to cut through the ensemble. The main vocalist learned a special type of hesitant pronunciation and mic distance control to get around the problem, without realizing it at first. Trying to deal with the actual cause is admirable.
Agreed. When doing live sound, I encourage the singers/speakers to project across the top of the mic, with it near their chins and pointing up. This also prevents it from blocking their faces. As a singer and voice actor, I practice without a grill or windscreen, to develop the pronunciation skill that you mention, holding back on the plosive consonants.
I thought this was proper technique for singing into a mic🤔🍻
My experience is that proper mic technique is whatever the singer wants to do the get the look and feel they desire or makes them most comfortable or happy with their performance.
And
A great sound engineer will the the singer the best mic for the job or their quirks or whatever is needed to get a desirable sound.
@@DaveRatworking in church sound, I am often responsible for training the "Talent" how to use microphones, and I generally use the Starbucks Coffee Cup analogy.
It's Life Itself, so it must stay right below your lips, and NEVER EVER EVER dump it out! (Pointing it at the floor wedges between verses is a common bad habit lol)
@ke6gwf don't spill the sound!
I think the stacked design improves the sound of the mic overall. Nice!
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Cool stuff! I just use multi-band compression to deal with it myself but cool to see this exercise in dealing with the source.
Cool and that will definitely help or work. And yes taking sound away is never quite the same as preventing the mic from capturing it in the first place
Great fun video! The old studio trick was to have a pencil in front to deflect. I've a modded Oktava ML19 cardioid ribbon that was designed initially for speech and it used to have a curved concave strip of aluminium right in front of the ribbon which I assume was to deflect plosives which are bad news for the ribbon!
Awesome and cool info.
These tests of you are so very, very helping! Thanks Dave!!!
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Dave, thanks for making this. Would have been cool to see the pink noise response for each mic after the modification
Did I not show that? I'll go back and look I may have that footage
@@DaveRat I must have been distracted - it’s there! Just the front runners :-)
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When you took the grill off B and revealed the "round hawk" I thought of the old Don King parodies on SNL. Interesting video, thanks for all the hard work to do such thorough testing.
I had this understanding that those mesh screens basically work to turn the turbulent flow of plosives into more laminar flow. And it's been rumored that even NASA at some point made laminar flow by just stacking packs of drinking straws after the fan to create laminar flow. So the mesh screen is "simplified" version of that principle of having multitude of holes in line :)
Power to the people
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Any love for the EV ND76. Great mics. Dont see them much.
👍👍
Great Dave,
Miself just have one of these 'foam ones' to put on mics (you can buy in diff colors🎉) and cut a tiny very small bit of gaff tape and put that over it from side to side.
Just like the "pencil trick" over the grill of a large diagram or (even over the popscreen)
Some singers just feel better with a 'handheld'
All for the best Take ❤
Great one Dave .Was just up in Owen sound at a friend's house trying to get my buddies audio set up ..We got it n big trouble because his son had set up his effects console for a specific sound .Let's just say don't push the red button !
The disks are kind of like the design of the windscreen on the KMS105. This testing is something I like because I have always said let the mic do the work and this is a way to do that. If you have the response you need out of the gate, you get a better mix faster. We spend hours and hours tuning speaker systems, why not spend more time working with the mics in this way.
I just bought the official windshield for my SM58 and forgot about it :D
I mean, it's not that often I expect needing that, but it's in my bag for that moment I DO need it.
Same for the official SM57 wind shields...
For non rock show singers and situations where the added visual unsightliness of an external windscreen is acceptable, yes, externals will work
Again an absolute stunning video from you. I celebrate it. Thx a lot.
To me, bcs of working on different shows w different artists here in Germany and Europe, where people tent to use a lot of different types of mics like sennheiser, akg, Beyerdynamic, Neumann beside the SM58, I’m using a dynamic eq, set to be active only at a certain level and changing it according to the pop frequency of the used mic.
It works inaudible but effective.
But it’s a wonderful mod for some artists from the US I’m touring with, who definitely swear on their SM58. Thx a lot.
Greetz, @xel
As Lewitt found out when comparing their own pop filter that is magnetically held in place on their microphone mounts to other pop filters _(and the fact that when the Lewitt LCT 1040 came out, its filter was farther away than on all their previous microphones),_ the distance the pop filter has to the microphone is essential. It's easy to test if you got your own pop filter. Start making pop sounds with the filter touching the microphone grill, then move it farther and farther away to find the distance needed to make them effective.
I use the Hakan P110 pop filter which is excellent. It's thick, but still needs a distance to the microphone to work properly. The air needs space to move away form the microphone (to dissipate, like you said), so placing it straight on top of the microphone is going to be difficult. I understand you didn't want to alter the exterior of the microphones since no tests with that was done.
I am curious to how the effect of parts of the Hakan P110 filter cut up and placed inside of the microphone grille of the SM58 would work vs. your mod.
That p110 filter seems to be just open cell foam. As you mention, the farther the filter is the less dense and intricate it needs to be. When dealing with very small distances the intricacy and complexity of the filter design increases and the effectiveness decreases.
For applications where an external filter is viable, there are many good options out there.
But for applications where the singer is holding the mic moving it around a lot and the visual aesthetics are very important, such is not increasing the overall size of the windscreen creating more blockage of the face to cameras, then creating an internal unseen windscreen becomes very valuable and useful
Interesting you mentioned the Lewitt pop filter. I have the 440 Pure and noticed using my Stedman gooseneck pop filter was more effective and therefore I trust it over the Lewitt magnetic one. If the 1040 was released after the 440, then it means that I don’t have their optimal magnetic pop screen.
In the film world, we all know that disrupting the wind with a layer of (faux) fur then giving it room to diffuse (air space) is key. The Rycote BBG comes to mind for something like a 58 (not sure if they make one for that mic)
Yes and exactly. Yes and for handheld mics and rock shows, we Don't have the luxury of using those advanced tools and the look and lip feel are very significant factors that that make internal and unseen pop protection valuable and necessary.
@@DaveRat ya cannot break the laws of physics! 😂
True and also some designs are better than others and with me just mucking around for a bunch of hours I was able to improve The pee pop projection of the most popular mic in the world. With some actual computer modeling and engineering I think it could be bumped up quite a bit more and fully encased inside the existing shell
Love it!
Very nice video Dave, i will try the nylon method, it seems to work very well. Thank you
Nice.
Fascinating. Off the top of my head,I wonder about a layer of felt between the foam liner and the grille.
From my experience and the testing that I did, as you increase the absorptive density of anything you put in front of the diaphragm it reduces the high frequency response. If you leave air gaps around whatever barrier you place there, the plosions are not affected and just go right around the barrier be it felt a heart disk or dense foam.
If you do not leave air gaps around the barrier, then you create a chamber that increases low frequency boom and alters the polar pattern as well as reduces the frequency response HF
When I see the purple desk in the field or on you're background I know im in safe hands. I've enjoyed the videos so much as well as the folk commenting. This set of comments with people dissing the 58 and your opinion did make me laugh out loud. You obviously did FOH for one of the biggest bands ever. Im no RHCP fan as such but I've always mixed what's on the stage and paying me. You should try getting Pooch or Big Mick on for a chat sometime to discuss the 58. Metallica switched vocal mic's but put the 58 capsule in the stage mic. I can't remember the model number they pretend to use on stage, let's call it the elvis mic. It's a 58 inside the shell. Appreciate the level of skill your system techs have guys. Cheer Dave Rat. 🐀
Polenta is quite evidently the issue
Interesting! Thanks for sharing.
Would also be interesting to measure the pink noise response at 2 distances to see whether the mods alter proximity effect
They don't
Pooping puppies
A takeaway is “get an OM-7”.
Also, there are eq plugins that have use multiband compression. Presonus base eq now has one that you can set the range +\- (in this case reduction) and response trigger amount (in db) as well as the Q amount.
I’m with you on stopping the air at the mic diaphragm 👍🏼 - but there are now EQs that mitigate very well.
Removing puppy poop from your polenta is never as good as not putting it there in the first place
🤣 👆🏻 this phrase here to fore will always replace the old “crap in/crap out”
7:40 I don't know why but that graph reminds me of duck hunt on an NES you hit the bird and it would freeze and then drop.
Dude LOVE your videos!!
I will have to try what you've done with a rap mic that I've been designing
What a coincidence, I was just thinking on the weekend how annoying the SM58 pop is (after using them for the last 30 years!).
Loved the P rap and the patented P-pop creator™. That was funny! 😎😎
Whenever I see a 58 used in a million live performances, I'm baffled at they can possibly sound that good. To me the 58 is really kind of dull with a ton of warmth/mud. I wonder if just removing a ton of low end to just make it sound better also had the impact of reducing the pops significantly, whereas say a beta 58 is brighter and you wouldn't eq it the same and maybe wind up with more pops. Maybe interesting, but I thought your putting the audix filter in there made it sound a little more like what I think an OM7 sounds like. Just throwing food for thought at you even though I'm sure you already considered all of that. Loved the video, super interesting, well thought out, and funny!
BTW, you had a little segment talking about doing sound for Yngwie in one of the zoom calls which was just hilarious. I can't find it now, but I think that would be worth posting public, and I don't think the artists would be offended either. It was really funny how you told that story. It was regarding the 6 Marshalls on 10 and the 2 or 3 svt's on 10 and the keyboardist expecting his floor monitors to keep up and how you worked around that and then "poof"! Cheers, and hope all is going well for you!
Very interesting! I've always not liked the plosive amount from 58s, I prefer audix om series as they seem to have less plosive and a more airy high end in my experience. nice to see there's a noticeable difference in the mod!
Agreed. Though my main issue with 58 is stage noise bleed
@@DaveRat can you recommend a mic similar to sm58 but more resistant to noise bleed?
Maybe audix om5 or om6 is worth a try . Also Telefunken M8O is more expensive but I have seen singers that like 58 transition well to it.
Much of the challenge is lip feel for the musician as well as the problem with 58 and background noise is also what allows singers to sing farther from the might and still hear their voice.
One of the best way to eliminate plosions is to teach your vocalists good mic technique.
Great Video. 😃👍♥️
Change the title to "SM58 puppies pooping in piles of polenta" 😂
Ever just taped a pencil to the outside of the mic, centred on the diaphragm? Love that trick for the studio but naturally doesn’t lend itsself to live, but perhaps there’s a 3d printable cap for the top of the mic grill someone can invent?
My experience is a sound engineer has shown that " lip feel " his extremely important to many performers. Additionally " the look" can also be extremely important to many performers.
I kind of looked at this as a project to see if improvements could be made without altering lip feel or look
@@DaveRat reckon we could modify the grill so the centre ‘bars’ deflect a bit more plosives?
That's an interesting idea that would be fun to try
@@DaveRat you’re the man!
I’m super surprised that with 3D Printers being so prevalent these days, that there hasn’t been some 11 year old somewhere, who has solved this problem for us, yet…
I was thinking the same thing! Those discs look prime for a 3D print project!
Whats that software you're using for the freq response? Smart? Got a link?
I've often thought about doing something like this with an M80... Love the sound of that mic, but the plosives can be pretty bad
What are this little wedges????
Thank you Dave!! Could you pls tell how did u capture the sound of that gun without pressing space bar? thanks
I press the space bar. I set the averaging time just fast enough so that I could capture the blast and then hit the space bar before it dropped. I just added it out all of the dead space in the videos
What we could do in terms of a solution is to design a piece of CNC cut foam rubber which fits over the SM58 screen, and the foam rubber holding a pop shield. Yes.
Not hard to make, methinks. Aluminum foam might be good as well.
Wire would also probably be ok.
Could likewise just redesign the windscreen and grille, and sell a 3rd party upgrade which replaces the silver grille golf ball. Antimicrobial - solid silver or chromium finish, and the ability to attenuate the cardiod back entrance by adjusting a dial would be neat.
I will furnish the thread some drawings, gimme a minute and a half hour and some head scratches.
That first modified mic seems to have about 10db less p pop. Maybe if we get something that works, Shure will take it and run. Perhaps someday we will see a SM58ool (no p in it) or something...
Dave, I would really like to hear your thoughts on the old feedback reduction technique where two microphones are taped together, you sing into the top one and the bottom one is out of phase. Is this a way to reduce or eliminate feedback without having to ring out problem frequencies? Also, what feedback reduction methods are used at modern big shows? I would think at that level, there are too many problem frequencies to be able to ring them out without harming sound quality. Thank you.
In a big show done by someone like Dave, the system, speaker placement, mic placement, monitor design, and everything else is going to be designed from the ground up with feedback prevention in mind, in other words, not putting speakers directly in line with the polar pattern of microphones, as well as having the singers trained on proper mic usage to get lots of gain before feedback.
If you have singers running around in front of the speaker stacks, you may have more problems, but if they are staying close to the mic and you have gates set up to close when they aren't actively singing, you can probably survive lol
You may also have feedback eliminator processors, or built into the system processor, to notch out actively feeding back frequencies.
And yes, I would probably check the system, or Ring it Out in a new room, just to see if there are any particularly live frequencies or speakers or sources that might cause an issue, and then work through eq or changing positions to resolve the issue.
For instance, maybe a microphone for a bass cabinet is feeding back because a monitor behind the microphone is reflecting off the front of the base cabinet, but you can move the bass cabinet or turn it away from the monitor to remove the problem.
Other times you can remove the microphone from the particular speaker.
Like maybe don't put that bass cabinet mic into that monitor channel.
I have even had to constantly pan a wireless mic on a high energy speaker so whenever he walked in front of the speakers on one side, I would pan the mic to the opposite side, avoiding feedback while maintaining average room volume lol
But that was a result of system design issues, or the "talent" leaving where they were supposed to be is more like it...
The dual mic issue is that if you sing into both, the sound goes away, or at least drops a lot and sound all phasey and crap. Sing into one and some sound gets into the other and it also sounds somewhat phasey and crap. So the sound is super unstable and audibly poorer quality requiring the singer the be very mic aware.
Try it, then try and get singers to do it.
Solutions with quality and finesse will get you gigs and better sounding shows. This i believe will have the opposite effect.
cool
I've been using an sm57 with a windscreen. Seems to work...
Yes, that is a great combo for singers that are ok with a soft foam on the lips mic
I have a theory that plosives do not follow the inverse square law in the same way that regular sound waves do.
I've noticed when doing corporate sound, when someone is speaking into a microphone that is too far away from their mouth, that the plosives are much more aggressive. I think it's because you're using so much preamp gain to make up for the distance to the source, that you're amplifying the plosives with the rest of the noise floor. Conversely, I notice if you speak into a microphone with your mouth right against the grille, the plosives aren't as noticeable. Even though the plosives are much more likely to hit the diaphragm, they're not being amplified as much with the rest of the noise floor since you don't need to use nearly as much preamp gain.
Would you be able to test that? Plosives at different distances vs pink noise at different distances? Do they stay at the same relative level or not?
I tried to do exactly that by doing smart measurements of the pink noise up close and the plosive measurements at the end of the long tube that was not sealed on either end
I believe you're absolutely correct about plosives surviving distance better than the speech itself, at least within a short distance, I noticed this too and also noticed that the plosives are not travelling at the speed of sound, but considerably slower, it could be as simple as how quick your mouth/lungs are capable of accelerating a blast of air during normal speech. Also playing into this is that the plosives seem to be much more directional than the speech, you can move the microphone out of the stream of plosive air by putting it off axis and almost completely eliminate the plosives but maintain a fairly good level of audio.
I tend to disagree with your theory about the preamp gain though, I don't think this is relevant at all unless the preamp is actually clipping, gain is not selective in that manner. You could test this by using a Y-split on your next corporate lectern job and have a high gain input lower gain input.
@@chickenfizz the point about the preamp gain has to do with level matching as the source moves away from the transducer. a person holding the mic 16" away needs much more preamp gain than someone speaking into the grille, if you trim them both to the same input level.
@@mogwix on second reading I see what you're saying. Not that the gain itself is responsible for unfairly choosing to amplify the plosives in favour of the wanted speech, but that the wanted speech has become comparatively quieter with distance than the plosives.
@@chickenfizz Yes exactly. I wonder what it is about plosives. They must be like those air cannon toys that "shoot" a puff of air across the room, or maybe they move like smoke rings ... could be an interesting bit of fluid dynamics.
Here all us simpletons are using SM58's, Dave's out there using SM59's
Great video, Dave. I do take one issue though. Where is the frequency response and plosive tests for an SM58 with an external, foam pop filter? It seems essential to understand how it, as well as your modifications, compare to one another. It is, after all, the reference for existing plosive mitigation. For curiosity sake, you might also include a flat, gooseneck mounted studio pop filter as well.
Yeah I didn't do the external windscreens or the nylon stretched over a paddle that they use in studios because I figure that big, ugly and cumbersome solutions fall into a different category than hidden solutions that don't change the lip feel or look of the mic.
@@DaveRat I totally understand. Still, it would be nice to be able to compare the actual reduction of a foam windscreen to your modification.
I guess, in the end, it only matters if you like what you were able to create.
Agreed and yeah my experience is that phone windscreens do such a good job that plosions are no longer an issue. If I dive into this further that would be a great measure of success is to approach the results that foam wind screens can get
@@fantasticsound2085the issue is, you won't be getting a rock star to be singing into a mic with a Radio Shack foam sock on it, so for this conversation it's not any more an option than putting them in a recording studio with a pop filter on a shock mounted condenser mic lol
@@DaveRatso if a foam windscreen can reduce it almost completely, what could we do to get a similar effect if we went slightly external?
What if we 3d printed a new screen for the 58 that was just slightly larger, but allowed for a thicker layer of foam inside, or maybe even a 3d printed baffled arrangement to redirect plosives?
How much larger would we need to go to get similar results, and would it still be small enough that it would be acceptable?
Maybe it could be taller like a tophat, instead of spherical, so it wouldn't block the face anymore, but would be like your stacked disks, protecting only from axial plosives?
Or make it like a line array, maintaining the side to side width, but taller, and then curving out on one side, so you have more thickness on axis, but also on the "back side" of the mic (audience view), so that it's not blocking the face any more, but whether the air flow is straight down from the top, or coming into the back side, it's still got more thickness, but not changing the profile the audience sees.
You might have to work with singers to get them to keep the mic in line with the airflow, but it would be a minor adjustment.
With the ability to 3d print capsule housings, it would be easy to test different shapes and designs, and then when you find one that works, make a metal version, but a printed plastic version, maybe with a metal insert to screw onto the mic, might even be tough enough for stage use, as long as they aren't throwing it around lol
Preforate that perforation..
Fun interesting content
DAAAAAAAVE how come you didn’t include a stock 58 with a Shure foam pop filter for comparison?
Adding an external windscreen easily solves the issue. As does the nylon stretched studio paddle.
But also, many to most singers don't want foam on lips and/or the extra big size and unsightly look of a foam windscreen.
Yes, we can solve the problem by making it big and ugly, but that's no fun. The beauty of an unseen solution is a much more desirable.sdventure
As always - great info! Thanks Dave! (BTW, when I read your reply... I heard your voice in my head! Be careful in there! )@@DaveRat
I would argue the principal part of the plosive problem is simply incompetence on the part of the person using the microphone. I propose using absolutely NO high pass filter in the performer’s path. Let them hear the problem their misuse provokes and perhaps, just possibly, they might pick up a precious new practice.
Well in situations of mic cupping I would agree with you to some degree, The issue of plosives seems to be most prominent in situations where a person is speaking at some distance maybe 6" to 1ft from the mic perhaps for a political event or House of worship or corporate event, and a cardioid mic is used which reduces low frequencies at distance due to proximity effect. Compensation for the lack of low frequencies is made and even the slightest puff of air is almost impossible to avoid by the person speaking. And those slight puffs of air create resonant micro booms that are very annoying.
Subwoofers on an auxend and high pass filters can help mitigate but to really solve the problem without impacting smooth natural low-end vocal response, the plosives need to be addressed at the source
Performing a rudimentary investigation of pop-shielding the SM58 and similar mics, I turned up this product called the "Popper Blocker", and this CZcamsr covering the commercial product: czcams.com/video/jlUKKti6am0/video.htmlsi=WOBI-BgfqonfEQRn So you can kinda just shove some extra material inside the dome.
I propose developing a pop-shield specific to the SM58, possibly an alternative windscreen, and even a new system for mounting an SM58 element, particularly those made for wireless systems could be easily modified to form a new model housing which has been hardcore-modified to get that SM58 sound but with a much stricter and more rugged enclosure, with some extra acoustic features.
I could be totally wrong on this, but it seems to me the best route to go is an external filter. Keep the stock windscreens, but add a "bozo nose" foam over top. Those to me do a much better job at diffusing the extra burst of air pressure on the plosives. It's a cheap and easy solution, short of adding in a nylon stocking and rubber band to hold in place.
The more expensive added step would be to also to swap out the audio transformer inside the bottom half with one made by Tab Funkenwerk, the AMI T58. It's a $90 USD modification and gets the frequency curve of your SM57/58 close to that of the Shure Unidyne 565SD or 545SD.
Absolutely and yet external filters create visual and practical issues that self contained unseen solutions avoid.
There are often bigger ugly solutions that work work better
I'd rather live with an ugly windscreen than with a plosive-ridden vocals. That's just my opinion.
Agreed and ideally could be no plosives or ugly windscreen. Striving for ideal solutions even when they don't already exist can be a fun adventure and sometimes end up as a cool product to have fun making and selling.
Dad said, making plosive proof grills for another manufacturer's mic is not on my list of adventures. But possibly could inspire manufacture to do something, wouldn't that be cool if shure stepped up in fixed it!
@@DaveRat Do you have access to Shure's fairly new Dualdyne mics? I wonder how much of an improvement they are over the SM58 that they claim there is? 🤔
Poor polenta :(
"Round Hawk" haa
Heh heh heh.. He used muff.
The plosive pop gun.
What a clever man.
Seriously.
I want one.
With an A weighted response.
I want one that does impulse response sampling and measures sound levels. With a cable tester. And a laser pen, one that measures distances and tells you the delay time would be nice. rta/peak display. And a smartphone holder. And a butane jet lighter for soldering and heat shrink. And a torch. And a walkie talkie. And a fitting for a holster for a real firearm - gigs in africa are serious. Fit it to the side of the mixing console, innit. In lime green.
All mounted in a plastic AK47 with a rubber rat deadcat like a silencer.
Yes.
Can you make a run of them? I think we need them. Especially Ukraine.
And a bayonet.
"this thing is a work of art" 🤟 are you familiar with the work of john otway? here in a slightly more sedate couple of numbers, but he later earned a deal with shure after his sm58 featured prominently in a number that involved him head-butting it repeatedly. at gigs, the mic would end up almost unrecognisable but mostly still functional.
czcams.com/video/Z6oQ4oRH_nc/video.html
Just buy Audix microphones;)
I solved this years ago!!!!
I just don’t use those antiques! Problem solved!
Am I the only one who actually made an uwu noise uncontrollably when I looked at the graph in smaart at the graph of the fly gun? I love how rounded it looks! Please tell me that is the actual curve, and not just an artifact of the speed of the measurment.
A bit of both. The FFT measurement works results in the low frequencies needing longer time frames so a short burst will get overly smooth with an FFT measurement. This will look different than an RTA measurement.
Pat said the frequency content will drive the curve and variations will show up but they will increasingly smooth at lower frequencies
@@DaveRat Thank you for your wealth of knowledge that you freely share!
🤙👍🤙
You know the best plosion reduction technique for a 58? Throw it in the trash and buy an OM5 or V7. I seriously can’t wait until the 58 finally loses traction. I will praise the day.
OM7, V7 are easier with plosions. But I just can’t get me enough of the warmth of the 58. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Though I agree that it’s a good time right now to explore other options
OM5 and V7 dont have the same polar pattern, that’s irrelevant
I share your opinion about the 58s. As for traction, that ship has sailed. The selection of better vocal microphones has never been broader but singers remain surprisingly reticent to change.
... and please add the SM7b to the 'loses traction' box :)
@@simonclepkens7862 I don’t see how polar pattern makes them irrelevant, a tighter pattern should in theory make their plosives worse but they aren’t. They both have WAY better gain before feedback and bleed rejection than the 58 for the same price.
I'm sorry you are wrong. About the frequency response on, a, SM-58. Sorry, no. The frequency response does not stay, the same. You are wrong there. And here's why. That you didn't take into account.
Every unidirectional microphone has proximity effect. That get fairly pronounced on a SM-58. And if you put on their little optional, Foam Pop Filter. Well? It's going to keep your lips. Another 1/4 inch further away. From the grill and the diaphragm. Of that SM-58. And in so doing. It still reduces the Proximity Effect. Though not by much. But a little goes a long way. So you're not correct there and. And.
The difference becomes even more pronounced. If you put the large oversized, rather long, Foam Pop Filter on a SM-58.. When you then might notice. It'll compare almost unmistakably. From the SM-7's. That cost $300 more. But it's the same capsule. The real difference in the sound is your distance of your lips to the diaphragm. In that case. You really can't get closer than 2 inches from the diaphragm. That makes it even more huge difference. In both low-frequency, proximity effect and overall output level.
And so I'm really surprised to hear you without this, additional information I mean this is not rocket science you know. And that does make a sizable difference in the sound. Because you see. My specialty is in doing, Live Broadcasts, Live Recordings. And I will usually insist. We put at least the extra standard small optional, foam pop filter. On the SM-58's. It makes a huge difference, huge. So I don't know where you're getting your information from? And quite frankly I like the larger oversized foam pop filters. But won't usually find that on a vocal PA microphone position. So then you use the smaller foam pop filter. It makes a huge difference. Believe it.
I mean I would live to any of you. I'm a history making multiple major music award nominee.
RemyRAD
The test for P pops was done with an air gun and the mic at the end of a long non sealed tube. I used the tube to keep the distance from nsistant and also to eliminate proximity effect for the p pop measurements.
The pink noise tests were done close mic'ed.
This was to capture the process ximity effect.
Additionally, what you don't see in the video is air gun tests done close and pink tests done far.
I did not include those test because they don't provide additiona significantl useful info.
The p pop issue happens when close to the mic and is even more of an issue when far from the mic.
Foam windscreens are big, ugly, and change the feel of the mic to the singer lips, so I did not include using them.
Adding internal disks reduced p pops both near and far as shown with the air gun for far and voice for near.
It’s called engineering. I’m pretty sure that Shure spent more hours than you. 😂
Perhaps that's too simple of a perspective?
When the original SM58 was designed, sound systems did not have the power and low frequency capabilities that they do now.
Due to the popularity of the mic Shure is remiss to upgrade the mic to accommodate its current usages.
So yes it comes down to engineering, The original engineering with a set of parameters which are no longer relevant in many situations and the further engineering that I'm performing in order to improve and modernize this classic mic and solve a very well-known issue that plagues many users
@@DaveRat Actually, Shure did upgrade the SM58. They released it as the Dualdyne series. I don't know how much better it is compared to the 58 and I'd be interested to see and hear the difference.