Distortion: How To Find Its Cause and Remove It

First, be sure to know your entire signal flow.

Second, it’s usually the microphone preamp causing the distortion.

FYI, here’s The Location Sound Podcast with Michael Helms that I mentioned — https://locationsoundpodcast.libsyn.com/

At a recent conference my friend Michael Helms attended a presentation where the voices of the speakers on stage started to distort when they got loud. This was due to clipping that was happening somewhere in the audio signal chain.

Unfortunately he also witnessed the sound guy lower the faders of the distorted voices which lowered their volume but didn’t remove any distortion! Not good.

In this case, and in most cases with microphones, the distortion was due to the microphone preamplifier being cranked too high.

The correct adjustment would have been to:

1. Turn down the mic preamp until the audio stopped clipping and distorting, and

2. Push up the fader a bit to compensate for the reduced level

It’s not easy handling sound for Live events, but if you know the actual cause of distortion you can quickly and easily eliminate it.

LINKS:

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