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> boosting the bass artificially

To clarify a bit, I think that, by "artificial", you mean the boost does not correspond to how the human voice actually sounds, which is true.

But in another sense, it's not artificial. It's a natural side effect of the physics of how microphones work. In building microphones to be directional (favor sounds from, say, in front), they've also made it where the amount of bass picked up is heightened when the mic is very close.

So NPR is artificially (with a high-pass filter) removing a natural side-effect (of directional mics) to avoid getting artificial-sounding boomy bass.

Also, this is one of those accidental invention things where what was originally a side effect has turned into a valued, essential feature. Like guitar amp distortion is part of the electric guitar sound. Or like how resonator guitars (Dobro, National) were invented to be louder but now people like the tone.

There could also be a cultural aspect of this. In English, the lower you speak, the more respectable you are. It is borderline ridiculous when you listen as a foreigner (when voices are cutting off or rattling), until I learnt how to use it myself ;) Anyway, I speak with much higher pitch in French, and perhaps the bass mic is important for English speakers, but wouldn’t have had such an effect on European radios, where, maybe in Spanish, high frequencies would be important because the faster you speak, the more interesting you are? Consonants are much more important in latin languages.

I haven't noticed this so much in English, but it's egregious in Spain, where actors in shows speak an octave lower than their normal voice. It sounds very forced to me.

The basic vocal technique for a deep voice requires relaxation. Different parts of your body resonate in different registers, and the “deep” voice is usually a chest resonance. Trying to force it creates tension in your chest that interferes with your voice.

I just realized how true the thing about the faster you speak the more interesting you are is in Spain, France, Italian... Pretty terrible for a language learner though.

> So NPR is artificially (with a high-pass filter) removing a natural side-effect (of directional mics) to avoid getting artificial-sounding boomy bass.

He says later on in the article that they try and get people in the studio to not talk directly into the mic but across it. So in some ways they are trying to correct for the issues caused by strong directionality before they get to artificial things like signal filters.

That (talking across) was what clicked for me. They are in a controlled reverbance room and that's worth a lot too.

It is so clear that getting a clean analog signal up front is worth a lot.

So, this is not quite correct. Talking across it means that you are aiming your voice to the side of the microphone, but the microphone is still aimed directly at your mouth. It’s not the directionality of the microphone that is an issue, it’s the air coming out of your mouth.

> But in another sense, it's not artificial. It's a natural side effect of the physics of how microphones work. In building microphones to be directional (favor sounds from, say, in front), they've also made it where the amount of bass picked up is heightened when the mic is very close.

This is called the Proximity Effect, isn't it?

Any reason why this isn't just done in software rather than hardware? Is it just more setup when it's easier if it's a hardware switch.

The article just said it's not left up to the studio.

Flippantly, because hardware is cool!

Plugins - software for audio programs - are available but audio engineers are famously persnickety.

Disagree, because the issue here is where the filter is. As others have noted that a condenser mic has an internal preamp, it is most useful to filter inside the mic before amplification to preserve S/N ratio. I suppose you could do that with software in the mic, but that seems like a lot of effort for maybe a worse result.

Further down the audio path it eventually makes sense to digitize, but if you didn't have the HPF in the mic your noise floor will be worse.

Low frequencies carry an awful lot of energy and you will get maximum dynamic range out of a mic by close-micing but HPF'ing off the lows early in the chain. Many condensers have little preamps inside them, and the HPF may be placed before this pre giving it effectively a lot more headroom.

I don’t know how the U87 works, but some capsules can change response by adjusting polarization voltages.

Software?

Software pipelines only began to get into radio some 20/25 years ago. NPR started in 71

Also software can't do magic (and you aren't processing each microphone digitally), you want to be your signal to be as best as it can as close to the source as you can make it to be.

You can boost your gain a lot higher if you throw out the bass early in the signal chain and preserve a much higher S/N ratio.

Reliability. Purpose-built hardware switches don't crash, ever.

Tell that to a roadie. Hardware fails all the time.

Old Steven king book. On a group traveling to a rain forest.

They gave all the equipment to a pack of monkeys for the night. Anything still working in the morning was certified as reliable.

I may be wrong (its been a long time since I read it, and it may be just something that fits really well thematically with the book but wasn’t actually in it), but I think that was Michael Crichton’s Congo, not a Steven King book.

Your right. That’s why I couldn’t find the reference

The original chaos monkeys?

Latency is still a problem with audio software.

Two contributing factors, I suspect. Most importantly software can only deal with whatever hits the digital side; physics and electronics being what they are there are lots of places to lose information on the analog side. If you filter out that range before you add gain you probably get way better SNR and don't have to rely on some ridiculously sampling and high resolution to not lose things. Second - they have been doing this a lot longer than sophisticated software pipelines have been available.

It’s because a HW circuit is easier to engage, more reliable, higher fidelity and requires less maintenance.

I don't know if you’ve worked with modern audio software but its truly a tangled stack of complexity, incompatibility, license management, etc etc. It can sound and work great once set up, but its touchy stuff when it comes time to make changes, update the OS, etc. as we all know software is notoriously buggy which is far from ideal in a live scenario.

I always figured it had more to do with the kind of systems were using back in the days of old - flat and dull sounding by default. Most cars I remember being in, in the 80's and 90's maybe had quad 4" speakers with no tweeters, and a portable radio or walkman was pretty lo-fi sounding as well. So the bass and the highs would be hyped up to make it sound better for the average listener?

You can also just go for the similar Neumann's that are lower down in their line. I have a TLM 103 and recommend it highly, although it doesn't have the high-pass switch so you'd want to do that via software or preamp.

Also good: older AKGs, you can sometimes pick these up relatively cheap on ebay.

> Pop vocals in particular are way thinner than people realize.

Thanks to near constant use of auto-tune I think most people realize pop vocals are thin.

Edit: clarification to remove accidental contradiction. I initially ended with "... I think most people realize that," which would have essentially translated to, "Most people realize that pop vocals are thinner than most people realize."

Pitch correction doesn't thin vocals when used correctly.

I read this in T-pain’s voice. Auto tune does get abused, doesn’t it?

for what its worth T-pain has pretty conclusively proved that he didn't need autotune, he just used it as a gimmick to stand out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIjXUg1s5gc

Quite relevantly, his NPR tiny desk concert was a fantastic example of his musical range and his vocal talent. He is an excellent musician.

Similarly, his performances on The Masked Singer were outstanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIZ23g9lsBk&t=359s

Autotune and melodyne are just standard now. Good usage is not really detectable. What people forget to note is that you still need to know how to sing in the first place. Autotune plugins can only do so much...

These plugins really exist to save time for large studios, not make bad musicians better. Time is money for studios, so they don't want to waste it on multiple retakes when someone can be close enough to make small fixes with melodyne. For session work, market effects still pressure people to, well, not make mistakes like that. A great singer is still going to be in higher demand than a decent one, because then the studios don't have to spend much time at all fixing their vocals.

Also, -noticeable- autotune can be desired. It's a musical choice. In that sense it's no different than using a vocoder, etc. I personally do not like it but that's the beauty of music; there's something for everyone.

It is totally detectable, unless it truly is a one off tweak. But that is almost never what happens. Maybe a great vocal will get a tweak to save otherwise great take, and that is fine. Good thing.

But then the whole production sees similar things all over the place and it gets cleaned right up technically. Time, levels, the works right?

And the energy is diminished, could be lost.

Like fashion, this will all cycle in and out. Young people hear the humanity in music made prior to these and other tools and it appeals.

Little things, like a change in tempo, small vocal errors, inconsistency, all add up in a track.

I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle.

Like you say, there is nothing technically wrong with any of this tech. And it could all be used very differently from how it is today too.

Recently, I have been going back through great live shows. Fantastic! And I still get that tingle from the realization someone delivered it live, to a crowd. And yeah, not so perfect, but oh so very human too.

"It is totally detectable."

Good application of it is not, no. When we hear obvious autotune vocals, it's a deliberate aesthetic choice.

I believe what you're talking about is how modern production is about producing "perfect" song recordings, and mapping everything to a click track/beat grid. Now that is totally noticeable compared to music made a few decades ago. I do agree that it makes music sound sterile. This is separate to autotune/melodyne being used.

"I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle."

Maybe the main industry studios will, but music in general isn't determined by what those folks are doing. There are more indie publishers than ever, and so on.

I made an edit, because I do agree with you.

And yes! The indies are all over the place. Love it.

Those hi hats. Argh

I used to not like autotune at all in music, but then I think I heard an interview with Grimes (?) who basically said (paraphrasing) "oh, I love autotune. Yes it's artificial and detectable, BUT it brings the vocals even closer to the music, which makes a more powerful impression.

Ever since then, it's not bothered me nearly so much when the vocals are tuned. The track hits harder. Yes: it's true the voice loses some of it's natural beauty, but in turn, you get music and voice that follow perfectly.

I think the big difference there is trying to use it to just hide imperfections vs. consciously making it a conspicuous part of the music. For someone like Grimes, adding in blatantly artificial manipulation fits in perfectly with the rest of her aesthetic.

Autotune used as an artistic style is something I used to dislike out of... snobbery, I suppose. It's a perfectly valid choice for an artist.

Now, I really hate hearing it in kids' songs. Sung by kids, for kids, and sounding so flat and blah. Much like laments against modern "beauty" productions, I think excessive autotune presents kids with an unrealistic expectation for their own voices.