Question about setting up 2 microphones

Trippsy · March 11, 2020

Its simple. I want to set up two microphones close to each other in a podcast or table like setting. How would I keep my voice from being picked up by the 2nd microphone and vice versa? Or is it even an issue/solvable issue?
Probably a dumb question but im new and want to learn.

Thanks in advance!

ShearMe · March 11, 2020

Two words: Noise Gate.

It depends on your setup how you implement this, but it can be either a physical device or a software tweak. The closer the two speakers are, the more fiddling and testing will be required to get a mic to pick up it's "owner" and not the more distant speaker.

https://www.behindthemixer.com/audio-gating-guide/

JZStudios · March 11, 2020

Noise gate is kind of a "Fuck it, we'll do it live!" fix it in post deal. If you have decent mics it depends on how close they are, but also what pattern they have. Omnidirectional is no good. Here's a decent link; https://ehomerecordingstudio.com/microphone-polar-patterns/

Otherwise you'll want to control the volume pretty accurately, keep them separated as far as possible, and try to align the pattern so they pick up less noise. Probably still need a noise gate, but that only helps when there's "silence" in one. Can lead to a bit of middy channel separation, but if you're both talking at the same time, and it being a podcast, it shouldn't really matter. Prioritize on fiddling with placement and volume/sensitivity levels to physically get less crosstalk.