royer 122v, Operation Instructions Manual & User Manual, Page: 15 / 33

increasingly pronounced as the distance between the micro-
phone and the sound source is reduced.
This bass-boosting characteristic can become quite intense and,
if desired, can be corrected by equalization. However, for a
multiple microphone setup, the pronounced bass boosting (due
to proximity effect) can be turned to an advantage. If an instru-
ment, such as a trumpet, is extremely close-miked and the bass
is cut to restore flat response, unwanted low-frequency sounds
are cut back by upwards of 20dB compared to an unequalized
microphone with a flat response. This discrimination is
inde-
pendent of the microphone’s polar response.
Another area where proximity effect can be turned to an advan-
tage is to make things sound more “real than real.” For exam-
ple, many voices and certain musical instruments produce fun-
damental frequencies within the bass range (below 150Hz or
so) but the fundamentals are weak. If a microphone that has no
proximity effect and a rising high frequency response is used on
an upright piano, or on a person with a thin, weak voice, the
recorded sound is likely to sound even thinner than it was in
real life. In contrast, using a microphone with strong proximity
effect on such sound sources can deliver a “better than real”
sound since the boosted bass response will compensate for the
weak fundamentals in the sound source. Since the fundamentals
14
Typical relationship of
microphone distance to
frequency response for rib-
bon-velocity bidirectional
microphone.