Your voice can be amplified when speaking through a microphone; the quality of this amplified sound depends on both your mic and its amplifier system.
You can perform several straightforward tests to assess how a microphone performs and prevent feedback; the ear-splitting noise is caused when the mic and speaker come too close together.
Acoustics
Many singers are amazed to discover that their natural voices sound pretty different when amplified. Your sound amplification system, microphone, speakers, and any acoustic effects such as reverb or autotune will all impact how people hear your voice; additionally, the room can significantly affect it as bad acoustics can alter your sound significantly.
Opera and Broadway singers rarely used microphones in the past, which allowed their voices to fill large halls without microphones and project over orchestras. On the other hand, rock singers often sing in rooms with poor acoustics that may drown out their voices due to loud instruments playing too close by, leading them into bad habits such as overusing breath support or belting their singing voice.
In certain situations, your voice can be trained to minimize or even eliminate its need for a microphone. The key is learning to hear yourself without one so that you can develop techniques explicitly tailored to your unique voice. Furthermore, it’s wise to avoid feedback – an ear-splitting noise produced when mic and speaker come too close together – which occurs when too much time passes between mic use and speaker exposure.
Feedback
Feedback, that high-pitched noise that can make audiences shudder and flee the stage, is caused by too much sound entering a microphone from external sources like speakers. Both heads have non-flat frequency response curves which pick up more at specific frequencies than others, and, the greater it’s gain setting, the more likely it is that feedback occurs at any frequency near enough to the mic element.
Feedback can be continuous, such as when the microphone has been adjusted to avoid input but still an unpleasant sound or tone coming through, or intermittent, where feedback only occurs occasionally and becomes annoying for both singer and audience members.
Privacy
Even though having access to your microphone can seem like a great feature, it could also pose privacy concerns. Most apps that utilize microphones require your permission when installing or accepting them – for this reason, if any problems exist regarding privacy, be sure to read up on an app’s terms of service and privacy policies before downloading. Ideally, apps should indicate they’re listening by showing an indicator, such as Shazam; having an LED indicator could also be handy in such instances.
