Recording my breathing?

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Actually someones post about making sure you are not recording at max levels is in fact quite a good point. I believe perhaps there was another post stating this was not an issue but I disagree . While I do agree that if you are looking down at your picking hand you are most likely breathing strait down towards the mic at the lower body. And its just a guess mind you but perhaps just shifting your head more towards the neck joint might help. And for sure perhaps placing that mic in a more downward facing angle might help a lot also. And learning to relax you breathing is quite a good suggestion also.

However where I disagree is in considering proximity effect (which is likely some of the culprit in picking up the breath noise), proximity effect as well as off axis pic up will definitely increase with a hotter signal coming off the mic. Couple that the fact, with the fact that if you are recording to digital instead of tape you actually do not want the type of hot signal that tape required in the past. You can and should be at least -6 to -10 db below 0. and can easily be -12 to -15 db. At least try it an see if it does indeed help eliminate some of the breath problem Cheers , Kev

Proximity effect has nothing to do with recording level. It has to do with how close a directional mic, whether cardioid or figure 8, is to the sound source. The amount of proximity effect doesn't change with input level. Neither does the amount of off-axis pick-up. Both of these are inherent characteristics of the mic itself.

Your understanding of analog & digital levels is also a bit off. Depending upon how much headroom is desired in the digital domain, analog "0" is equal to -20 to -15 digital.

[bagpipe]

Thanks for all the replies so far. How about the difference between omnidirectional and unidirectional mics. Is it a safe assumption that I should be using unidirectional mics which would be assumed to pick up more of the direct sound source ie the guitar, and not my breathing? In my case, the neck mic was an unidirectional (a Behringer B-5 with the unidirectional filter) and the body mic was a omnidirectional (a Naiant X-Q) as that is all I have.

Is everyone going on the assumption that I would have been using unidirectional mics for both? (Probably not difficult to tell that I'm new to all of this ). It makes sense to me that a omnidirectional mic would pick up more external noise.

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by bagpipe

Thanks for all the replies so far. How about the difference between omnidirectional and unidirectional mics. Is it a safe assumption that I should be using unidirectional mics which would be assumed to pick up more of the direct sound source ie the guitar, and not my breathing? In my case, the neck mic was an unidirectional (a Behringer B-5 with the unidirectional filter) and the body mic was a omnidirectional (a Naiant X-Q) as that is all I have.

Is everyone going on the assumption that I would have been using unidirectional mics for both? (Probably not difficult to tell that I'm new to all of this ). It makes sense to me that a omnidirectional mic would pick up more external noise.

Omni mics do not suffer from proximity effect but do have a 360 degree pick-up pattern. No matter where pointed, an omni will hear you breathe to one degree or another. My advice: use the directional mic only and see if the breath noise problem goes away. Thousands of good recordings have been made with just one mic placed properly anyway. Give it a shot.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by RRuskin

Proximity effect has nothing to do with recording level. It has to do with how close a directional mic, whether cardioid or figure 8, is to the sound source. The amount of proximity effect doesn't change with input level. Neither does the amount of off-axis pick-up. Both of these are inherent characteristics of the mic itself.

Your understanding of analog & digital levels is also a bit off. Depending upon how much headroom is desired in the digital domain, analog "0" is equal to -20 to -15 digital.

Ahh I stand corrected , perhaps I am using some terminology out of context or incorrectly, Its happened before. While it is true that proximity effect is a function of how close the source is. What I was trying to relate was that in a practical sense as you increase the gain you will here more of whatever "Inherent characteristics" the mic has.

So if not in the technical sense than at least in the end result you will here an increase in those characteristics with an increase in gain. And I suppose I should have used the term wind noise or breath noise instead of prox effect .

As far as digital and analog levels I was not attempting to give an exact relationship between the two, Thank you for that BTW. Rather I was giving a practical suggestion as to where one might set mic pre levels in relation to what the digital meters are peaking at. And as you stated if -15 to -20 is the equivalent relationship to 0 then I was suggesting the OP might try that and see ? if less breath noise results in the recording by doing so

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Ahh I stand corrected , perhaps I am using some terminology out of context or incorrectly, Its happened before. While it is true that proximity effect is a function of how close the source is. What I was trying to relate was that in a practical sense as you increase the gain you will here more of whatever "Inherent characteristics" the mic has.

So if not in the technical sense than at least in the end result you will here an increase in those characteristics with an increase in gain. And I suppose I should have used the term wind noise or breath noise instead of prox effect .

As far as digital and analog levels I was not attempting to give an exact relationship between the two, Thank you for that BTW. Rather I was giving a practical suggestion as to where one might set mic pre levels in relation to what the digital meters are peaking at. And as you stated if -15 to -20 is the equivalent relationship to 0 then I was suggesting the OP might try that and see ? if less breath noise results in the recording by doing so

You're still not getting it. Increasing the gain increases the level of everything in the same relationship. Whatever ratio exists between wanted and unwanted sound(s) picked up by a microphone will remain exactly the same.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by RRuskin

You're still not getting it. Increasing the gain increases the level of everything in the same relationship. Whatever ratio exists between wanted and unwanted sound(s) picked up by a microphone will remain exactly the same.

Actually I do more or less understand. I'm just poor at stating my thoughts in it type written form. And honestly thanks for your attempt to educate. I, by no means consider myself an audio engineer. Merely a student of recording. Because of my own confusion I did query an engineer and he more of less confirmed what you are saying. He put it this way " In theory, input gain should raise the level linearly" i.e. ( same relationship) He did also state that in reality because of nummerious variables including circuit topology and even room acoustics, that the input and more importantly the resulting output may not actually be entirely linear.

[jackstrat]

After you have taken all of the precautions in the excellent replies, you can always go back and remove the breathing using Sony SoundForge or similar program. I just spent a couple of days at work removing the enhales and exhales of the vocals on over 100 clips. It is not tough to do, just time-consuming.

JackL

[KevWind]

I had another thought the OP might try. Audition just the track from the neck mic, see if there is less or any breath noise if so, then you might consider using just that track . You could the duplicate it then slip (in time) one track just slightly enough to get a delay effect, if your DAW has that feature and then pan one track hard left and one hard right..

[Ivob]

i'm glad to see that not only i have problems with breathing in recordings, i spent a lot of time with setting a mic to gain an optimal recording. decreasing the input level doesn't solve the problem because when mastering the tracks, you lawfully have to increase the output because it's too quiet and the breathing is back. after some time i came to terms with the fact that the recordings will probably never be clean and i told to myself: it's acoustic music so why it shouldn't be apparent that it is played by a living player!? now i know that regular breathing is better than to keep your breath to prevent recording from breathing because it causes a deficit which you have to compensate after a few second and it means noisier breat-ins and breath-outs...moreover, irregular breathing causes that i make mistakes when playing/recording and that's not good for concentration. but also a type of mic is probably important, as far as i know smaller diaphragm mics don't take such a wide surroundings than larger diaphragms, but you looses some mellowness of sound with small diahpragms. hope to understand my english good luck with recording!

[deepnback]

bagpipe:
Is that a common problem?

Hi, yes this is a common problem. On most of my recordings I can hear my breath. Mostly because I have an almost constantly stuffed nose
Meanwhile I accept a bit of this sound on my recording and avoid to record when I am sick. I also do some meditation right before I start recording and it helps a bit. I also put some salve with menthol below my nostrils to have a quieter breathing.

But if the playing and tranport of emotion was good I do not care about noise at all.

[valleyguy]

Move the mics closer to the guitar, you'll pick up less extraneous sounds, like breathing.