User Manual

Townsend Labs Sphere L22 Precision Microphone System Guide Recording Vocals

The Room

Even a studio with good acoustics may not be ideal for your application. It could be too reverberant,

dry, or contain unflattering bass resonances. Repositioning the mic and/or artist is generally the best

solution, but that isn’t practical if the track has already been recorded. With Sphere you can

continuously alter the polar pattern of the mic to blend in the desired amount of room sound after

the track has been recorded!

Home and Project Studios

Less than ideal recording environments, such as a typical home or project studio, often have too

much (or poor quality) room ambience and reverberation that often produce flutter echoes and comb

filtering. Sphere offers great features to help achieve a professional vocal sound despite these

impediments. While it is always a good idea to optimize these issues acoustically, it is often not

practical. Acoustical treatments for a home studio can be costly, and might not appeal aesthetically to

the other family members who use the space.

Off-Axis Correction

Sphere’s OFF-AXIS CORRECTION™ can minimize room reflections and produce a more present,

intimate sound. OFF-AXIS CORRECTION works by applying a correction factor to the mic’s polar

response to yield a more accurate pattern.

For example, the polar patterns for virtually all conventional cardioid mics vary substantially with

frequency. A typical large diaphragm condenser mic might be cardioid in the range 1 – 2 kHz,

omnidirectional below 150 Hz, and figure-8 (or other non-cardioid patterns) at higher frequencies.

These variations from an accurate cardioid response are important factors that characterize the sound

of each mic, and even the best have some of these imperfect properties. However, when acoustics are

not ideal or other instruments bleed into the coverage of the mic, they can cause problems.

With

OFF-AXIS CORRECTION enabled, a mic’s flawed cardioid pattern, like the one described above, can

be converted into a more accurate cardioid pattern across its full audible spectrum. This can lead to

more off-axis rejection and therefore a less colored off-axis response. But perhaps most importantly,

OFF-AXIS CORRECTION lets you set the mic model, and consequently its on-axis response and entire

polar pattern independently. This means you can take any mic model, such as a cardioid 87, and apply

a different pattern, such as hypercardioid, that is not necessarily found in the original mic, yet still

maintain the overall sonic character.

Assuming room reflections arrive at the mic equally from all directions, a hypercardioid pattern

produces the least room pickup, which can significantly reduce the effect of poor acoustics. Using a

hypercardioid pattern also lets the vocalist move farther from the mic without getting too much room

sound, which can produce a more natural recording.