Microphone set up question: What can I do to control fan noise?
Hi! I live in a tropical country so it gets really warm and humid sometimes. My room currently cannot handle air-conditioning, which means an electric fan is a must.
This creates a bit of a problem for me, since fan noise tends to get picked up by my condenser mic.
I've considered just putting up a bit of cardboard or something to block the fan's , but that feels inelegant, and it'll probably not look very nice when friends/family come around.
Are there any pieces of equipment I can look for or buy to block out or adjust for fan noise?
Thank you!
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You have a few choices:
Get a quieter fan.
Move closer to the microphone and turn down the gain.
Speak louder and turn down the gain.
Use a noise-cancelling headset such as used by pilots.
Use software like iZotope RX to reduce the noise.
You can mitigate some of it by using a noise gate, but when you speak it will open up the mic and will still come through. Cardboard won't do much. Repositioning the fan in the room so it's less direct would help ..... But, other than completely getting rid of it, you're not going to 100% be able to mask it.
Get a dynamic microphone, they are a lot more tolerant of background noise. You can also try a hHigh Pass Filter if the fan noise is very low frequency.
record just room noise and invert the track and overlay it with your vocal track to negate the fan noise