Per què el micròfon del Mundial de la BBC es posa contra els llavis

I've been watching the World Cup on the BBC and sometimes when a match ends they speak to the commentators live from the stadium and you get to see the microphone that they use when they're doing the commentary and it's this really weird looking thing and they use it by putting it directly up to their mouth. "And down to ten men, I just thought every single one of them was superb." I wanted to know more about how it works and maybe have a go with it, so I got my hands on one. This is the Coles 4104 microphone and it's a lip ribbon microphone, it was designed in the 1950s by the BBC, working with a company called Standard Telephones and Cables. The reason that I wanted to try this mic out is because it's cool but also because I often film next to really loud places like busy roads and stuff and I have had problems with things just being a little bit too noisy when I get to watching them back in the edit. So I really want to see how this mic would perform in the types of places that I film.

So this is a pretty loud area here in Tottenham Court Road station, quite a lot of people milling around and passing by. So hey this is what it sounds like with this weird microphone. And this is what it sounds like with the normal microphone I use, so you probably, I imagine, can hear quite a lot more of everything that's going on around me. This is what the usual mic that I would use sounds like so you can hear that bus beeping in the background, you can probably hear lots of other weird things happening around me. But if I go back to this it should be a lot more reduced because I guess this is basically the equivalent of the commentator in the football stadium, you know you can hear the background noise, you can hear the crowd and whatever else might be happening. But it's definitely separating the voice from whatever might be happening in the background. And this is absolutely incredible to have, I don't know what is happening but there's loads of noise coming from these cars.

So this is a fantastic test. Now I'm not an audio engineer but from what I understand the way this mic works is that it's open at the front and the back and what the microphone picks up is the difference in sound pressure between the front and the back. So if I'm here and I'm speaking into it at the front I'm creating some sound pressure here that's going to be different from what's happening at the back and so that will get picked up and recorded. But if something happens off to the side that will create sound pressure that's going to be about the same at the front and the back so that won't get picked up or at least it'll be a lot quieter than it would have been. I suppose because the mic picks up this direction and this direction, when vehicles are going past it might actually pick them up to an extent so like is this getting picked up right now? There's a bus going past making a little bit of noise there so it might be getting picked up but it should still be fairly audible. I seem to be framed by a wheelbarrow right now. Because the microphone is optimised for

being used this closely and by a football commentator who's shouting really loud and getting really energetic, things that happen behind it are going to have to be very loud to really be picked up at any kind of significant level. So I'm on quite a busy road right now, there's a bus idling here, there's people walking around all over the place, we're at Tottenham Court Road but this is what it sounds like through the commentary mic. And then this is what it sounds like through a more traditional mic that I might use for other videos so you should be able to get quite a bit more background ambience let's say. Whenever you're using a microphone you always want to try and get it as close to the audio source as possible - in this case my mouth - and that's the same principle as when you are somewhere loud and you're trying to hear someone speak you might have to lean in to hear them but it can be really easy to mess up the distance between the microphone and the audio source especially if you're focusing on lots of other things. That's why myself and lots of other people these days use microphones like this where

you clip it onto yourself because then once you've clicked that on and you check that that sounds okay it's going to stay there it's going to be at the same distance from your mouth pretty much the whole time and you're not going to have to think about it. You do sometimes see people do this where they take it off and hand hold it which still works but then the risk is that if you stop thinking about that and you start thinking about other things or what you're going to say the mic starts to drift a little bit further away and it starts to sound a little bit bad or you might start holding it a little bit too close to your mouth and it starts sounding really spicy. But with this mic it actually has this little lip on the front of it and you're supposed to use it by literally putting that against your top lip and that forces you to use it at the correct distance so if you put it like that, you are going to be using it correctly; you don't have to think about it and you can't kind of accidentally hold it too far or too close to your mouth.

I suppose what might be interesting is to see what would happen if I held this microphone too far away maybe I forget about the lip thing and I hold it like this. It definitely to me sounds like my voice is not quite punching out in the same way but if I put it back on the lip this is what it sounds like and then another thing we can try is if I hold it on the side now my voice should be quite a bit on the next loud. One of the loudest places that you can go in London of course is the Central line on the London Underground which I'm on board right now. So this is what it sounds like with the commentary mic [INAUDIBLE] and this is what it sounds like with the commentary mic, so hopefully you can hear a difference between that because for me it's so loud in here right now that I can't really hear the difference to be honest.

One thing I didn't mention when I was trying out this mic is that it's made in the UK by a company called Coles Electroacoustics which is based in Hertfordshire I think. And I did ask them if I could come and visit the factory and have a look at how these mics are made but it was too short notice so they couldn't do it. But they did send me a few clips from inside the factory that give you a little bit of a look at how these mics are made. And apparently the design of the mic has changed a little bit since it first came out in the 1950s but not massively and you do find this a lot with microphones like if you take a camera from the 1950s and compare it to one from today there will be quite a lot of differences but if you compare a microphone from then to one from today the underlying principles of how it works will still be roughly the same. So actually the first time I saw this microphone was when I was on my recent trip to

the G7 summit and one of the reporters who was on the trip was using a microphone like this to do I assume a report for the radio he was just in the corner of some place that we were having lunch and talking into it and Inoticed that and I thought it was really distinctive because he was using it so close to his mouth, I'd never seen anything like that before. So then when I was watching the World Cup and that mic came up again I thought "ok I've got to find out what this is because that is such a weird looking thing." But yeah I guess that's another scenario where you can use it if you're in a crowded space and you have to do something for the radio or a podcast or something like that. Big goof on my part to film this video during one of the several heatwaves that we've had this year. Voluntarily stepping onto the Central line during one of these heatwaves, not something to be recommended. Well with the tube out of the way there's really only one other loud thing I can think of to try. Okay so this is going to be pretty loud and I think I'll probably just have to play this clip twice so I'll put on screen what mic

you're hearing right now and yeah it is pretty loud. I'll put on screen what mic you're hearing right now, and yeah, it is pretty loud. But hopefully there is quite a difference between the two mics. Overall I don't think I'm going to be using this for future videos just because this whole situation is a little bit strange but it's always nice to try new things. You never know, and maybe if I was doing videos where I don't appear on camera maybe I would use it, who knows. But it does also kind of make you sound like a football commentator which is not the kind of vibe that we usually go for around here. All right well that was fun. - Chris Spargo? - Yes. - Oh nice to meet you. I'm doing a video right now hence all my weird ass stuff that I have.