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I tried this cheap mic he got off amazon and I was surprised at how little background noise it picked up during calls and on discord.

I also tried a blue yeti in cardioid mode still picks up background sound if it's behind me or even loud sound coming from the speakers. However, I noticed that the the cheap mic doesn't pick up that sound.

I suspect it might have to do with the fact that it's really close to the audio source (my face). Is this true, and can I expect this if I buy another "lapel" mic? What is this property of only picking up really close sounds called?

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  • Hey Hassan - this needs condensing. You can delete -everything- except the last sentence.
    – Mark
    Mar 29 '20 at 13:51
  • I wanted to give context as to what microphone I was referring to, as well as what else I tried and why I thought what I did. If you don’t think so I’m happy to accept an edit.
    – Hassan
    Mar 29 '20 at 15:45
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From your link...

"Clip the microphone onto the headphone cable as close to the mouth as possible"

Sound follows the inverse square law - to massively over-simplify, twice as far away is a quarter as loud, 4x times further = 1/16th as loud.

So let's assume your background noise remains constant… & we have a mic 2 cm from your mouth compared to one 50cm away.

It's not that there's less background noise, it's that the voice is massively louder in comparison. To prevent that overloading your mic preamp, you turn down the gain on the one close to your mouth… & the background noise is turned down too.

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  • So what you're saying is I can expect this from any lapel mic, not just this one?
    – Hassan
    Mar 26 '20 at 16:16
  • Pretty much, yes. Not that the sound quality itself will necessarily be better, but the apparent reduction in background noise will be similar with any lav or headset mic.
    – Tetsujin
    Mar 27 '20 at 7:43
  • Makes sense, thanks!
    – Hassan
    Mar 27 '20 at 13:44

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