Curious about the -20db pad on mic?

The MH

The MH

New member
I never used this feature on my mic and I finally got a little curious and googled it. A few people said they noticed the ambient noise reduce greatly when the 20db pad was switched on and gain adjusted accordingly. But some said the tone had noticeable changes.

My question is, under what circumstances would a professional use the -20db pad switch? (I only use my mic for vocals.)
 
- 20 dB pad is used to avoid the saturation of the internal mic preamplifier when capturing a loud source like drums. Depending of the exact design of the internal preamplifier, this may affect the sound of the mic and its self noise.
 
I had never used it or my low end roll off and figured it was time to see how they worked. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
 
It is highly unlikely that you will want to use a -20 dB pad on a microphone when doing vocals. All that using it is likely to do is mean that you need to increase the gain on your preamp to make up the lost gain from the microphone, and in doing so probably introduce noise from having the preamp input cranked high. Minus 20 is a big reduction, and is more suited to drums, loud guitar amps and Boeing 727 engines!
 
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