its not a difficult thing to understand and i respect you took time too get photos but the thing i was talking about was the reason we did the mic hanging from the ceiling i was taught too do it this way ,the guy who taught me in my resindency was a former member and enginner of 10cc and also enginnered many classic albums from the 70/80/90s and is now working for lucasfilms and disney so too say that he was wrong in what he taught me then thats a bit arrogant too say the least.
1. I never said it is "wrong" to hang a mic from the ceiling or to position it upside down. I said that as long as the mic is in the location you want it, it makes absolutely no difference whether the mic is upside-down, rightside-up or sideways. I was talking about the idea of the "singing into the mic body instead of the capsule" making no sense... I was talking about the idea of it somehow sounding different or picking up a voice differently.
2. just because somebody has some credits to their name does not mean they know everything (or that they know
anything for that matter.) Lots of "engineers" pick up bad habbits or bad information that they carry with them through the years.
3. It is not "arrogant" to question what people say to you. It is "foolish" NOT to if you have actual knowledge or reason to believe that the person is wrong.
4. ...and you think it is "arrogant" of me to question this guy, but what about
you presuming that I am just "someone on a forum"? You do not know what my credits are or what I have worked on or who I have worked with or for how long.
every engineer places mics a little bit differently to the next all use different mics and waystoo record and its the same for every singer some have great studio instincts and can position themselfs perfectlly to give the best takes everytime so need to have the best atmosphere to record and for people who cant sing as long or as loudly we hung mics to open there vocal cords up the pic you produced is just a standard placement and as you say and your correct a mic at that hight can be postioned how you want but only if the singer can give a good take or is happy to sing at that level also each mic has pros and cons so some cant be postioned how you like they have to be fixed in a certain way to have them record perfectlly.
each to there own ..in my studio i dont record vocals that much and when i do its mainly rap/mc vocals so in mine theres no need to hang it up .
Like I said, I never said anything about what would be a proper mic position.
I never said there is a "right" or a "wrong" way to position a mic...
...in fact, I said the OPPOSITE of that: I said that not only is there no right or wrong position, but there is not even a sonic "better" or "worse" since it makes no sonic difference either way.
I was only talking about the fact that there is no sonic difference between upside-down, rightside-up and sideways...
...and that the reason people turn mics upside-down is to accommodate space or to reach somewhere, etc... not because it "sounds different" or because "you'd be singing into the body of the mic if the capsule were in the same position and the only difference being the orientation of the mic body as up or down"...
AND...
my picture applies regardless of what the mic position is.
I even made a new one for you showing the mic higher with the singers head pointed up to allow him to "open his vocal chords"...
No matter what "upside down"mic position you show me, there is a "rightside up" version of it that will sound exactly the same.
we also used to record guitars in a old warehouse next door and to get ambience theyd put the guitar amps into the derilict warehouse dangle the mics above the amps to record the reverb and atmosphere theyd also have mics i weird things like tin baths and tin buckets also recording at the same time to record the weird reverbs coming into them from the amps .
all this would be fed into the desk on seperate channels then fed into its own stereo bus which was then compressed wed record this to analogue tape then bounced to dat for storage.
effects like this would be used in movies/games or intros for rock bands wanting something weird.
hanging mics up has lots of uses and is safe to do but if your ever unsure remember to place some kind of cushioning underneath it .
None of that stuff above is related in any way to this discussion.
There are many reasons to put mics in all sorts of positions...
BUT...
none of this relates to "the reason for positioning a mic upside down vs rightside up when you will be performing directly into the capsule"