Topic: Roll Off Question

[dave570]

When using a battery box with a bass roll off (assuming one needs that), how would I know which frequency to use? Is it just a guess?  The choices are:  69Hz or 107Hz or 160Hz or 195 Hz or 888Hz.

[taylordb]

I nevr use a bass roll off, but if I did I would use the lowest setting.

[DSatz]

If you're using microphones that have an overall sound that you like (especially the balance between the bass response and everything else), then the only real purpose for a bass rolloff control would be to filter out low-frequency noise. 69 Hz could be used that way without costing you too much in terms of musical enjoyment. A lot depends on how steep ("sharp") the rolloff is, of course, e.g. in dB per octave.

But the other, higher frequencies on your list could cause you regrets, if in fact the rolloff wasn't really necessary. 160 or 195 Hz (which aren't very far apart from each other--an odd choice of alternatives in that respect) are already in the voice range, and would change the character of speaking or singing voices, not just bass instruments.

888 Hz is of course in the midrange or even upper midrange, so a rolloff there would be like a special effect rather than any reasonable kind of protection or "sound shaping."

--best regards

P.S.: Oleg (below) is right to mention proximity effect--that will affect your recordings if your microphones are directional and are close to (say, within three feet of) a direct sound source.

[oleg]

low fq roll off is used when you have proximity effect placing the mics to close to the source what rise the low ones not proportional to others .
also  in windy conditions where you don't have good wind isolation ,to prevent overloading preamp .
some mics has low fq cut of directly on mic preamp and if you need to use it it better then use ones on your preamp ( also depends where it cuts ) to eliminate low fq overloading inside the mic preamp