Red Rght Returning
 

A million years ago when I was studying marine navigation (It was interesting - no other reason) that's how they taught us to remember which color marker buoy should be passed on which side of the boat when entering a harbor..

So here's the dumb question - when a mic has a red dot on one side, should the red dot be on the right or the left as you look from behind the mic?

In which case I guess it would be Red Right Recording.

I'm not aware of red dots being specific to orientation.

Red dots on schoeps mics mean they are hotter than those without.

A red dot on a Beyer m160 ribbon mic means you store it that way to keep the ribbon from sagging.

Regards,

Ty Ford

I believe the Sanken CUB-01 has a red dot on the capsule pointing towards front and center of its cardioid pattern. This is probably due to its unique shape. Not sure what other mics have this indicator.

A red dot on a mic could also mean that the phase is reversed in that pin 2 is now negative and pin 3 is hot.

An additional thought - if the mic is a side address mic they may have a dot to indicate the front. For instance, my Rode NT1A side-address cardioid has a gold dot to indicate the side that should be facing the sound source. It can also indicate the polarity of a figure-8 mic, with the dot indicating the side from which an increasing pressure wave will cause the output voltage to go positive.

Steve - thanks. This is exactly the source of my question.

I'm looking at a figure 8 mic and there is a red dot on one side and a black dot on the other. There's also a 0 degree mark on the end that would align with the red dot.

I think my real question then would be, when using a figure 8 mic in an m/s configuration, is there a convention as to which lobe should be on the right vs left

In a cardioid/figure-8 M/S array, the positive side of the figure-8 points 90 degrees left by convention with the cardioid pointing to stage centre. The matirx therefore is L=M+S and R=M-S

Sometimes it's an indication that someone was sloppy with red paint near the mic.

Regards,

Ty Ford