RUSH: Quick little question here. Normally this is something I would save for Open Line Friday, but it’s a guy watching the program on the Dittocam today at www.RushLimbaugh.com. He says, ‘On the Dittocam you’re speaking a good distance from the microphone, yet your voice comes through loud and clear. How is this?’ Brian says, ‘See, see? I told you.’ Told you what? What are you — (interruption) — hm-hm. Well, we do have a great studio. Brian’s the broadcast engineer here and thinks he’s going to be praised and complimented for this in my answer to the question. The first thing is, I’m looking at myself on the Dittocam monitor here and it does look like I’m quite a ways away from it, but I’m not. It’s an optical illusion. I’m probably within three inches of this microphone. There are two things at work here. This is a Golden EIB Microphone. It’s an Electro-Voice RE-20, I believe, but those of us who are highly trained broadcast specialists know how to use these things.
The incorrect way to use a microphone is to put it right in front of you like this (leaning in close) and speak into it because you pop your P’s real bad, and that could be dangerous on certain words. We broadcast professionals turn it aside and speak across it so that our P’s do not pop. We don’t have to worry about anything like that, and with the compression that is built into our system here, I can move this microphone even further — well, you’re probably hearing me not quite as loud, but the presence is still there. As I move it in closer, it gets a little bit more present, but not really louder. Now, sometimes I do what we professional broadcasters refer to as eat the microphone. That is when I really want to make a point. I am eating this microphone. My lips are touching this microphone right now. There are any number of highly trained specialist techniques that we who are professionals in this business use. The one thing about the microphone, I can’t have it in the way here because I gesticulate wildly and I don’t — (knocking it over) oops, doing that, knocking the microphone away from me. I might damage it as well. So while it looks like it’s far away on the Dittocam, it’s actually right in front of me, just turned off to the side. All right, quick time-out. We’ll be back. Any other real radio announcer broadcast lessons that you would like, feel free to ask any question at any time.