As some readers may know, I have been involved to varying degrees with the music industry over the years in one capacity or another. I worked for a small indie label for several years; I've promoted shows. I've helped record albums and I've done live sound for bands and public speakers. I can't claim to be an expert at any of these things, but I know my way around a studio and a mixing board.

What does this have to do with judging? One of the tools that every judge, sooner or later, is called upon to use is the microphone. And I see a lot of people using microphones poorly. Keeping people informed about what's going on through announcements is a critical part of running an efficient tournament—the cost of having to give the same answer repeatedly is huge. But announcements are only as useful as the audience they reach, and maximizing your audience is a real challenge. Players are distracted by their decks, their sleeves, the opponent sitting across from them, their soda, their neighbor, their cell phone... and this list is far from exhaustive. Failure to make announcements as clear and audible as possible puts you well behind in the battle for attention.

I think that most judges, who never have to use a microphone in any other part of their life, don't realize that there is a technique. This is a little surprising to me, because I know that they can hear the difference between good announcements and poor ones. I know because they tell me. It's not uncommon for me to get compliments on my announcements. And I can't claim to have a particularly good, rich voice, or to enunciate unusually well. All the advantage I have is that I have a rough understanding of how to use a microphone, and I'm not intimidated by the sound of my own voice. By the end of this article, you should have all the information you need to improve the quality of announcements at your events. It takes a little practice to get it down, but not much. And you should see some degree of improvement immediately.

There are several different technologies that are employed to collect sound for recording or live amplification. The basics are condenser mics, ribbon mics, piezo mics, and dynamic mics. Each type of microphone has different characteristics, and is differently suited to loud sounds, quiet sounds, high-pitched sounds, low-pitched sounds, etc. Fortunately for us, you are unlikely to ever run into anything but a dynamic microphone in a public address system at a Magic tournament.

Dynamic mics use a diaphragm with a small coiled wire suspended in a magnetic field. Air pushing back and forth on the diaphragm moves the coil, which changes its position in the magnetic field and generates current. This is basically a loudspeaker working in reverse. In fact, you can use a loudspeaker as a microphone. Go science! Knowing this isn't essential, but it's kind of cool.

What is useful to know about dynamic microphones, compared to other styles, is that the element that the air pushes on is relatively heavy, so it takes more force to get it to move. In the case of speaking at a Magic tournament, this is a good thing, because the practical implication is that the volume of signal picked up drops off quickly as the source gets further away from the microphone. The microphone picks up loud, close sounds (your head judge) much better than it picks up loud, distant sounds (your opponent).

However, close is relative: the power of sound (or radiation in general) drops off with the square of the distance, so for maximum isolation of sound (as well as two other benefits I'll discuss shortly), the first rule of using PA microphones is:

Hold the microphone close to your mouth—1-2 inches or less.

Most people hold the microphone at a "comfortable" distance of 4-8 inches from their mouth. They then have to raise their voice, which can sound tinny and thin. It's also not uncommon to have issues with feedback. Holding the mic close helps with both those issues. Learning to be comfortable with a microphone so close to your mouth is one of the areas that just takes practice.

Feedback is the worst problem you can have with a PA system. It's caused when the microphone "hears" the sound coming from the speakers, which then gets fed to the amplifier and is played back out of the speakers at a higher volume, which means the microphone picks it up more strongly and feeds it to the amplifier at a higher volume, and hilarity ensues.

Typically your microphone operator and your PA adjustor will shoot for a constant volume of sound. If the judge on the mic is speaking quietly, someone is likely to turn up the PA to compensate. Which is fine, except that now the microphone is effectively more sensitive, so it's more likely to hear the speaker and feed back. Which isn't fine. In general, if you find that the sound is too loud when you're close to the mic, the solution is to move away from the mic to complete the announcement, and then adjust the volume of the PA down:

Adjust the volume of the PA to match your voice, not the distance from the mic or the volume of your voice.

The third thing to know about dynamic mics, volume, and feedback is a minor point. Dynamic mics are almost all designed with what's called a cardioid pickup pattern, which means that they get most of their sound from whatever the microphone is pointed at, and smaller amounts of sound from the sides and rear, with a bit of a hole right in the back of the microphone, where the cable comes out. To accomplish it, there are typically some holes in the innards that let sound in from the back of the microphone. If you hold the microphone up high, near the business end, and particularly if you cup your hand around the ball of the microphone's grill, you block those holes and create a small chamber that can resonate and cause feedback.

Now that you've got the volume adjusted, your goal is to get your voice sounding good. This is a matter of small adjustments: finding the sweet spot of your voice for volume and the right mic distance for balancing the treble and bass of your voice.

Your voice changes in tone and stress as it gets louder and softer. To be most clear, you need a good balance of high-pitched sounds, bass sounds, and midrange sounds. Most people get the best balance, more or less, at a conversational tone. In general, your voice will have more stress on high tones as you speak more loudly, and more relative volume in lower tones when you speak more quietly. Most commonly, I see people yelling or using strong projection with their voices when they speak, which (combined with the need to back off the microphone) drives much of the low-end out of their voice. High tones give definition and punctuation to speech, but too much high and not enough low sounds thin, and if you're speaking loudly, you can sound anxious or tense as well. Speaking too quietly, and dropping those high tones, will cause you to sound muddy and garbled. Some speakers may have naturally bass-heavy voices and may find that it helps to use a louder voice; others may run the opposite way.

The second factor is that as you back off the microphone, the bass will drop out of what is picked up faster than the higher-pitched sounds, so you can further correct for your voice by getting slightly closer or slightly farther away from the mic. Note that this will tend to compound the issue of volume—if you're talking too loudly, your voice may be tinny to start, and backing off to fix the volume may exacerbate this—so use with care.

The last, and perhaps most important piece of advice I have for microphone users, is this:

Know what you're going to say, and don't say more than you need to.

Now that you've got your sound system set up so that people can hear you, you still have to get them to listen! You're only going to hold their attention for so lond before they lose focus and interest. When you know what you've got to get through, you'll meander less, you'll sound like you know what you're talking about, and you'll get things started quickly. Less talk, more rock, as the DJ says.

Hope this has been useful for some of you; it's not rocket science, but there is definitely some technique to it. Until next time, keep shufflin'.