Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to correct me so patiently. Discovering that background noise is largely down to distance from mic plus gain makes me

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to correct me so patiently. Discovering that background noise is largely down to distance from mic plus gain makes me want to explore condenser mics again, paying more attention to polar patterns and learning how to set them up better somehow. I preferred how I sounded with my condenser mics but struggled to reduce room noise without also reducing voice levels significantly, even when I was basically on top of the mic and hearing the proximity effect. I tried two condensers and both picked up ambient noise and road noise. I was researching noise gates/compressors at work when a colleague said, “just switch to a dynamic mic” and that ended up working, apparently for different reasons than I'd assumed — guessing a different pattern or gain…