Pop filters are just meant to catch bursts of air, not sound. Plosive vocal sounds, like "p" and "t", tend to send bursts of air into the mic, which cause the same type of distortion you get in windy conditions. Pop filters block this while having almost no effect on the sound, so one does not have to angle their voice off the mic, which, of course, makes a significant difference in the sound.

.mmb

Justin Glenn Smith wrote: 
Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
  
On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Miller Puckette wrote:

    
I've tried clapping into mics and cant get consistent results -- the
burst of air goes in all different directions and I could never get a
consistent sound into the mic at all.
      
...
  
i just looked up "pop filter" when seeing that word in cgc's reply, and
it seems like it's a highpass filter, though it doesn't use those words
in the description I read, but I guess it from what they say about
clipping and aspirated plosives.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_filter

but this article is weird, because it mentions the hiss but doesn't say
what a pop filter does about hiss...
    

It is not so much a question of highpass vs. lowpass as it is a
directional filtering - the pop filter attenuates the most direct path
of the sound, and if I am not mistaken they are designed to attenuate
more with a higher energy burst of sound (this attenuation achieved via
air turbulence), in order to filter more strongly on the loudest
sibilants (high pitched) and plosives (low pitched) while affecting the
quieter sounds as little as possible.

This turbulence theory may be wrong, I looked for confirmation or denial
online but my google skills are failing me.

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