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Multi-person outdoor recording with one lav mic
I run a training company that helps people have better conversations. We need to record both a person who is wearing the microphone as well as a person they are in conversation with for training purposes. The other person will just be standing near them without a microphone on.
Essentially, I want to be able to do this (this is just a random video I found with decent audio in the type of setup I’m talking about): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CnMZ4TI5BY
We’ve been using a really old Sony ECM-AW4 to connect to a camera and record audio and video in the field. That seems to work ok, but the audio quality is not very good given the connection is bluetooth.
I’m wondering if there’s a better lav mic I can be using to pick up a conversation happening. We can’t have a boom or shotgun mic as often we are too far away and it distracts from the natural conversations that people are having.
What mics would be best in your opinion?
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2 Replies
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[Joe Homs] “We need to record both a person who is wearing the microphone as well as a person they are in conversation with for training purposes. The other person will just be standing near them without a microphone on.”
That’s a problem. You can’t get good results using just one lavalier mic. With lavs, you need a mic on each person. Why? Because you need the mics to be the same distance (more or less) from the speakers’ mouths to get the same (more or less) signal to noise ratio.
About the only way I know to do this with a single mic (that isn’t boomed) is to use a reporter’s stick mic. The interviewer has to be good at this, moving the mic between the parties and working to minimize talking over each other. It doesn’t come naturally to most people so it requires some rehearsal. When I say reporters stick mic, I’m talking about a mic like the Electro-Voice re50n/d-b:
Also, with dynamic mics like this, you need to keep the mic in close proximity to the mouth, say 10-15cm. This takes some strength if it’s a long interview or if the people are spaced too far apart. Under less ideal conditions it’s almost inevitable that the interviewer holding the mic will allow the mic to “droop” down resulting in a decrease in audio quality over time. Which is of course why people always recommend booming (or lavs on each person). Interviewers usually have their hands full just conducting an interview; adding mic management to their workload isn’t really a good idea in most cases.
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You are not going to get that kind of quality from a single lav clipped to one person.
I don’t see a lav on the guy in your example video.
I strongly suspect that he has a microphone in the brim of his baseball cap.
Perhaps something like one of the little plastic Rode videomics.
And likely a recorder in his backpack. Clever.———————————————————————————
Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.
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