Advisement on Audio setup for Classroom

[Michelle Mizner]

These are all great ideas, and I am taking each one into account. Thank you, thank you!!!

Michelle

[Richard Crowley]

The mic on camera 2 seems superfluous. It seems unlikely it will pick up anything useful.

Having separate mics on each table and recording them to separate tracks on independent recorders (or camera tracks, or whatever) will be a post-production hassle (or nightmare, depending on your skill and patience). What you save by not having a sound person with a boom you will more than spend on mixing all that down. But if that is the trade-off that makes sense for your situation, then so be it.

You are asking about microphone “interference” or “cancellation”. Hard-wired mics don’t “interfere” with each other. You will not see any artifacts from hard-wired mics because there are other hard-wired mics in the room (or even cheek-by-jowl).

OTOH when you go to mix this down in post-production editing, you may hear these things if you attempt to violate the 3-to-1 rule…

https://www.wikirecording.org/3_to_1_Rule
https://www.homestudiocorner.com/the-31-rule/
https://www.recordingeq.com/articles/321eq.html
https://www.sweetwater.com/expert-center/glossary/t–3:1Rule

But it doesn’t sound like this will be a problem unless the tables are unusually close together. Besides it is easily avoided by simply selecting the “best” track at the moment and muting the others.

Certainly wireless mics have a potential of interference, mainly because of the RF link interacting with other nearby RF signals. “Nearby” in the geographic sense as well as the frequency sense. So your wireless mic MAY experience problems in the venue, but that would be the case with ANY wireless mic and ANY location, and it has nothing to do with your proposed audio scheme.

[Michelle Mizner]

Excellent. Thank you! That was exactly the information I was looking for on the interference/cancellation piece. And the links on the 3-to-1 rule were helpful. I have read about this before, but the diagrams and explanations you provided helped it to sink in.

If I go with boundary mics on the tables, I will get an 8 track recorder, per everyone’s suggestion. Thanks to each of you!

Another option some colleagues have provided is to just set up the H4N recorders (or something similar) on each table, and not even mess with the extra mics. Buy or rig a stand and place the recorders at each group’s table. So, I am considering this now as well.

[Richard Crowley]

An effective but inexpensive 8-channel recorder is the Zoom R-16. I have used one several times and while a bit operationally fiddly (nested menus), it has been a solid and reliable performer. But it has phantom power on only two of the 8 mic inputs, so you will need to either use mics that don’t require power, or use mics that use their own batteries, etc.

I didn’t mean to imply the camera 2 should have NO microphone or record NO sound-track. You will need the sound track to sync it up in post-production. And if you have whole-room sounds like cheering or applause, etc. it may be the more suitable track.