How’s the Rode NTG4+ as an all around microphone? Replacement for a Rode VideoMic Pro?

[Bruce Watson]

[Gabe Blank] “…and would like the freedom to simply mount the mic to the top of my camera and get good audio that way too. Is this at all possible with the NTG4+?”

Not likely going to happen. The optimal place for a mic to record sound is almost never on top of a camera. Doesn’t matter what mic you put there or how expensive it is. It’s always going to sound like it’s out of position, because it is.

That’s just the laws of physics talking to ya.

[Gabe Blank]

Makes sense. I guess that natural follow up question is will it sound more out of place than something like the VideoMic Pro? Or will it make a better top mounted mic than the VideoMic Pro does, even if it’s a bad idea either way.

The only time I’ll be top mounting it is when I’m doing something documentary style or even filming personal/family videos I just want better audio for. Not necessarily trying to get professional level sound or something that will sound the same as if I spent time properly booming it. I’ll be spending time properly booming it when the situation calls for it.

My fear is that it simply can’t operate farther away from the subject (say, 1-3 meters away.) And also that the pickup pattern will make it useless in this environment. I’m sure anyone who has used this mic before can confirm/deny those fears pretty easily.

Thanks for the response, Bruce.

[Bruce Watson]

[Gabe Blank] “My fear is that it simply can’t operate farther away from the subject (say, 1-3 meters away.) And also that the pickup pattern will make it useless in this environment. I’m sure anyone who has used this mic before can confirm/deny those fears pretty easily.”

It won’t be “useless” so much as at 3m it just won’t sound much better than the VideoMic Pro.

Audio is mostly about signal-to-noise ratio. The reason you get in close when booming is so that you increase the ratio of the signal (voice) to the room reflections (noise). As you get farther away, you’ll hear the signal get lower compared to the noise. It doesn’t take being very far away (slightly more than a meter does it for me) for the audio to become unacceptably noisy. Certainly by the time you’re all the way out to where the camera is, your signal level will be near what the noise level is. Sound will get… yucky, for lack of a better term.

A secondary problem you’ll get is in using a diffraction tube mic (aka “shotgun”) in a room that features rapid reflections. That is, has hard reflective surfaces nearby like ceilings, walls, etc. This often works against the interference tube design and results in comb filtering artifacts which are often just nasty sounding and very difficult to impossible to correct in post. If I were going to use a single mic for both interior and exterior dialog work, it would be a hypercardioid and not a shotgun, for just this reason. Something like an AT 4053B (which I have and can recommend) would work nicely. I only use a shotgun when I can get it sufficiently far away from reflectors like walls and especially ceilings. That said, shotguns tend to work great outdoors, but can still be effected by nearby stone or concrete walls.

[Ty Ford]

Hello Gabe and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

I see Bruce has already escorted you through “Location Audio 101.”

What he says is true.

Any questions?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog

[Harlan Rumjahn]

I have a Rode Videomic Pro Plus on top of my BMPCC. I’ve also had lost of experience using off camera audio set ups with booming a shotgun (Rode NTG-2), or other recorders — dual system audio. Additionally I’ve put the NTG-2 on top of my camera.

I can say, from lots of experience and testing, that if you want usable sound for things like home movies or documentaries, then mounting a shotgun on top of your camera will absolutely work. If you are pretty close to your subject — no more than about 3-4 feet, depending on your environment — then it can be difficult to tell the difference from a mic boomed from overhead. Quiet outdoor environments will give you the ability to be even farther from your subject and still get good sound. Also, you have to be cognizant of any sound coming from behind your subject, since the mic on your camera will be pointed in that direction too.

Everyone seems to knee jerk the response that on camera mic mounting is not good. But, a more nuanced answer will take into account the distance and the environment in which you are using such a setup. Following those few simple guidelines above — with your personal experimentation for what’s acceptable sound to you — will show you that audio from a mic mounted on camera will often produce great results!

As far a the NTG-4 is concerned. You can listen to samples online. I think Philip Bloom does a review of that mic. In my personal opinion, that mic doesn’t sound much better than the NTG-2, if at all. I prefer the NTG-2 sound, which is similar to the Rode Videomic Pro Plus, by the way, in its sound. The NTG-4, in my opinion, doesn’t have that warmth of sound that you hear in dialogue from movies.

If you’re going to buy a new shotgun mic, I would advise to spend more to get a better mic than the NTG-4. I’d say a mic around the $1600 range would suite your needs. Go online and watch the shotgun mic comparison reviews. Any mic more than that price range will likely give you an increase in quality that is minimal, as I understand it.

Good luck and have fun!

[Gabe Blank]

Hey Harlan,

Your post was extremely helpful. Thank you for taking the time to participate in this discussion.

Sadly I don’t have the budget to drop 1600$ on a mic. I’m hoping to purchase both a mic and recorder while staying under 1000$. Reality is there is a plethora of other gear I’d like to eventually invest in as well and I need to be smart about what I pick up. So long as I can get professional level audio, I’ll be pleased. On that note, it seems you aren’t a huge fan of the NTG-4+, do you have another preference that would keep me within budget?

I do appreciate your comment about the NTG-4+ not being significantly different than the NTG-2. I’ll do more research and see if that is a potential option as well.

Best regards,
Gabe

[Gabe Blank]

Hey Bruce,

You’ve given me a lot to consider. I’m hoping you can confirm a couple of my takeaways from your previous post.

First, it sounds like you’re saying the NTG4+ (or really any shotgun mic) will still function mounted on top of a camera. It will just, obviously, lose some of the sound quality due to an increase in noise as I move away from the subject. Meaning, it will function just as well as the Rode VideoMic Pro would in the same conditions. Is this correct? I was afraid it would be worse than the VideoMic Pro, but it sounds like you’re saying the difference is slim or non-existent.

To clarify, my plan is not to mount the mic on my camera on a normal basis. I simply wanted to understand whether or not I could do this in rare circumstances. For instance home videos or when I absolutely do not have time to do an audio setup for a quick project. It sounds like you’re saying I would have this freedom. Of course, I know this is not recommended for professional shoots.

Your point about using a hypercardioid mic is very interesting. I must admit, this is the first I’ve heard of the issue of comb filtering artifacts. You still state that you’d use a shotgun mic if possible, would you be willing to elaborate on this? What exactly are the pros and cons of each type? I’m not finding a lot of reliable information online… Any additional information you could provide would be extremely helpful.

I only have the budget for one mic, so I am trying to maximize sound quality as well as function. It’d be great to have something that will sound professional boomed indoors and outdoors while still providing me the option of top mounting for home videos without the requirement of perfect audio.

Thanks a ton,

Gabe

[Ty Ford]

“Everyone seems to knee jerk the response that on camera mic mounting is not good. But, a more nuanced answer will take into account the distance and the environment in which you are using such a setup. Following those few simple guidelines above — with your personal experimentation for what’s acceptable sound to you — will show you that audio from a mic mounted on camera will often produce great results!”

Well, “Everyone” is an overstatement. What needs to be taken into account is that a good suspension mount is necessary to isolate the camera-mounted mic from the sound of moving finger in the event that the camera is not locked down. Camera operators must be careful not to make noises that the mic will pick up. Some cameras are noisier than others. You absolutely will hear camera and zoom motor noise with some cameras.

I do agree that 3-4 feet is about as far away as you can be with a camera-mounted microphone. Less if you’re in a noisy environment. While you might not agree that best practices is to get the mic as close as you can, your fight is with the laws of physics.

Camera-mounted mics are usually parallel to the ground. As long as there’s never anything behind what the mic is aimed at, you’ll be OK. If there’s direct or reflected noise behind what you’re aiming at, booming from above or below will cut your voice track out of the noise. Camera mounting won’t work unless you choose another angle.

I like an NTG-3 over the NTG-4. If you want to play with the big boys, you’ll need a Schoeps CMIT or MiniCMIT, DPA 4017 or Sennheiser MKH 416.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog

[Bruce Watson]

[Harlan Rumjahn] “if you want usable sound for things like home movies or documentaries, then mounting a shotgun on top of your camera will absolutely work.”

Depends on how you define “usable”. I’m a fan of documentaries, and I’ve walked out on more than a few because of poor sound. I image that the producers of those docs thought the sound was usable. But I did not. That’s what I mean by “define usable”.

[Harlan Rumjahn] “If you are pretty close to your subject — no more than about 3-4 feet, depending on your environment — then it can be difficult to tell the difference from a mic boomed from overhead.”

I disagree. It’s usually fairly easy to hear the difference. You just have to learn what to listen for. What typically gives it away for me is what I call “small room sound” which includes rapidly occurring first reflections from nearby hard surfaces (walls, ceiling, etc.). This is stuff that the human ear/brain processing can fairly easily discard in person, but which a microphone/recorder dutifully records and you hear when watching a screen, because your brain doesn’t get all the other queues needed to be able to discard the “noise”.

[Harlan Rumjahn] “Quiet outdoor environments will give you the ability to be even farther from your subject and still get good sound.”

This I really disagree with this. The farther you get away from the source, the lower your signal to noise ratio. That’s the laws of physics, not an opinion. But also, the farther from the source, the more gain your amplifier has to supply. And the less expensive an amplifier is, the less clean gain it can generally supply. So turning up the gain to compensate for the distance, adds mic preamp noise.

[Harlan Rumjahn] “Everyone seems to knee jerk the response that on camera mic mounting is not good.”

Not everyone. There’s plenty of people who, for one reason or another, insist that they absolutely have to mount their mic on their camera. People gotta do what people gotta do. Often the same people come to forums like this and ask about how to fix their audio in post. When they find out how expensive/difficult fixing in post is, they start trying to figure out how to make a better capture. Pretty soon they’re asking about which boom pole to get. This is a more or less standard path people take, IMHO. It seems to me that the more people have struggled with audio from a camera mounted mic, the less willing they are to mount microphones on cameras. So I think it’s less of a knee jerk response, and more of a learned response.

[Harlan Rumjahn] “audio from a mic mounted on camera will often produce great results!”

Again, it depends on how you define “great results”. It’s possible that some people will like it. But then again, it’s just as possible that they’ll like the sound of the camera’s internal mics. They are in the same position, more or less, as the camera mounted mic. And position is perhaps the biggest determiner of sound quality.

[Harlan Rumjahn]

Hey Gabe,

You’re welcome!

I mostly don’t disagree with what the other posters have said in their responses, but you have to 1) take into account, like what Bruce said, what you will personally accept as “usable” audio to you, and 2) experiment on your own, or listen to samples if you don’t have the mics themselves, to see for yourself what you will accept.

I have done a lot of experimentation and have found to be true what I have described in my first response above. I suspect that both Bruce and Ty are extremely acute in what they listen for when they are hearing audio — and kudos to them for that! — but what I understood from your post was that you wanted something that would produce excellent audio for home movies and/or documentaries. Probably my ears aren’t as attuned to the subtleties of audio as those of audio professionals, but I can say that you will most likely be able to get audio that is better than just good enough, if you keep the on-camera mic about 3-4 feet away from the subject and keep the ambient noise to an absolute minimum.

I’ll say again that in the conditions where your ambient noise is low, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference between the on camera mic and one boomed from above (I’ve tested this a number of times). Now, if you are in an indoor environment, I think it is difficult to get movie-quality audio no matter if the shotgun is on the mic or directed from above. You have those reflections that the other posters have been referring to. I’m not a physics person, obviously, so I can’t tell you exactly why it is that shotgun mics sometimes don’t work too well in an indoor environment, but I can say that ANY microphone doesn’t seem to work too well in an indoor environment when it is not close enough to the subject (this proximity is a very important point). You end up getting this reflective, echoey quality to your audio that is unpleasant and home movie-sounding.

I know Bruce doesn’t agree, but I have found that when I’m outdoors in a quiet environment, the quality of my audio increases when either booming from above or having the shotgun mounted on my camera. I have personally been able to step farther away from the subject and still get good audio. I think it has something to do with there being no reflective surfaces around, and also the lack of, or minimization of, ambient noise. As has been mentioned, if you can keep the signal above the noise, you can often capture great sound, and I think outdoor environments somehow provide a low ambient noise due to lack of reflections, or whatever. Of course I’m not talking about the outdoor environments of a busy city, or standing near an air conditioner or any of the countless number of man-made humming generator-type machines that surround us wherever we go in the modern world. (if you keep your ears open, you’ll here these machines EVERYWHERE)

The bottom line is that you have to try it on your own to see. We can all give advice from our own experiences, or reading, but for your purposes, it sounds like it would be a benefit to try and see what works for you. That is what I ended up doing in the end, and I’ve been pleased.

I’ve also experienced getting sucked into thinking I need to spend a lot on a good microphone. Probably this is the case if I’m making a movie for the big screen. Maybe. But I do strongly believe that if you place the microphone correctly, and get it close enough to the talent, and keep the ambient noise down to a minimum, you can hack your way to professional sounding audio without blowing your budget on one sweet-A microphone (but we’re all tempted!)

The truth, I think, is that expensive microphones don’t do magic. No matter how great or expensive a microphone, it’s going to come down to placement and proximity that is going to make the biggest difference in quality of sound. This is, of course, given that your microphone isn’t a complete piece of crap ???? From there, the characteristics of the sound also depends on your microphone choice. Again, we are somewhat getting into personal preference.

It seems, for instance (at least to my ears), that there is a certain sort of “Hollywood big-budget” characteristic of dialogue audio that is produced by certain microphones. This is why I have said that I’m not a big fan of the NTG-4, which is supposed to be a better microphone than the more entry level ones that Rode makes. It does produce great sound in many peoples’ opinions, but to me it doesn’t give that sound I personally like the best. You have to listen for yourself!

Here is a video that may be helpful to you in making your decision. The gentleman that made the video has made a couple of other ones, and I found them to be extremely useful in mic considerations. He tests some of the well-known expensive microphones side by side in real world environments. And he also tests the cheap NTG-2! If those videos teach you anything, it probably will be that spending tons on a microphone may not be the best use of your money. This is to a certain point, of course, since if you buy a too cheaply made microphone then the audio will be beyond what you can make professional sounding. But it goes the other way: Up to a certain point in audio quality that you can squeeze from a microphone, paying more won’t get you much farther. Believe me, I’m not rich, so I have to consider what I can stretch my way to!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8Tj8Rl0HU

I hope this is helpful, and I always love reading these audio discussions! I’m not a professional, but I do love focusing on getting good audio in my little projects. In my opinion, good audio is more important than good anything else ???? Maybe there’s an audiophile hiding somewhere deep within me.

Have fun everybody! Good luck Gabe!

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