[Bruce Watson]

Barry’s confusion is understandable, to me anyway. There’s not any really good definition for the word “stereo” or even “stereophonic” from which it derives. Stereo is interchangeably used to mean “two track” and “a single track with two fields that when played back together generates a stereophonic effect”, not to mention the equipment used to playback the track (“turn on the stereo”), etc.

Here’s the thing. A single “stereo” track is nothing more than two mono tracks that are linked together. You can separate the two tracks and treat each one as a mono track. Happens all the time. You can also do the reverse — connect two mono tracks into a single stereo track. This also happens all the time.

To generate a “stereophonic effect” you need to use at least two microphones simultaneously to record the sounds. The microphones can be coincident, spaced apart, or somewhere in between (near-coincident). The stereophonic effect comes from either loudness variations (the two microphones capture the same sound at different loudness levels), time-of-arrival variations (the two microphones capture the same sound but at slightly different times because of the spacing (one mic is farther away from the source than the other mic)), or both.

There are a great many stereo micing techniques. Some of the more popular techniques include XY, MS, and Blumlein for coincident stereo pairs, AB for spaced pairs, and ORTF and NOS for near-coincident pairs.

[Bruce Watson]

[Scott Hopkins] “I will stick with my good lav, but still wonder how all those ENG camera operators get by with a shotgun mounted right next to the lens.”

In my local news market there are three main players (ABC, CBS, NBC affiliates). They all tend to clip lavs on the people they interview as “set pieces” (reporter not in the frame). When the reporter is doing an active interview they all tend to use exactly one mic, which is the EV RE50N/D-B that the talent operates. Great sounding mic that is as reliable as the day is long. On the few times I’ve been in Europe I’ve noticed that they all use Sennheiser MD42s for that same duty. Both excellent reporter mics.

I’ve not heard a local news broadcast using a camera mounted mic. Ever. Well, at least in the last ten years or so, when I started actively listening for it. It’s a distinctive sound, hard to miss. But all I’ve heard is lavs and stick mics from the small units.

They do use boom mounted shotguns for big public events like School Board meetings and other “crowd” stuff and pressers, but when I’ve been a spectator at these things the crews always had boom ops. For the one-man-band things, a reporter typically sets up a tripod, drops their camera on it, then steps out in front and either uses a lav or a stick mic.

[Bruce Watson]

I’m not at all a Foley (note the capital “F”, Foley is the inventor’s name) expert. I thought about venturing into sound design a while back, but my investigations led me to the conclusion that it would probably break me. I didn’t have the time or resources to do it well. So most of what I “know” is really just hearsay. And mixed in with what I know about music recording. Make of my advice what you will, ignore what you want, because clearly YMMV.

Your room seems to want both bass traps and some more absorption. Most Foley and sound effects people record relatively “dead” so that they can add reverb later to match the video — if the video is showing small office, the footsteps made in the office, and the pencil dropped on the desk, etc. need a small room reverb to make them sound right, etc.

I suspect the mic preamp available from your Eleven Rack is probably sufficient for your current needs. The SD MixPre-D isn’t a recorder, it’s a mixer. A nicely versatile mixer with excellent clean preamps, but none-the-less it duplicates some functionality with your Eleven Rack. Might not be worth pursuing unless your needs change later.

I’ve got no experience with the Rode NT1-A, so I can’t really comment on it.

[Bruce Watson]

[Scott Hopkins] “…recording outdoor interviews about 5 feet from subject…”
[Scott Hopkins] “my Sennheiser 8060 but it really gets too much noise and not enough voice.”

Yep, it would. Because it’s not close enough or positioned well enough to pick up more voice and less noise. The optimum position for the camera is seldom the correct position for the mic. Which means that on-camera mics are almost always out of position, which results in less than poor sound quality.

Said another way, it’s not the mic, it’s the position of the mic. If you want less noise and more voice, you have to get the mic closer to the voice. It really is just that simple.

If getting your 8060 positioned correctly really is out of the question, my advice is to sell it and put the money toward either high quality lavalier mics or earset mics.

[Bruce Watson]

Three major sources of problems that I can think of.

First, most rooms are considerably noiser than people think. That’s because the rooms aren’t built to be either sound proof (blocking sound transmission from inside <-> outside), or treated to give reasonably flat frequency response (absorption and dispersion).

Second, you’ll need mics that have low selfnoise and are also sensitive, and mic preamps that can give you a lot of very clean gain. This is going to be somewhat expensive. The reason for that is that cheap mics tend to be less sensitive, thus requiring more gain from the preamps. And cheap preamps tend to need more sensitive mics because they can’t give you a lot of clean gain. It’s a vicious cycle.

Third, there’s this: [Leonhard Wolf] “These two recordings are amplified by 36dB.”

Most Foley work isn’t meant to be heard at levels like this. Part of the art of sound design is knowing how to place the sounds in the context of the sound track. Hands rubbing will be barely audible. Like real life (sound design is often thought of as “world building” in that you have to build a sound world that supports the story being told on screen). So try to resist the urge to put the sound under a microscope and make it huge when it’s not going to be used that way. You’ll just drive yourself crazy.

First thing to do IMHO is to buy, borrow, or rent a better mic, and look for a used SD MixPre-D (which are way cheaper now that the SD MixPre-3/6 have come out). The MixPre-D has lots of good clean gain, excellent limiters, and can act as a USB interface to your computer if you still want to go that way. Once you have this, you can find out what your room really does sound like. You can therefore decide whether you can live with it, treat it to make it better (seal the windows better, double glaze them, add thick velvet curtains over them, add bass traps, add absorption, add diffusion, etc.), or start looking for a better room.

[Bruce Watson]

A popular option for a “pole cam” is a PTZ camera. Security cameras became so popular for this that manufacturers like NewTek have offerings now. Their new PTZ NDI camera looks very interesting, and it’s seemingly in your price range.

BTW, what “27′ giant carbon fiber tripods” are you thinking about? URL? I don’t know of any that tall, and I’ve got an application for one.

[Bruce Watson]

[Daan van den Berg] “I found out that their kit isn’t the ME4 but the older ME2.”

It may well be that you’re hearing the difference between an omni (me2) and cardioid (me4). In general cardioids are more susceptible to handling noise than omnis.

BTW, unless you’re doing a fair amount of training of your talent on the dos and don’ts of cardioids, I would (and I do) avoid cardioid lavs like the plague (that they are). I don’t know anyone who even owns a cardioid lav. They are just a PITA in general. The only lavs I own are omni.

If you want a replacement for your me4, first place I’d look would be Oscar SoundTech. I’ve got a pair of their 802s, and they increase the sound quality of my old Sennheiser G3s by quite a bit over the stock Senny mics (me2s in my case). They are a bit more sensitive to handling noise than the me2 however. That said, I’ve never had any problems with them — my typical installation is to make a strain-relief loop in the cable right below the mic and tape that loop down such that the cable running from loop to mic has just a little slack in it.

That cured all of my handling noise problems with the OST 802s. Clearly YMMV. But it doesn’t cure clothing rustle which takes another layer of inventiveness to quell. ????

[Bruce Watson]

[Don Alexander] “I’ve been asked to look for some noise-cancelling headphones for field shoots.”

Noise cancelling doesn’t work the way you apparently think it does. What it tries to do is cancel out the sound field that you are in, so that you can better hear that phone call or mp3 that you’re listening to. That is, the noise is different from the signal. It can work really well for this. But this isn’t what you seem to want.

What you seem to be asking for is to cancel out the noise which is, in fact, the signal you want to listen to (but with a bit of delay on top). So you’re asking the noise cancelling system to cancel out what you’re trying to hear. This isn’t going to work well for you, it’s going to give you a huge amount of artifacts in the sound. Both holes and missed peaks. The phase difference between the noise and the signal actually just mucks things up more (unless it’s quite large, I’m guessing on the order of a half second or more delay). It sounds really bad. Try it and see.

What you really seem to want is to just attenuate the sound field that you are in so that you can listen to the recorded sound at a lower level. Unfortunately, the laws of physics aren’t on your side here. There’s a limit to how much you can attenuate the sound from the sound field you are physically in. The theoretical limit is in the low to mid -30dB range. Why so low? Because there are other paths to your ear drums besides your ear canals. The bone structure of the head is problematic, especially the sinus cavities. Even if you keep your mouth and nose closed (makes it difficult to breathe, but still) you still get large amounts of mid range to low frequency infiltration into the sinus cavities. If you breathe of course, it just gets worse.

The only way out of this is to remove one’s ears from the sound field. You can do that by having your sound mixer work in a “green room” (broadcast booth? sound trailer?) that’s isolated from the source, for example, but your boom op is going to be stuck out there where he can’t really hear what he’s booming. About the only way out of this for someone who’s body has to be in the sound field is a fully sealed helmet with a separate air supply (a solid helmet, similar to a motor cycle helmet for example). Both of which have to be “sound proofed”. At least this way you shield the bones of the head from direct contact with the sound (mostly) and you get an “air gap” which can actually be rather effective at noise attenuation. I’m not sure how you’d deal with the separate air supply, but without it you surrender most of your gains.

Sorry. Not the answer you were hoping for. But the laws of physics are the laws of physics. What can ya do?

My suggestion would be a pair of custom molded in-ear monitors (IEMs), and a pair of 3M Peltor X-series earmuffs on top. That’s about as much attenuation as you’re going to easily get. Anything more puts you in the range of “extreme measures” which takes lots of money and time, and has no guarantees.

[Bruce Watson]

[Gennady Gaidukevich] “2) My goal is to record dialogues in loud environment – clubs, street etc. What would be better option in terms of quality: just ZOOM H1 or ZOOM H1 and lav mic?”

Omni lav mic. Why? Understandability of dialog is largely dependent on signal-to-noise ratio. This is largely controlled by mic placement. That is, getting the mic closer to the sound source (speaker’s mouth) lets you record sound that is more dialog and less background sound (noise).

If that’s not enough, remember that lav mics don’t have to be worn in the standard “lavalier position” of center-of-chest. You can also clip them to the visor of a hat, the inside of a glasses frame, etc. If none of these give sufficient performance, a last resort might be an ear-set mic which lets you put a cardioid mic right at the corner of the mouth. It’s difficult to get much better signal-to-noise ratio than that.

[Bruce Watson]

[Adriano Castaldini] “Infact, as I described the kind of sounds I’d like to capture from the old lady (sighs, steps, almost no words, etc.) these could be considered like ambient sounds, right?”

First, let me just say that this is an excellent assignment! However this works out, I guarantee it will be an interesting learning experience for you. Enjoy it.

The reason this stuff is done as Foley in post is because a single mic can’t be in the right position to capture “sighs” and “steps” at the same time.

With a microphone, it’s all about positioning — this is your main control of signal-to-noise ratio. To capture her voice you need to have to mic above and in front of her head, pointing at her mouth at about a 45 degree angle, all while still out of the frame. And you have to track her movements. Which is why it takes a boom op. Clearly, if you then want to use this same mic to capture shoe sounds, it’s way out of position.

What you’d get from shoe sounds from that far out of position won’t match well with the voice sounds even if you could capture it. That’s because you’re getting different amounts of room sound, and timing, from the room. That is, the reflections off the walls, ceiling, floor, furnishings won’t sound like it’s a recording from 50cm from the source (like the mouth is recorded). Instead all those aural queues provided by the reflections will sound like a recording from 2m away from the source. Because that’s exactly what it will be that you’re recording.

Nearly all sound that you hear in a movie, be it narrative or documentary, is provided in post. Typically the only sound recorded “on set” is dialog. That’s tough enough as it is, no need to make it harder. So all other sounds (running water at a sink, setting down a teacup on a table, flicking on a light switch, newspaper rustle, footsteps, turning a door knob, every frellin’ thing, is Foley or sound effects.

My advice, such as it is, is try to capture whatever comes from her mouth and add the rest in in post. Record Foley as dry as you can, build up your dry soundscape (getting the relative levels correct), then polish it (appropriate compression, and a reverb to match the quality of the room (most reverb plugins in DAWs have a “small room” built in)).

And since you can’t boom (no boom op), put a lav on her. An omni lav. This will consistently capture her voice, and be close enough to capture even soft sighs. You can hide the lav under her clothes if you need too, but discuss this first, and have a (female) assistant on hand to do the work if it makes the (female) subject more comfortable.

Also, capture a fair amount of room tone (a few minutes of the room with nothing else) to use when you edit. Once you place a sound effect like setting down a glass on a table, you’ll need to cut out what the lav picked up, and replace that with room tone. So you end up with the same room tone, plus the sound effect stacked — so it will sound like it happened in the real room. You may need to add reverb to the individual effect to match with the room tone, which is yet another way to do things.

Have fun with this — it really is an excellent learning opportunity.