[Bruce Watson]

The problem with low budget mics and low budget recorders is that they don’t work well together. Low budget mics tend to not be very sensitive and thus require lots of clean gain. Which the low budget recorders can’t deliver. Which generates a noisy result. Said another way, low budget recorders can’t deliver much clean gain, so require a sensitive mic.

This is compounded by the prevalence of one-man-bands using mic-on-camera, which nearly always is a recipe for bad sound. That’s because the optimum placement for a mic is almost never the same as the optimal placement for a camera. And guess which one “wins” in the one-man-band situation…

Still, you wanted suggestions. So… I’d look at the Tascam DR-60 or DR-70. Why? They’ll do an acceptable job of recording, and because you can mount it under your camera which gives you at least a chance of observing the meters. Not that you will (I find it difficult anyway), but at least you’ll have a chance (if something spikes you might see how close to clipping it went). And it puts the headphone plug right there with the camera so you have no excuse not to monitor your audio. Not monitoring your sound through headphones continuously, is like framing your shot without looking at your viewfinder.

Then get a good pair of headphones on the order of the Sony MDR-7506s. Use them. Every. Single. Time.

Then, if you can only afford a single mic, I’d get a hypercardioid, not a shotgun. Why? Because a hyper is far safer to use inside, and can certainly be used outside. Shotgun mics (interference tube mics) don’t handle early reflections well, like you get off of nearby walls and ceilings inside. The result is often audible comb filtering, which you won’t like and will have a devil of a time trying to fix in post with dubious results. So I’d suggest something along the lines of an Audix SCX1-HC, or an AT 4053b (both of these come up used from time to time if you look for them).

Finally, it’s really advantageous to have a c-stand, grip-head, sandbag, boompole holder, and a boompole (get it all used). For interviews for example, this will let you come in from the side and place your mic where it will work best, with nothing in the picture. Place the mic just above the frame line, centered in front of the inteviewee, pointed down at the interviewee’s mouth at about a 45 degree angle. This will put the mic in the range of say 45-60cm from the mouth. Which will sound so much better than mounting the mic on the camera that it will blow your socks off. And you can do it and still be a one-man-band.

[Bruce Watson]

[Karel Voners] “I do use it to drive a larger amp which is connected to bookshelf speakers. Was this not recommended perhaps? I have a pair of sennheiser hd25 headphones. But I mainly edit using speakers.”

In that case, most of the equipment I mentioned would be inappropriate. What you’re looking for is often called a “monitor controller”. Grace Design makes several. Benchmark makes some that are well regarded. Dangerous Music Monitor ST. Crane Song Avocet. There are dozens more. It’s hard to find ones that are USB input, most are XLR input.

For USB, it’s much more common to find combination boxes called “interfaces” which include XLR mic inputs, mic amps, phantom power, and ADC that you don’t necessarily want. The pure monitor controllers however tend to cost more…

You’ve exhausted what little knowledge I have on the subject. Hopefully someone else who knows more will chime in.

[Edit]: Most of the monitor controllers are supplying line-out on XLR to feed active monitors. It sounds like you’d still need to feed that signal to an amplifier and take the output of that to your passive speakers via speaker wire. I don’t know of any USB input to power amplifier speaker wire output boxes. That would be… interesting, but I’m not sure there’s be much of a market for it.

[Bruce Watson]

I take it you’re looking for a headphone preamp since you didn’t say. When I edit with PPro, I’m using headphones, which is why I’m making that assumption. Well, that and the Digidesign Mbox 2 micro is a usb headphone amp.

The Grace Design m9xx (made for MassDrop) is quite good, and no I’m not letting mine go. ???? But you can find them used on eBay on occasion. Many of the USB headphone amps are really quite good these days, and affordable. Apogee makes the Groove, OPPO has the HA-2, Focusrite Scarlett Solo, Audeze Deckard, AudioQuest DragonFly Black (which is tiny). There are dozens of others; there are even a couple of tube preamps out there.

A lot depends on what headphones you’re trying to drive. The Grace Design m9xx will drive just about anything. Some of the others will be a little more picky. That said, I only have direct experience with the Grace.

[Bruce Watson]

The safest thing you can do is ask the specifier for clarification. They wrote the specs; they must know what they mean (or at least they should know what they really want). All I can do is guess, which I’m disinclined to do.

I too am mystified at the lack of a LUFS target.

[Bruce Watson]

Hey guys I have an SKP 100 sennheiser transmitter but it doesn’t supply phantom power to my beloved mkh 416.

For phantom power you need the SKP 300, not the SKP 100.

[Bruce Watson]

Wouldn’t cardioid or unidirectional always be preferable in this situation? Trying to isolate the voices as much as possible on individual channels.

There’s more to it than just isolation. Off-axis coloration can be a PITA too. This comes into play more if your talent is moving, particularly if they are moving their head while providing you signal. Think about what happens with off-axis coloration while the head moves. As the head moves, the noise sources around the head change how they sound due to the variables of the off-axis coloration. This can be distracting even if the sound levels of said noise are low.

Better mics made for this kind of thing (think Broadway musicals) have less off-axis coloration. At the lower end of the scale it’s usually a safer play to stick with omnis.

As Ty says, the vast majority of the increased isolation available with earset mics comes from their proximity to talent’s mouth. That’s way more important than the extra couple of dB you’ll get by going with a cardioid over an omni.

Then there’s proximity effect, which omnis don’t have but which directional mics do have. The mic manufacturers typically roll off the bottom end in various amounts to compensate somewhat, but it’s still dependent on distance to source, which means that every time you put the mic on a person it’s going to be a little different, which just adds to your post processing, especially if you’re trying to match clips across various shoots. It’s done all the time, but it does add some time and complexity to the task at hand.

So, if you’re bound and determined to use a directional mic, have at it. Just don’t be surprised if it’s not as easy as you had hoped.

[Bruce Watson]

And while I can get my dialogue sounding really “good” in post, I can’t seem to get that “feel” I was talking about in my first post.

I suspect that the main difference between the two examples falls under the category of sound design. The “good” one clearly had a bigger budget as national commercials almost always do. You don’t normally hear this level of sound design in TV shows until you hit the Netflix level of content, which are more Hollywood level than network TV sitcom level.

Jay Rose has a couple of books out that you might find interesting, IDK. First is his Producing Great Sound for Film and Video. Next is his Audio Postproduction for Film and Video. Both are excellent reads and come highly recommended.

As Mr. Ford suggests, you might want to upgrade your equipment a bit. Not that that will make a huge difference by itself, but it will make sufficient difference that when you go through sufficient post production steps you’ll end up with a better product. Said a different way, if you start with better capture, your dialog will be able to withstand the rigors of post better, and end up sounding nicer. Enough to reach your goal? You are the only one who can answer that.

[Bruce Watson]

Problem: For years now, I have wondered why good XLR headset microphones WITHOUT the earphones seem so hard to find… or am I blind?

Could be, but probably just a search term problem. What you’ve been looking for are typically called “earset” mics. Countryman has made a living for many years making earset mics (their E6 line comes to mind). They are used all over, from live theater to corporate presentations. There are many manufacturers of earset mics, from Shure to Sennheiser.

However, the “classic” answer to your problem is lavalier mics, AKA clip mics or lapel mics. This is what your standard evening news broadcast typically uses. Everything from Sanken and DPA down to Tram (what my locals channels use). I use Oscar SoundTech 802s for this duty and highly recommend them. I don’t advise using wireless unless you just can’t find any other way. Always use an omni lav. mic, that way you don’t have any problems with your “talent” moving and taking their mouth out-of-pattern, and you don’t have any problems with proximity effect.

[Bruce Watson]

Why not just buy them already made for cinema use?

https://wicksandwax.com/filmtv.htm

[Bruce Watson]

Note in the picture Mr. Crowley posted of the young woman’s back where the body pack transmitter antenna is. If the antenna touches skin, bad things happen. Mainly most of the transmit power gets shunted into the skin and your transmission range therefore decreases sharply. What was once 100m of range can turn into 15m quickly. This “power starvation” increases the likelihood of dropouts and other artifacts. So keep the antenna off the skin. Sadly, this includes keeping the antenna off a sweat soaked shirt as well, as the sweat does a great job of conducting; a sweaty shirt is almost like direct skin contact that way.

Search around the ‘net and you’ll find various strategies on how to deal with this. You can’t be the first one to try to do this; someone else has been there, done that, and posted about it. I always try to learn from other peoples’ mistakes if I can.