Bruce Watson
Forum Replies Created
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What Ty said.
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[Noam Osband] “…the EV RE50 will be professional level audio?”
These things are used in about every local news broadcast in North America. It doesn’t get any more professional than that. Besides, that’s the design purpose of an RE50N — to be a reporter’s stick mic.
If you want to find out what an RE50N can really do, use one for interviews on a noisy trade show floor. Very impressive.
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[Noam Osband] “…but often handheld (well, in a mic shock holder attached to a grip).”
Ah. Your AT 5053b is the wrong tool for the job. What you want for that duty is a reporter’s stick mic. In NA, that’s usually an Electro-Voice RE50N/D-B, which is an omni, not a hypercardioid, and it’s dynamic, not a condenser. It wants to be placed about 10cm away from the mouth, just below the chin, so one talks over the top of it, not at it. Great sounding mic, nearly impervious to plosives, wind noise, and handling noise (has internal shock mount). And really hardy — I’ve seen them get dropped and stepped on and yet they still sound fine.
You can see how they are meant to be used in just about every local newscast in NA these days. In Europe, the equivalent is a Sennheiser MD 42 ENG. Another excellent reporter’s stick mic.
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[Ty Ford] “Nobody likes big room sound either.”
You don’t like big echoing caves? Aw man… ????
I actually do like some big room sounds — for example, a modern orchestral performance hall with full orchestra. Or a big stone cathedral for pipe organ or Bach cantatas. Something interesting happens when you have a pipe organ playing into a 6+ second T60 time.
Big halls can be glorious for music. Dialog? Not so much.
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[chris pike] “…I’d like to ask whether a well placed boom mic might be better in the sense that it gives you “the feel of a room”?”
It might, and that would typically be a problem. Nobody likes “small room sound”, and once you’ve recorded it, it’s just about impossible to fix it. The key is to avoid recording it in the first place.
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[Bob Mark] “my poor ol’ ME2 is collecting dust. :>)”
Mine are in a baggie somewhere. It’s the baggie that’s collecting dust. 😉
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[Peter Chamberlain] “The minimum hardware and os requirement are clearly defined at the bottom of the read me for every release.”
So you have to download the software before you can figure out whether it makes sense to download the software? Great.
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[Robert Withers] “I tried to find this information some time ago and just gave up. Couldn’t even find reference to any Mac OS. Why does BMD keep this a secret?”
I actually got a reply back from BMD about my minimum requirements request. Not only did they not answer the question, but they also said to just download it, install it, and see what happens. From my back and forth with their “tech. support” I’m left with the opinion that they aren’t trying to keep it a secret, it’s just that BMD does not know. That is, they don’t seem to be doing any backwards compatibility testing (times have changed since I was writing and testing software; every company I worked for did backwards compatibility testing). That seems harsh, but that’s the impression they left me with.
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[Richard Crowley] “I was unable to locate you on YouTube. There was nothing I could identify as “dadvgirls”? A link would not be out of place here IMHO.”
I found it on FB, Twitter, and Instagram. But not on YouTube.
One thought on the picture posted — dad in middle, girl on each side, all behind a flat table. In this case, a couple of boundary mics on the table might work. IDK, I haven’t tried it.
Alternatively, a used SD 302, or a Tascam DR-70D maybe, and three OST 801/802s with XLR interfaces, and three XLR cables might be the ticket. The 302 would require you to do a live mix to two-track which shouldn’t be that difficult. The DR-70D would just record the three channels separately IIRC.
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[Mark Crews] “What is the best practice for micing someone who is whispering on camera?”
An interesting question, one that I’m not sure I know the answer to. However, there’s some logic to say that you mic whispers the same as you would normal dialog. So set your recording levels so that you’re recording normal dialog (setting the recorder to try to capture their “normal dialog” voice at around -10 to -12 dBFS peaks). What you’ll then get when they whisper is well below that, no question. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all, because you don’t have to increase the gain in post any more than you would for normal dialog. If you boost the whispers up to the level of normal dialog, the whispers just sound weird. So you keep the relationship to normal dialog more or less the same as it was when you recorded it. This has the added advantage that it keeps the noise levels of the room tone more or less constant as well.
As Ty says, a stage whisper is good too if your talent knows how. But micing as normal for normal dialog should still work. That said, it’s theoretical for me; I’ve never needed to record anyone whispering. Clearly, YMMV.