Peter Perry
Forum Replies Created
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I stand corrected.
I was confusing two seperate issues, the 700MHZ issue, in which we must vacate the 700MHZ block by June 12, after which it will be illegal to use that freq range.
The other issue is the use of unlicensed consumer products that will use the white spaces in between DTV signals. They are supposed to employ a sensing circuit that will detect any other users in the freq spectrum, and a database of known users in a geographical area and the unit will not operate if either of these conditions are met.
The problem is the sensing circuit of these devices has been shown to not actually do what the manufacturers claim it will do.
Peter3P Video Services
http://www.3pvideo.com
Audio/Video Production
Serving the Northeast -
Hey Chuck,
No, the mic will not become “illegal”. I believe what the seller is referring to is that when the analog television stations switch over to digital only, then those frequency blocks are going to be auctioned off.
The buyers are expected to be broadband providers to handheld devices like Blackberry and the like.
What this means to you as a wireless mic user is the freq that your mic operates on may now be subject to interference from handheld devices (like they aren’t bad enough already…I can’t tell you how many times I have heard Blackberry interference on WIRED mics.)
How bad will this be and how soon it will happen? Good question…the switchover date has already been pushed back to June, I think.
I doubt if you could get in trouble using your mic. It just may not work anymore.3P Video Services
http://www.3pvideo.com
Audio/Video Production
Serving the Northeast -
You could mount your shotgun on the mount on the camera and connect it to one of the XLR inputs and then connect your wireless to the other XLR input. Then you will have both the lav and shotgun.
I will echo what the others have said about wireless units. Inexpensive wireless mics can be more trouble than they are worth.
The Sennheiser 300 I have used and I like them for the price.
Peter3P Video Services
http://www.3pvideo.com
Audio/Video Production
Serving the Northeast -
This is the issue the way I understand it.
When the digital transition takes place, the stations will be disabling their analog transmitters, leaving empty frequency bands called white spaces, which aren’t really empty because those are the freqs some of operate our wireless mics in.
These white spaces are going to be auctioned off to manufacturers of wireless devices like Blackberries, smartphones, handheld computers, etc. These devices will MOST DEFINITELY interfere with the operation of our wireless mics.
That is why these freqs will become unusable…not because of new digital TV transmissions, or legality or illegality, or cable vs rabbit ears or whatever.
Peter3P Video Services
http://www.3pvideo.com
Audio/Video Production
Serving the Northeast -
Hi Michael,
First, the double mic thing was, as you said, for safety purposes in case of hits or failure.
Weere you actually mixing the show? Were you ducking non speakers just a little to help with the phasing…you must do that.
The other problem inexperienced people run into is having too much gain in the setup..more than is needed. Make sure you don’t have the gain cranked on the mics if you don’t need it to make level. This often happens when you get mic checks fom people and they give you the a low, timid mic check, then the show hits and everyone is screaming.
Make sure you also check the mics to make sure they are in phase before the show.
Peter3P Video Services
http://www.3pvideo.com
Audio/Video Production
Serving the Northeast -
Hi guys,
I have been doing talk shows for the last 10 years, and I like to use lots of lavs (Sony 55’s) hung from the grid right over the audience. On the last one I had eight hung over a 200 seat audience. I also had a shotgun on each side to give it a little more ooomph when I transitioned from only audience mics to opening the lavs on the host/guests. I had all the audience mics except the shotguns on an external mixer and on the output of that I had a stereo compressor with a ratio set at around 10:1, and a relatively high threshold. Most of the time the compressor wasn’t doing anything, but if the audience suddenly went nuts, it acted more like a limiter.
You have to be careful of raising the noise floor too much.
Peter -
Forget that last question….it was stupid. I have been up since 3 am and my brain isn’t working too well. I hate early morning crew calls. 🙂
It still sounds like poor gain structure to me. Do you have the gain on the 410 cranked….or really low, so you have to crank up something else? The goal is to have all your gain stages working optimally.
Peter -
Hey Aaron,
This sounds like poor gain structure.
How do you have this stuff connected…..in what order?
Peter -
Hey guys,
Maybe I am misunderstanding something. Are you guys talking about authoring surround sound content? If you are, then you can’t just go to Best Buy and get something. Those systems are for playback of encoded material.
If you want to do surround sound right, you will need an audio interface with at least 6 discreet channels to get the 6 channels of info (in 5.1) out of FCP and into your monitoring setup. There are lots of different ones available.
Then you would need the six monitors, preferrably active monitors.
The good news is you can get all this stuff for less than the $1200 max budget you have. $500 is a stretch.
You could gete a M-Audio Delta 1010 interface for under $300….that is eight channels, in case you do want to go 7.1.
You could get 6 M-Audio BX5a active monitors for $600….cables to connect it all and you should be good to go.
I don’t know FCP…can it do 5.1 mixdown and encoding?
Peter -
Hi Carla,
You should hire an audio person to do this for you. I sat here for 15 minutes trying to come up with a solution using your gear, and I can’t come up with anything that would be acceptable to me.
The fact that you don’t even have a mixer is a problem. That means you are limited to using 4 mics.
If you don’t want to hire an audio person, what you could do is to have two boom mics WITH BOOM OPERATORS, each covering half of the table. That could be the most cost effective way of covering this. Ty is going to disagree with using shotguns indoors, but you have what you have. 🙂
Peter