[Richard Crowley]

[Adriano Castaldini] “1. Short question: which is the best cable for noise rejection and shielding?”

All of those are good cables for audio. None is better or worse “for noise rejection and shielding” or for any other aspect of audio signal integrity, for that matter. Don’t obsess over various brands of cable and connectors. You will go mad and become a cable fanatic and never make any videos.

[Adriano Castaldini] “2. Long question: in THIS image you can see a list of detailed infos about the cable. Can someone of you kindly (and patiently) explain to me the main infos to understand why a cable is better then another one?”

It is a myth that “one cable is better than another one”. The people who believe in magic cable claim they can “hear a difference” . But no difference can be measured. And none of the “differences” can be correlated with the perfectly ordinary scientific measurements as shown in your image. ALL cable has different amount of resistance or capacitance or inductance or is made of different materials or may be more stiff or more limp, or be a different color, etc.

But remember from the previous response. Microphone signals (and most line-level signals) are low-impedance so that any slight differences in cable capacitance (or other factors) will NOT affect the quality of the signal.

The only kind of audio signals that are vulnerable to cable characteristics are high-impedance signals. These are the kinds of signals that come from vintage electric guitars (with high-impedance pickups) and old, vintage high-impedance, unbalanced microphones. Now, many decades later, we know better than to make high-impedance sources. That makes the choice of cable quite un-important.

This is not worth obsessing over. One of my favorite quotes from another forum was a famous audio engineer who said: “A $200 cable is better than a $2 cable. But it is not better than a $5 cable.” In other words: You can buy very cheap cables made from poor-quality materials (which will fall apart) and constructed with poor workmanship (which may be intermittent or break). But buying very expensive cables gets you nothing more than an ordinary cable can deliver.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

There is no theoretical basis for there to be any “quality” difference. This is a low-impedance, balanced signal which is designed to be impervious to variations in cabling. Same goes for mic-level and line-level connections.

A coil-cord is rather a “one-trick pony”. It is rather useful in a limited number of circumstances. For the same budget you could have two or three regular, straight cables of various lengths and IMHO that would make your kit much more “flexible” at no extra $$. But it is a personal choice and it won’t affect the sound you are recording one way or the other.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

As Mr. Ford and Mr. Watson have said, the closer you can get the microphone to the subjects’ mouths , the better you will be for selectively capturing the dialog over the ambient noise.

If you want a clip-on lav mic that plugs into your phone, consider something like….

https://www.amazon.com//dp/B016V3663Y/

The outstanding feature of these microphones is that they have a built-in connector to plug in your monitor headphones (or earbuds, etc.) See my signature line below….

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Yes, assuming that whatever is driving them can deliver a good sound level into 250 ohms.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

I would use (and recommend) a monaural mic. You aren’t trying to capture the (whatever) sound WITH its ambience. Because when you layer and mix together all these little sounds, if each one is carrying its own ambience (or stereo stage position) with it, you will have a jumbled mess . Each sound should be as isolated and pristine as you can get so that you can CREATE the whole sound experience with all the sounds combined as needed. Then, if you are in a reflective room, you can ADD some echo/reverb to make it SOUND like it LOOKS.

You should not need a boom. You should be able to walk through the grass, or over the gravel, or on the squeaky wooden floor, etc. just holding the mic in your hand with your arm pointing down and the mic perhaps 12-18 inches from your feet.

This is rather the OPPOSITE of what you originally came here asking. You WANT the sound of the “operator” because that is the person performing the footsteps (or whatever) AND doing the recording. ????

Of course, you ALWAYS wear GOOD headphones when recording audio. So that you can HEAR what you are doing. It is to be expected that you may need to “cheat” how something is done or the angle or distance of the microphone to capture a convincing sound. This is a time-honored tradition with Foley. You may even find some OTHER door that makes a more convincing sound than the actual one that is on the video, etc.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Even people with a crew of 100s of talented professionals and a budget of hundreds of millions of $₤€ don’t go out and record the ACTUAL footsteps, minor motions, generic sounds of the ACTUAL subject, and typically not even in the ACTUAL location. You are attempting to do something that even professionals with unlimited resources don’t do.

When you watch a movie that cost $100s of millions of $₤€, the chances that you are HEARING the ACTUAL footsteps (or whatever sound) that you are SEEING are essentially ZERO. Nobody does that. It is simply impractical. That is why Jack Donovan Foley, back before any of us were born, perfected the process that bears his name. It is so much easier, cheaper, faster, etc. to either use a pre-recorded sound, or record your own sound in a Foley studio (or in your back bedroom or the public park or wherever).

For that matter, likely way more than half of the background sounds that you hear wasn’t recorded in the same space, and almost certainly not at the same time as shooting the film/video. And likely as not is was created in the mixing studio and doesn’t even exist in the Real World.

Now, if you are retired and have spare months and years with nothing better to do, and no customer/professor to please and no deadline, certainly you can go out in the field with your subject and take all day to record some footsteps, etc. “Sorry, Agnes could we do take 37 on opening that squeaky door? I still don’t have it perfect.”

The PRIMARY thing that must be recorded during principal shooting is DIALOG. Secondary to that is capturing “room tone” preferably as close to principal shooting as possible. Then there is all the other NON-synchronous stuff like recording the sounds of various things. But that doesn’t involve the rest of the crew or the actors (or subjects of a documentary).

I think that your concept of recording the ACTUAL sounds ON LOCATION is seriously misguided and will end up costing you far more time and money, AND produce a worse result. If you have no dialog, then shoot MOS (without sound). Or as is commonly done, with the built-in microphone on the camera recording a “reference” or “guide” sound track so that you will know where to put the door-slam or the tea-cup dropping, etc.

You seem to be obsessing on gear without adequate knowledge or experience of what is practical in the Real World. Use whatever you have available right now, and spend a few hours going out into the world and recording things. It may change your whole perspective on how to do this.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

[Adriano Castaldini] “The necessity of changing the cable (5-pin, 3-pin) move me toward the external cable solution.”
We still don’t understand WHY you think you want to use a stereo microphone on the boom? If you are recording stereo “room tone” or ambient sounds or whatever, you do NOT want to be moving the microphone around. And the mic doesn’t need to be far away from you.

[Adriano Castaldini] “how conveniently long must the cable be for a 1/2/3mt pole?”
The extra length required for wrapping around the pole is maybe an extra 10-20% the pole length at most. Not enough to fret over IMHO. Surely you want extra length for other contingencies which will more than cover the shortening effect of pole-wrapping.

[Adriano Castaldini] “Is it convenient to wrap the cable around the entire pole, or it’s better to leave an uncovered segment of the pole for the hands? (i.e. can I put the hands directly on the wrapped cable, or not?)”
I typically use my grip on the pole as the “anchor” point for the cable at the back end of the pole. So I grip the pole and the cable to keep it tight. That way you aren’t fooling around with other means (like tape or clips, etc.) And it is easy to change lengths, etc.

[Adriano Castaldini] “When I’ll shorten the pole, there will be a lot of free cable. Is there a specific way to arrange the cable in order to avoid noises?”
When you are doing major resets like changing the length of the pole, you are not recording. It is not realistic to expect to get noiseless audio while re-configuring the pole.

The tone of your questions seems to have significantly changed from when you said you were a “one-man-band”. None of these questions and answers appear to fit within your original scope of recording a “day in the life” style video single-handed. I’m pretty confused here. Your questions apply to the case where you have a dedicated boom operator. Did I miss your change of requirements here somewhere?

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

There won’t be any significant difference between (#1) and (#3) But (#3) might be more convenient, depending on other factors not in evidence.
(#2) is definitely not recommended. Hanging the cable from the blimp will put strain on the blimp connection as well as making the cable MUCH more vulnerable to brushing against something (causing noise) or even getting caught-up on something (causing you to stumble and break your arm!)

Wrapping the cable around the pole (or putting the cable inside the pole) mechanically decouples the cable from whatever noise the cable may pick up and the microphone.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

If you are recording ambience, etc with a stereo mic, then you are not using a boom. So it is still not clear why you think you need a 5-pin option for your boom?

Yes, it is true that the internal coiled cable can slap around when the boom is moved quickly. But quick boom movements should typically be ROTATION (much less likely to cause noise) to cover two people in a dialog, for example. Whpping the boom left/right (or up/down) is not recommended for other reasons having nothing to do with cable noise, whether internal or external.

Of course, an external cable can also cause noise if not wrapped around the boom properly and held tight.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Why does a Lamborghini cost 10x as much as a Fiat? They both get you to the market and back home. As you say, carbon fiber is a more exotic and expensive material, so you can expect that it will cost more. But only you can decide whether buying a premium boom (or ANY premium product) is worth the extra expense for what YOU will be doing with it. If you are an in-demand boom operator booked for dozens of big-budget feature films, then having a couple of good carbon fiber booms is a required tool of the trade.

But if you are an amateur or a beginner student, then there are almost certainly more profitable areas for investing your capital budget. And if you get to the point where you need to upgrade from a common aluminum pole to a carbon fiber, there is no great barrier to upgrading. And either re-selling your aluminum boom or keeping it as a secondary / spare / backup.

IMHO, the choice of microphone contributes MUCH MUCH more to performance/$$$ than the pole. If you spend big $$$ on a fancy pole and then buy a cheap microphone to put on the end, that will translate DIRECTLY to poor quality sound. But if you live with perhaps a heavier pole, but put a good microphone on the end, you will HEAR that decision.

And there are advantages and disadvantages to internally cabled vs. external. Again, I would reserve the majority of my budget for getting quality microphone(s) and live with external until you can justify the expense.

What kind of mic are you booming that requires 5-pin XLR? Dialog pickup is the vast majority of what booms are used for and that is a mono mic and a 3-pin XLR. I question WHY do you think you need a 5-pin connection for a boom mic?

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.