Ty Ford
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Hello James,
Small room. OK. Still not a lot of definitive info, but if the acoustics of the room aren’t horrible, you may get OK, but not great audio with a lectern mic and a shotgun or house feed. Split track the feeds so you can go with one and not have the other mess up your audio if something goes bad.
The roaming presenters ..well how far will they roam. can you catch them with a shotgun? Probably not. If you had someone to move the mic with the speaker, maybe.
Ty Ford
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Hello James and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,
You have a challenging situation. A shotgun on a mount will not get you the quality you want and if you have an overhead PA, the problem could be worse. How many people speaking? You may want to consider renting the wireless. If you do, get them in plenty of time to play with them a bit.
You might be able to use the house system with existing lectern mics but they are sometimes pretty nasty sounding or misadjusted. Bring extra foam tops. The little pop filters that come with many lectern mics is usually not enough for someone who wants to eat the mic. The other problem with lectern mics is that head turns to refer to screens behind the speaker take the voice off mic. I have attached a hard-wired or wireless lav clip on mic to the lectern mics to get a direct feed from the lectern when the lectern mics don’t give me what I want.
Walk around guy and gals need wireless. The best mic for that is a Countryman e6 earworn mic. Not in front of the mouth, but just off the cheek.
If you do go wireless, all cell phones and blackberry type devices should be totally OFF. A blackberry in standby can totally wipe out a wireless mic.
I try to get the person to leave their electronics with me until they are done. I have had people turn their devices back on during a shoot and totally disrupt the wireless.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Brian,
The attenuation you’re seeing is probably on the camera mic circuit. Please consult your users manual for the exact implementation.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Sony MDR7506 or Audio Technica ATH-M50 are good.
If you need more: tp://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/2041
Regards,
Ty Ford
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[Justin Whitney] “So, I’m a little confused about “-10dBV signal” vs “+4dBU outs” but I can research that separately. (I’m REALLY inexperienced at audio engineering.) If the sound guy had dropped the signal on the line out, do you think that would’ve solved the problem? Or is the root of the problem the fact that I had a line going into a mic input?
>> The latter. There are basically 3 levels. From low to high; mic, -10 consumer and +4 professional line. There are actually some inbetween there, but the three are the main ones.
>>Mic levels can vary by maybe 20 dB with ribbon mics usually being the least sensitive and condenser mics being the most sensitive. All of these will be on balanced XLR connectors. (there are very cheap unbalanced mics. you don’t want them.)
>>-10 is consumer level. You usually only see it output on 1/4″ TS or RCA jacks.
>>Line level can be 0, +4 or +8. Either 1/4″ TRS jacks or XLRs
I also just remembered that the sound guy couldn’t even find an XLR out and had to use an adapter. I don’t know if that makes any difference at all or is unusual. I assumed sound boards had XLR outs for just this kind of setup. We ended up spending precious setup time going through a huge cardboard box looking for the right adapter. Bit of a clusterf***, really.”
>>That’s why I use the 442 mixer. I can take in mic, -10 or line and output mic -10 or line separately to each channel and I can feed three separate stereo inputs.
I humbly suggest you click on the “bootcamp field guide” link below.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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[Justin Whitney] “”if you don’t bother to listen”
Sorry if I sound defensive, but this seems to imply some sort of carelessness. “Sorry Justin, I frequently go into “broad mode”, speaking/writing to group. I did read what you wrote.
Yes, yours was a tough situation. We’ve all had them. Getting there early helps somtimes, sometimes not.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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He goofed. He should have used 48 k. Have him send one at 48 rather than convert it at your shop and see if it works.
Ty Ford
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Hi Justin and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,
JC and Rob are spot on here. As amazing as it seems, you can actually send line level audio to a mic level input, set what looks like a decent level, and if you don’t bother to listen, get total crap.
The clip occurs at the camera input before the meters, so the meters look good.
You were in a tough situation with high sound levels. Just because someone is standing at a console, doesn’t mean that person knows what level is coming out of every jack. On numerous occasions, I have been told a feed is mic or line and found it was the opposite or something in between. My best defense is my Sound Devices 442 mixer. It takes mic or line inputs and delivers mic, -10 or line outputs. I have not yet been in a situation where that mixer hasn’t been able to handle the incoming audio.
The best advice I can offer for the future is to use closed-back headphones, like the Sony MDR-7506 and ALWAYS listen. You may even find that during the shoot the levels to your camera will change. That’s because the audio feed you’re getting from the console is post fader, not prefader. If the audio is post fader, every time the sound operator changes a fader on the console, the audio level to your camera changes.
Some operators know their setup really well and make few changes. You can actually use the post fader feed. Having said that. if you are a one-person operation and can’t pay total attention to the audio, you can end up getting badly burned.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Mark and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,
The audio provided by the audio engineer. Do you mean that the audio was recorded separately? On what? At what sample rate? And why were the cameras set at differing frame rates?
I have successfully sample rate converted 44.1 audio to 48 and had it match the video. I have also had that not work at all.
If you are trying conversion with CS$, maybe your editing program isn’t as good at audio sample rate conversion.
Tough problem because you have such a salad of not matching sources.
Do let us know what happens.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hey marco,
the 702T has more memory than I do when it comes to names in forums. 🙂
Regards,
Ty
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