Ty Ford
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Hello Lewis and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.
You mean someone bumped the boom mic or is it body and/or clothing noise with a lav?
If they are within (or under) a word, there’s not much you can do. Try rolling off the low end, but as you do that the voice and room tone will also get thinner and perhaps give you away.
In Pro Tools, you can automate the EQ to cut jsut at the moment you want and then go back to normal. It’s pretty easy and you won’t have to use a different dialog track unless the bumps are quite noticeable.
If in the bump is in the clear, then past in some room tone.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Stan and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,
Omnis lavs are almost always preferred over cardioid lavs. Because they are placed closer to the mouth than a boom mic, they pickup the voice quite well, although a good boom mic in the right environment usually wins. You have to try both to see who the winner is.
The COS-11x is an excellent choice. The Countryman B6 is another.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Heh, yes, well, you’d be preaching to the choir.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Angus and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,
You have run into the wall of Physics.
Try this. Open the door, step outside. Place talent and mic, hit record.
Even outside spaces have their own “room tone” (ambience tone?), so you may have a problem there, but at least you won’t have room reflection problems.
The louder the voice, the more problem you’ll have because the louder the voice the more it excites the space around it. Like blowing into a pop bottle to make it sound a tone, any space has one or more resonant frequencies. Put enough energy into a space and you will find those resonant frequencies.
Outside, the sound is not contained and just disperses.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello David and Danny,
Don’t count on compensation. The FCC is remarkably overburdened and has been forced to do a job they were not funded to do with no where near the people needed to do the job.
As a result, we as members of the production community get hosed. I guess you could say it goes back to most of us not registering our wireless rigs when we got them and following the FCC rules about the use etc..
Back in the late 90s, as technology journalist, I attended a session at NAB in which this topic of was addressed. At some point I asked the rep from the FCC if they expected a problem for operators due to the vanishing spectrum. His response was that, based on their list of registered users, there would be no problem. I then suggested that if he took a look at the sales figures from the wireless mic mfgrs in the US, he would realize that the registered user base was probably 1/10 of the actual user base. Some of the mfgrs were in the room to hear me say that and mumbled in agreement.
He said something about they would know more about how big the problem was when they started hearing complaints from registered users. He has since retired.
So my present take on it is, NO ONE KNOWS. Remember that each TV station will be giving back 6 MHz of spectrum when they turn off the NTSC. Many will move their DTV signal to their old NTSC channel. I also hear that DTV antennae are being sold that are cut to start at channel 7, and that channel 2 here in Baltimore will be moving up, so I’m wondering if the FCC and congress has already decided to do something with channels 2-6. (I don’t have solid sources on the channel 2 info, but I’m looking into it.)
A lot depends on what actually gets put on those auctioned frequencies, where the transmitters are placed, how many watts they pump, how far away they are from each other and how long it takes to sell the spaces. Could be it’s not as bad as we expect, or at least not for some time.
Re-crystalling wireless mics, presently, is not an inexpensive procedure. BUT, mfgrs didn’t even offer much in the way of multi-frequencies over several blocks until this problem raised its head. I think they know they’ll have to make some new changes that will allow inexpensive, field-changeable blocks. I’m sure they can do it. They just haven’t needed to do it. Why put the R&D into something until you need to?
Hardest hit will be production companies that travel a lot. Maybe it will cause a temporary spike in the rental industry. For sure there will have to be a lot more frequency coordination unless technology figures out a way that multiple spread spectrums (or other protocols) can talk to each other to prevent on-channel collisions.
Given the faith I have in the wireless mic mfgring community, I’m not prepared to say the sky is falling. It’ll probably be more like SSDD.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Rick and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum
The best way to get audio from a mic into your computer is with a Centrance Micport Pro.
I provides Phantom Power if your mic needs it and uses the USB port on the computer.https://www.centrance.com/products/mp/buy.shtml
The Phantom Power supply powers a small circuit in externally polarized condenser mics that converts the exceedingly high capsule impedance into an impedance that a mic preamp wants to see.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Hello Tom and thanks for visiting the Cow Audio Forum.
I checked with Rhonda March at Team People just now. They have people in Houston and Charleston.
Rhonda March
Operations Manager Day-Hire Division
TeamPeople
Direct 202.454.8488
Main 202.587.4111
Fax 202.454.0664
Cell 202.281.9071
http://www.teampeople.tvRegards,
Ty Ford
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David,
Thanks for your generosity. This is some very helpful info.
I did sound for some standups last month and found the Rycote stickies with hairball cover worked nicely on my countryman B6 mics.
We were outside with very little wind. US Army officers in camo. I stuck the B6 on one side and covered it with a hairball and after unzipping the camo jacket, stuck the other side on the skin just under where the zipper would come back up. There was a very slight tuft of the hairball showing, but not enough to distract. That worked well for the entire afternoon on 4-5 interviews.
Earlier that day, I used the buttonhole trick for the B6 for an inside walk and talk around an armored personnel carrier. No problem.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Great response Brian,
When I’m mixing (especially music) I think in photographic composition terms; background, midground, foreground. Your mic approach does something similar and makes for a more complex soundscape.
Do you use any compression other than on the main bus?
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Rob,
Well, you may or may not need any compression on just those mics. Try without first and see. Compression is sometimes overused.
I like no more than 3 dB of gain reduction at 4:1 to 20:1 (content and particular box depending). Fairly fast attack, slower release.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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