[Will Salley]

“non-music moments in pop music recordings”

That could describe the whole hip-hop / rap genre.

[Will Salley]

Michael, normally, I would confirm your suspicions that there are no decent wireless mics for $200 or less, but given your list of uses, you may be able to use a “less than ideal” system that suits your price range. Before I go any further, let me clarify the term a bit – What I think you really considering is a wireless “system”, not just a wirelss mic. That being said, your receiver end of the system is as important as the transmitter end. I assume you are considering a handheld transmitter and not a plug-on or beltpack.

Since you know in advance the situations in which you intend to use the system – in your case – several loud locations – you have a distinct advantage in purchasing that system. Most people being interviewed in in noisy conditions will speak loudly and in relation to the level of noise; similar to when someone listening to music with headphones will scream to others in the room when they really don’t need to. Most high-end wireless systems go to great effort to make the signal path as quiet as possible (high signal to noise ratio). Many low-cost systems suffer from poor signal-to-noise and are unacceptable for most applications. You don’t have to be as concerned about this however, because you already have ambient noise to mask the system noise.

What you do need to be concerned about are these:

– Is the system “frequency agile” so that a clear channel is available. With most metros in the US, it can be difficult to find a clean freq to use, and if your system is locked to just one and that freq is being used by another, you’re out of luck.

– Is the system durable enough to stand up to what you plan to do? Many entry-level systems are plastic, with controls that break, and connectors that fail.

– You will need a “camera mountable” receiver. It will be smaller, and be powered by 9 volt or AA bats. Many stage-type systems have a bigger receiver with an external power supply.

– You will need a receiver with a balanced, XLR output to match the input of your DVX100 (which has good preamps but real a noisy headphone amp. I monitor the RCA outs and tolerate the delay)

And finally, most wireless sytems use a circuit known as a “compander” circuit (compressor – expander). It’s a way to get more audio signal out of less radio signal and it’s the reason most wireless mic systems are unusable junk. The reason is, that with some of these designs, the greater the input signal, the more the compander circuit kicks in and then you get more distortion – which is worse than noise. Some designs (such as the original Sennheiser E500 series) have a lot of noise on the carrier signal but do a good job with the actual program signal – that would be preferable in your case.

So to summarize, you could probably find a useable system for around $200, but it would most-probably be unacceptable for other work and it might not make it through the season. Check out the Cow classified section and see if someone has a used Lectrosonics, Sony, or Sennheiser. Also, you may need to buy a separate transmitter (handheld) and receiver (camera mount) because most systems with camera mounted receivers come with beltpack transmitters.

System Info – G5/Dual 2 – 10.4.4 – QT v7.0.4 – 4GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – External SATA Raid – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8

[Will Salley]

One approach would be to purchase a few more wireless systems and mic the priest, groom, bride, and musicians and singers. This, of course, would be kinda expensive and would need a mix and mixer (the person, not the thing) to go to camera(s). This would probably get the best overall sound possible, assuming the mics are of good quality and you have done all your frequency testing in advance.

Another method would be to use a wireless to send the output of church’s console to your camera. I’m not real experienced in the wedding business but I would think the brides voice would be the lowest of the three and that is where I would put another wireless, but away from anything that would cause clothing noise problems (don’t be afraid to place the mic with tape around the cleavage area or below it. A light creme, or white windscreen would help mask the mic element and may help isolate it from the clothiing. Synthetic fabrics and beads tend to cause problems with most lav mics and you will need to make a decision with each dress as to exactly where to place the mic.)
If you plan on this approach, try to use a submix from the house mix instead of the main outs. You can send the camera more of what you need and not what the house needs.

The approach you mentioned was to go to a stand alone recorder at the house console. You may have sync problems with the recorder unless it’s genlocked to camera, even if it’s another deck or digital. In that environment, you can’t really use a slate so you will have to send timecode to the camera and/or the recorder. I guess you could get an isolated mix to the deck and use it in post under the wireless sources that went to camera.

If you are shooting multicamera, you can send the cover camera (the wideshot) the house mix and the other cameras isolated sources but you still have to deal with sync issues between the cameras – but that’s another topic.

[Will Salley]

I did some demos of the 418. It’s very close to the 416 but with a little less sensitivity and maybe a little less +4k response. Matches well otherwise. Possible to use as dialog in m/s – just make a note of the forward element track for the editor -although I agree with David – there’s not much use for stereo dialog except maybe a POV shot with a lot of action. I thought it would be good utility mic to switch between standard short shotgun chores and nat sound aquisition.

[Will Salley]

Not without latency (delay caused by processing). Why not use an actual outboard effects unit? Are you absolutely sure you want to commit the effect to tape? It’s not reversible.

[Will Salley]

I do this all the time. The setup is as follows:

Digi 002 rack is connected to Powerbook via Firwire. Firewire drives are connected to Digi 002 Firewire pass-through. (for more than about 12 tracks, use a Firewaire 800 card in the card slot and connect drives to that)
Presonus Digimax LT is optical into 002 rack. (If you have more than 8 tracks.
Any 8-channel unit will do, I just like the Digimax’ mic pres.
You can insert compression or limiting on the Digimax or in between the mixer and 002. (I recommend it on the kick, snare, bass and vocals-trumpet if you got one)
Everything is miked on-stage. Mics go into splitter snake (active and isolated are best, but passive splitters will do. Also “box” type splitters will work too.)
The recordist has his own console with direct outs and/or mic-pres. The mic lines are routed to the 002 from the direct outs of the mixer or some (up to 12) can go directly into the interface(s).

Watch out for hums and RF in the cabling and then just calibrate the input gain to the correct levels.

Kick back and relax try to smile as the live sound guy ruins your tracks with feedback and LF runble.

[Will Salley]

Can you explain “choppy” a bit more? Are the settings of the AIFF identical to the WAV?

[Will Salley]

I’ve got a similar setup. Works fine with PT version 6.9, I haven’t tried it yet since I upgraded to 7. I like it much better than the Decklink audio mainly because the output levels can be adjusted on the hardware. The Decklink output is around +8db (should be +4).

Multi-channel monitoring works as it should but will occasionally need re-setting in FCP preferences.

The only real problem (that version 7 may have fixed) is when the Mac goes into sleep mode, the Digi Core Audio manager will crash. It will re-start automatically, however, as soon as you OK out of the resulting dialog box. I think most people would just set prefs to “sleep never”. This also occurs when Pro Tools is running by itself.

[Will Salley]

Not familiar with the Samson but the M130 is an excellent stereo mic for your purposes.

[Will Salley]

Probably due to a malfunctioning or poorly designed compander circuit. All analog wireless systems will introduce noise (hiss) into the audio, some models do it more than others. Some models of the more expensive brands will have more noise than a cheaper system – and sometimes it’s environmental.

Try operating the system with no mic plugged into the transmitter; if you still hear the same level of hiss, it’s probably a bad cable, external RF, or a design issue. If you don’t hear hiss, then the compander circuit may be the problem (still a design issue, but at least you know it’s not a bad cable, etc.) If, when a source is transmitted through the system, the hiss “follows” the signal level, it is probably the compander.