Mic's

[Michael Beere]

Guyes,

 

I want to hang mics from LX Bars just above an acting space. What type of mics are designed to do this. The production is a musical and the main characters have head mics but for other characters I want to reinforce with the hanging mics. Can you get away with using simple SM 58s.

 

Cheers

[jony.reynolds]

I've used audio technica pro 45's. I like them, they worked well when miking up a choir for a production of adiemus.

The web page is here

Hope this helps, Jon

[Bobbsy]

Not really. The SM58 is designed for close up vocal work and, as such, is better with a singer screaming into it from a few millimetres away. This makes it very much lacking in sensitivity for more distant stuff...you really wouldn't get any useful gain before feedback from the SM58. If you have to use a hanging setup, some kind of small diaphram condensor with a cardioid or hypercardioid pattern will do better.

 

However, in my experience ANY mic hanging isn't going to be much use for reinforcement purposes unless you sling it so low that people start complaining about the visual intrusion.

 

A far more common method of providing the reinforcement you need would be with some form of boundary mic like a PCC160 flat on the floor across the front of the stage. Such mics can be rented easily and cheaply. If you have lots of dialogue upstage, these can be supplemented with the small diaphram condensors hidden around the set as necessary farther upstage.

 

Don't forget that, even with this style of miking you still have to mix...your GBF will be a problem and you risk "interesting" phase problems if your op just leaves everything switched on all the time.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Bob

[J Pearce]

I've had great success with rifle mics hing just behind the proscenium arch, out of sight but below the grid.

 

In this position I use them to pick up rear/mid stage singing/action. I would then cover the apron and downstage area with rifle mics on stands in front of the stage.

[Ynot]

I want to hang mics from LX Bars just above an acting space.

OK - first question: Why do you feel you want to use hanging mics? Has someone suggested this without giving details of how or why?

A mic over the top of the heads of the cast is very inefficient for several reasons - not least of all the fact that as most mics are pretty directional, to get a good audio signal (ie voices) into said mic, the singers would need to be holding their heads back and directing their vocal talents straight UP - and if this is an amateur situation (as I suspect) then you're more likely to have them mumbling into their shoes!! :)

 

As has already been said, the PCC160 boundary, or 'plate' mics are in most situations a very good option for picking up general voices. I know that there are those (including perhaps one or two in my own venue!) who dislike them, not least because it's easy to pick up hoof-beats, (sorry - footsteps! :)) as they're floor-mounted, but a little judicious adjustments to channel EQ, along with a good thick layer of sound-proofing foam under the mic helps out a ton!

I've had great success with rifle mics hing just behind the proscenium arch, out of sight but below the grid.

You sure you mean rifles, not shotguns? To be honest, rifles tend, by their nature, to be pretty narrow in their pickup field, whilst shotguns have a wider area of sensitivity. Both have their place, certainly, but should be used with caution.

 

I have to admit that sound isn't my best discipline but I've had enough experience over the last 20 years to offer the above thoughts.

Oh, and no - an SM58 is most definitely NOT the mic of choice for anything other than close vocal use. Can't ofer an alternate myself for hanging, but just wouldn't recommend doing so either way. (Esp with am-drams!!)

 

TD

[J Pearce]

They could have been shotguns, it has been some time since the show, and I can't remember the spec.

[paulears]

confused here. I use shotgun and rifle pretty interchangably. I've got some short shotguns, and longer ones that I tend to call rifles - but I'm not sure I've ever really thought about the term.

 

I always used shotguns/rifles on the stage edge till I tried boundaries - never went back. The trouble is any mic with a lobar pattern means that as somebody goes left to right they go loud quiet loud quiet loud quiet loud quiet - boundaries don't do this anywhere near so much. Hanging mics always look bad, cast shadows and get in the way. They also don't work anywhere near as well as you may think. A handheld facing down sounds grim, picking ip nasty reflections from the floor.

 

If you must use overheads have a look at

this

this - rather nice

and this

[StevieR]

I would opt for a condensor at the very least as they tend to have a better sensitivity to distant sounds. Half-rifle would be my preferred choice (e.g. Sennheiser K6/ME66) but you do need an array of these to cover the stage properly.

 

As an addition to YNOT's point about the directivity, we have telescopic boom arms mounted on hook clamps that allow us to firmly mount the mic on the bar and angle it upstage to get better pickup. We then have several additional mics in the pit to cover the downstaga area. In total I would normally use 6 to 8 half-rifles to cover an 'average' small stage

 

Steve

[Just Some Bloke]

Another point to remember when using any form of flown or float mic, is that you can't tell them just to pick up the chorus. They will also pick up the principals. Thus chorus are amplified once and principals twice. In other words, the difference in level between those with radios and those without isn't helped much at all by adding mics that pick up everyone.

[robloxley]

I prefer PCC160s downstage, but if you've got a deep stage then flown mini-mics (AKG do a good series) can be helpful. They're often used over choirs, and similar to what's used in the Commons.

[Tom R]

Have used shotgun mic's before and they worked pretty well - but they do have quite a horrible rear and side pickup so be careful if you are flying scenery or whatever if you have the mic on - it tends to pickup that noise pretty well!! Voicing a similar NO to the SM58...that would be silly...if you dont have rifle/shotgun mic's then a condenser of some kind would be suitable.

 

I did try using boundary mic's before and they worked really well, as well as condensers at the front of the stage (with a bit of wood surrounding them to direct the sound - that worked quite well.) I came to the conlusion that mics at the front of the stage work much better than those from above - though they can be handy if you want to give the level that extra boost and cover bits of the stage that the boundary mics miss.

 

Tom

[andy_s]

just to pick up the chorus. They will also pick up the principals.

 

 

and the band as well, in fact any sound that can be heard onstage, including monitors etc.

 

this isn't to suggest "don't do it", just advice to make sure the artistic types are clear on what can or can't be achieved, so they don't expect miracles!

[entersoundman]

If it's to pick up the chorus I'd go for some AT shotgun mics

[Ian Cunningham]

I tend to use PCC160s on the font edge of the stage with flown shotguns (usually AKG c568s) to pick up the upstge areas that the PCC's don;t reach

 

The shotguns are usually rigged quite far downstage with a shallow angle & give a nice area pickup (VERY useful for recording if rigged as an X-Y pair)

 

THey do however pick up other sounds (the band , squeaky castors etc) and can have a very funky off-axis response.

 

What a lot of people misundertand (usually directors) is that area mics don't amplify the chorus theypick up whatever sounds arrive at them. If that sound is quiet singing with lots of shuffling feet then you get louder singing with REALLY LOUD shuffling feet!

I had a director insist that we didn't need radio mics for West Side Story (in a 1300 seater) just a "general wash" of sound (whatever the **** that is!)

Needless to say we used radio mics buit even then it was a battle to make them heard - one actress was so quiet I checked her mic serveral times thinking it was broken as there was nothing coming through, turned out she was simply not generating any usable volume.

 

That same director is adamant that the G&S don't use microphones. Thie obviously excludes the floats, the rifle to cover the soloist who sits on that fountain and that solo delivered from halfway up the staircase because thero's a mic hidden in the flowers on the bannister. Harumph!

 

Ian

[Bobbsy]

I notice another mention of shotguns in the previous post. I'm a bit with Paulears in that this seems to be a term in general use but without a common definition.

 

I tend to use it to mean some form of Supercardioid/lobar type of pattern, such as a Sennheiser 416 which uses an interference tube to achieve this pattern.

 

If this is the case, sometimes you're better to move to a slightly LESS directional mic like an ordinary cardioid because it doesn't have the rather unpredicable rear lobe(s) in the pattern. Since recording in an X-Y pattern was also mentioned, I'll just drop in that I find the cardioids give in this configuration give (to my ears) a nicer stereo image too. Thank heavens for my nearly antique C451EBs! I'd be lost without 'em!

 

Bob