mic's

[Alec97]

Hi all,

 

Does any one know of any budget mic that can pick up vocal's from 1 meter or more.

 

thanks.

[whisky-zulu]

What's the setting you'd be using the mic's in? i.e. Theatre? Conference?

[paulears]

Budget or mega expensive - they'll all do it. Some will work better in certain circumstances. Things that spoil it will be other sound in the room, proximity to loudspeakers, and the sonic width of the source - as in one, two, three or more vocalists, when things start to fight. A very quiet voice at a metre can mean for PA, you just can't get enough volume before feedback. with a really strong singer, a metre is pretty workable - so as WZ said - what do you want to do?

[Alec97]

I would be using them for a concert in a school hall with a stage with at some times 3 singers one on each mic or more per mic and there is some very quiet singers

[TonyMitchell]

I would be using them for a concert in a school hall with a stage with at some times 3 singers one on each mic or more per mic and there is some very quiet singers

 

Why do you want pickup 1 metre away from source to do this? It won't give you the results you want. Keep it simple - give each vocalist a wired 58 (or similar)- job done. Avoid mics with switches. Oh, and train the "very quiet singers" to speak up and hold the mics in front of their mouths & not their stomachs.

[GaryNattrass]

The SM58 hand held for each singer will give you the best control but if you just need a single mic to boost the group via PA I would personally use my fave shot shotgun the audio technica AT875R.

[Simon Lewis]

Just to expand on comments made so far...

A 'normal' microphone has two key properties - sensitivity and rejection. The first says how good it is at changing sound pressure waves to an electrical signal. The second says how good it is at rejecting unwanted sound (usually to the side or rear). There isn't a property called 'reach'. The humongous rifle mic shown earlier in this forum is very good at rejecting sound from all but a narrow lobe in front.

To pick up a voice at a distance, a mic will need to be sufficiently sensitive, to reject unwanted off axis sounds and be in a suitable acoustic environment. It cannot differentiate between wanted and unwanted sound (unless you start playing with DSP etc.). If you stand 1m away and have a band playing, it will not amplify voice preferentially to the band.

It's for this reason that we'd suggest either getting the source closer to the mic or, if you have to, use a highly directional mic (one that rejects most of the sound apart from

that arriving from the front), but that technique can have its problems. The directivity is frequency dependent and low frequency polar response certainly won't be very directional. Secondly, the use of interference tube (as with rifle mics) also introduces lobes in the polar response which can cause many problems in live work.

In your situation an SM58 held to the mouth will win every time ;-)

 

Edit... I am not discussing line array mics, arrays or other esoterica in this explanation!

[paulears]

The key factor when using mics to attempt to amplify a choir is the gain available before feedback happens. One mic may appear ineffective - you turn the volum up and all hell breaks loose before you got much in the way of volume through the speakers. Adding another distant mic doesn't really give any more volume, but allows more singers to share the available volume, rather than pick out one or two right in front of the mic. Add yet another and it could get even worse because that mic will be closer to the speakers, and probably hear those (causing the feedback) rather than hear the singers. Slapping a few mics on stands is the usual approach of beginners to the subject and they are always shocked by how little sound they can get over the sound of the singers. There's also the other annoying feature of doing this. There is always a beautifully voiced quiet singer wiped out by somebody with a terrible voice but a powerful one. Mics have no selection ability - they hear the loudest sounds, and present those for amplification. Never what you need. Sometimes, even after the honkers have been put at the back, and the pale pink voiced ones brought towards the mics, it's still horrible - so then you are left with a real mess. Gospel choirs have always solved it with loads of hand-held mics, which fit in with their style - they can have volume, reverb and balance put in by an expeienced sound operator. Choirs run by technophobes often reject individual miking as being too complex, or horrible looking (probably correct), but hanging mics overhead (another good try), using shotguns, or any of the other clever ideas rarely work.

 

You haven't mentioned the rest of the system. Where the speakers are in relation to the mics, what the building sounds like etc - these are vital. The modern community churches in converted warehouses or business units often have deader acoustics and they can get a bit more volume with careful mic placement than a traditional church with a huge reverberant sound - where reflections make the job worse.

 

 

Believe it or not, but the usual response of train them to sing louder is often the only advice that brings real results. I've lost count of the number of productions I've worked on where feedback point on the vocal mics meant that standing in front of the speakers just seemed to let you hear three or four distinct voices when you can see twenty opening their lips! The first time I got enough budget to give every singer a personal mic, the conductor berated me for wasting the money as it still sounded weak. I sat him down in front of 14 PFL buttons and asked him to put the headphones on. He went along the buttons, one by one and for the first time ever he could hear the contribution of each one - a bollocking session followed when the mimers got a rocket!