Choir or stage mics for a church hall stage

[IJWesley]

We are considering upgrading our mics that are use for our musical theatre productions. The venue is a typical church hall (in northern Sydney) - raised stage 8m wide and 4.5m deep. There is no overhead rigging, just 2 lighting bars - one inside the proscenium and the other about 2m in front of the stage over the audience. Stage is wooden floor and hollow, so foot noise is a real issue.

We currently use a mix of headset mics and Apex 175 Shotgun Microphones for general coverage of the ensemble. The Apex mics are at least 15 years old, and difficult to set up. We usually put 6 across the front of the stage, pointing upwards towards the singers. we have to push the gain to the limit to get any real amplification. We use a Presonus 32.4.2AI Sound Mixing Desk.

Any suggestions for alternatives to the Apex mics?

 

Ian

[Robin D]

The old hollow wooden stage issue. 🤔 Boundary mics can work well if placed immediately above the timber frame supporting the very front of the stage. That, in my, (albeit limited) experience is often double trussed making it much more rigid so transmits less vibration from the structure. 

Choir mics can also work very well if the actor(s) are in static position but will pick up any movement on stage. They are generally my first choice though. 

Carpet or similar on stage makes a huge difference with choir mics but is no good of they are dancing. 

One school stage was soooooooooo noisy, I looked and noted that the cross trusses were full width unsupported and widely spaced. Hired in half a dozen Acro type struts and fitted them under the stage which made an amazing difference to the acoustic properties of the stage. There was dancing in the show, the dancers didn't notice the reduction in bounce. 👍

Edited June 22, 2023 by Robin D
Typo

[sandall]

Haven't come across the Apex mic, but looking at the "spec" & reviews it looks more like a super-cardioid than a true shotgun, so not much pickup at the distance you are using. Also, in general the more open mics you have the less gain-before-feedback you can get. On that width stage I would be using no more than 4 decent shotgun mics (+ 1 in the middle if recording in stereo, to stop DSC voices leaping from side to side). I use ME80s, which give a good balance between vocals & the (sometimes quite large) "pit" orchestra, but there is a wide range of pro & semi-pro short shotguns to chose from. I've had mixed experience with boundary mics & only bad experiences with choir mics (no gain, lots of feedback), but they obviously work for some. As Robin suggests, carpeting the stage can make a huge difference, though you may not have that option.

[J Pearce]

I'm a big fan of PZMs/boundary mics for general pickup. Usually an odd number to give me a mic DSC where actors often end up to say important things. I find I get a cleaner sound than from rifle/shotgun mics, and they're less obtrusive. Sitting them on a thin bit of foam can help with transmitted noise, but footsteps that are audible to the human ear will unsuprisingly also be picked up the mics.

You'll want to fader chase to follow the active mic, or look at mic auto-mixers like the Dan Dugan stuff or the functionality built into Behringer/Midas mixers, which can work quite well at this sort of thing but can also get confused by noise that isn't dialogue. Simply throwing 5 mics live at 3dB off feedback isn't going to help you.

It is also worth taking time to ensure a quiet stage, strong arm the lampies away from the latest blue LED mounted to a 747 turbofan, and persuade the carpenters to add extra bracing and deadening to any platforms to avoid resonance.

Hanging mics work well for recording/relay etc. but are rarely useful for reinforcement unless you can get them to only just above head height, by which time you've usually upset 3 other departments.

[IJWesley]

Thanks for the responses - looks like I need to do some more research.

[Simon Lewis]

On 6/22/2023 at 1:55 PM, J Pearce said:

...It is also worth taking time to ensure a quiet stage, strong arm the lampies away from the latest blue LED mounted to a 747 turbofan, and persuade the carpenters to add extra bracing and deadening to any platforms to avoid resonance.
 

This helps tackle to problem at source.... and is well worth the effort!

 

[sandall]

On 6/22/2023 at 1:55 PM, J Pearce said:

....strong arm the lampies away from the latest blue LED mounted to a 747 turbofan, and persuade the carpenters to add extra bracing and deadening to any platforms to avoid resonance.

Maybe things are different in Sydney, but over here am-dram in a church hall suggests (a) it's someone else's building, so the chances of being allowed to put a screw into the stage are zilch, & (b) the volunteer lampy (singular) is unlikely to have a budget for anything with a fan in it🙂.

[Robin D]

You can generally brace under a stage without screws. Fence posts cut to precise lengths in bolt down post supports and then door wedges tapped in with rubber mallets. Can be removed afterwards and stored for the next occasion. Or screw up support posts as I hired in although that stage you could stand up under. 

[cedd]

A different approach, but I love the JTS Carbon Microboom mics for out in front of a choir. Comes with 3 capsules, nice and low profile, and gets the mics a bit closer and at head height. 

https://www.fbtaudio.co.uk/jts/installation/fgm-62-carbon.htm

If you really want to do some DIY electronics, it's possible to power them from a radio mic beltpack, so they can be dropped in situ easily and instantly. 

Yes you have to tape over the annoying red led ring. Otherwise they're great! 

[IJWesley]

18 hours ago, sandall said:

Maybe things are different in Sydney, but over here am-dram in a church hall suggests (a) it's someone else's building, so the chances of being allowed to put a screw into the stage are zilch, & (b) the volunteer lampy (singular) is unlikely to have a budget for anything with a fan in it🙂.

And that about sums up the problem!

We are fortunate, that as part of the church community, we don't have to pay to use the hall for rehearsals and performances, and over time we have managed to build up a reasonable amount of kit. However, making changes to the fabric of the building is a major issue. 

The understage does have a lot of bracing (front-to-back and left-to-right, but it is also used by others for storage, so additional bracing is not an option.

Maybe we just go low tech and get the enemble to sing out!

[kerry davies]

Micing amateurs is always hit and miss but being creative helps. I used to take the overheads out of the drum mic kit and hang them off the marquee stage cover and a folk club we ran used PZM's glued to glass plates very effectively hung off the ceiling and walls (You think you are restricted, the folk club was in a medieval hall draped in tapestries.

You say you have a bar just inside the proscenium so why not stick a few boundaries up there as a trial? They would be hard pressed to tap dance up there.

[paulears]

Shotguns, or even hyper-cardioids across the stage edge often result in weird comb filtering artefacts as people walk across the stage, which intrude less with boundary mics. The popular ones with the flattened cardioid-ish pattern work better than shotguns, but the killer feature is simply gain before feedback - hanging mics, mics on portal edges, or the floor always contribute so little. Great for recordings or show relay to breakout spaces, but just very poor value for money for amplification. Mic to subject distance is the key factor. Live mics more than a metre away from a sound source that is quieter than the ambient noise is just a bit pointless.

[sunray]

15 hours ago, paulears said:

Shotguns, or even hyper-cardioids across the stage edge often result in weird comb filtering artefacts as people walk across the stage, which intrude less with boundary mics. The popular ones with the flattened cardioid-ish pattern work better than shotguns, but the killer feature is simply gain before feedback - hanging mics, mics on portal edges, or the floor always contribute so little. Great for recordings or show relay to breakout spaces, but just very poor value for money for amplification. Mic to subject distance is the key factor. Live mics more than a metre away from a sound source that is quieter than the ambient noise is just a bit pointless.

Just a bit ??

 

We had a consultants spec for a theatre which included a row of 6 Shure 588's on resilient mounts along the front edge of the stage for sound reinforcement... There were a number of other points we thought inappropriate but getting something that simple so wrong we elected not to quote. We sent our reasons to them and the theatre concerned as a warning. Some 2-3 years later we did some work there and not very much of the original job was still there.

Edited June 28, 2023 by sunray