[LAU] Live mic and monitoring (was rant.)

[Marius Janßen]

Am 29.12.2012 21:55, schrieb Len Ovens:
> On Sat, December 29, 2012 11:54 am, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 09:48:34AM -0500, Thomas Vecchione wrote:
>>
>>> A directional mic can give quite a bit more than just a few dB of added
>>> headroom before feedback.  Take a look at the frequency response charts
>>> of
>>> the 'standard', the SM58, which pretty much has 10dB down across the
>>> board.
>> True if you consider only the direct sound, which may be valid
>> in the case of monitors close to the mic. OTOH, if the feedback
>> is mainly due to indirect sound which will come from all directions
>> then a cardioid provides just 4.8 dB advantage. Which of course
>> could make a difference.
> Ok, I should lay out what we have and some of the idiosyncrasies of the
> people involved.
>
> Small room, 100 to 150 people (I think). Small stage (8x30). Generally,
> three vocals, guitar (acoustic direct), piano (electric, through local amp
> as well as direct) and bass (amp only). Drums sometimes. two wedges for
> monitoring.
>
>   - lead vocal (also da boss), Male, uses stand. sets the eq on the PA for
> bass and highend up and midrange down (U shaped yuck) no worry about feed
> back prevention. Not sure what the mic is, but it seems to be the best
> one there... but then the whole PA is set to his voice as he likes it.
>   - vocal two, female, handheld, sm58. even though the PA is set with
> boosted high still sounds "boxy" like singing in a smaller room than the
> hall. But this is really only noticeable when she does lead stuff.
>   - vocal three, female, classic trained.. hardly needs a mic at all but
> has the Dixon I mentioned before... may as well be using a carbon pile
> telephone handset.. lucky she doesn't need much reinforcement.
>   - piano and guitar get the midrange sucked right out of them
>   - Bass (thats me) no PA, (not by choice, but what's practical) Amp eq not
> used.
>
> It sounds from what has been said, that an omni mic would help vocal two
> if it didn't give us Feed back problems. (we don't have any right now BTW,
> so we are not running on the edge or anything) The lead vocal likes the
> added proximity effect... no changing that, but it would be nice to give
> him his own eq. For vocal three, anything has to sound better. She gets
> less of the monitor anyway and has curtains behind... I would like to have
> an omni to try there as well.
it may be too far off to take into consideration, but you could test 
microphones by Bob Heil.
He invented the talk box long ago but made some microphones that are 
used by some serious acts like Alice In Chains, Charlie Daniels, ZZ Top, 
Joan Baez, Kansas and Stone Temple Pilots as well as Coast Hills Church 
and Northpoint Church to name a few.
I recently bought the Heil PR 35 for me as a singing drummer and also 
recommended the PR 20 and PR 22 as an announcer mic to my local church.
Heil's PR 20UT model http://www.heilsound.com/pro/microphones/pr-20-ut 
costs $101 and is worth a try to the concurring SM58 at nearly the same 
price point.
Your experience might be different, but they sound natural without 
needing much EQ.
> When I was in broadcast(80 to 85), the ENG guys had sennheiser shotguns.
> They used them both camera mounted or hand held... the talking head could
> hold the mic very low almost out of the picture. The TV station I worked
> for was somewhat more low budget than some and there was less rough
> handling than others have experienced. The main repair item was headphones
> and VCRs (U-matic, Sony BVUs and the panasonic equivalent). The Cameras
> just seem to need setup and the motor zoom is the main thing that broke on
> those. Some of the guys went manual zoom.
>
>
Just my 2 cents and God bless, Marius