Week 7

6 October 2007

After our holidays we were finally able to get back into the studio. To get us back in the swing of things we did the light entertainment show again and I was in sound and on boom. I felt very rusty in the sound room as I was in their by myself and forgot some stuff concerning the mixing desk from the extended break. It was generally not too difficult though as most of what we did was pretty straight forward. The biggest problem I seemed to encounter involved setting the levels at the right volume for the boom mic interview, although after a practice they seemed to go fine. Being back on the boom mic presented no real drama's althought it was difficult to keep it loud and out of shot from my end which may have someting to do with the lack of gain in the audio control room. I researched the positioning of microphones to see what gets the best sound for live music and interview situations.

The golden rule of microphone placement is get the distance right. In general, place the microphone as close as practical to the sound source without getting so close that you introduce unwanted effects.
The aim is to achieve a good balance between the subject sound and the ambient noise. In most cases you want the subject sound to be the clear focus, filled out with a moderate or low level of ambient noise. The desired balance will vary depending on the situation and the required effect. For example, interviews usually work best with very low ambient noise. However if you want to point out to your audience that the surroundings are very noisy you could hold the mic slightly further away from the subject.
It is possible to get too close. If a vocal mic is to close to the speaker's mouth, the audio may be unnaturally bassy (boomy, excessive low frequencies). You are also likely to experience popping and other unpleasant noises. A microphone too close to a very loud sound source is likely to cause distortion. Placing a mic too close to moving parts or other obstacles may be dangerous. For example, be careful when micing drums that the drummer isn't going to hit the mic.

Reference: http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/microphones/placement.html