Have Shure upset the White House?

R

rob aylestone

Moderator
For years, every President has spoken into two SM57s. Then it was suddenly one with a very ugly looking iso mount. Now it's two small, almost out of shot condensers? Still sounds fine, but why the changes?
 
They were always 2 identical 57s on the Presidents podium - wherever he was in the world, so I guess provided by the White House press department. The all of sudden it turned into one, hung under an iso mount so it looked really odd. Now it's changed again.

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Perhaps something to do with Covid and having mics that are further away and less prone to contamination and having be cleaned often? People do tend to touch podium mics also, so putting them out of reach may prevent that(?)
 
I'll be they couldn't get enough signal to their new 2i2 digital interface, and were either going to have to get a pair of Cloudlifters or new mics!!!


... and why are they recording it in stereo using such a narrow spaced pair? ... and why did Nixon need THREE SM57s?

Personally, I think the sound quality of presidential addresses has gone down since they got rid of the RCA ribbons and the tube preamps.

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I've read two (possibly three?) mics are used in a parallel feed so if one feed fails the other can transparently maintain the feed.
 
arcaxis said:
I've read two (possibly three?) mics are used in a parallel feed so if one feed fails the other can transparently maintain the feed.
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Quite ^ You don't see it much now but any major news event headed by a notable used to have upwards of a dozen mics thrust at them!

People are now lulled by the reliability of kit. When doing one off recordings of Gang shows we ran a Ferrograph, a Brennel and a Truvox at 17/8isp with DP tape as the backup to the backup!

Dave.
 
The two mics are used for redundancy. The double mount (seen in the Clinton pic) plus the foam windscreens is the VIP kit (which has been replaced in the Shure catalog with a shock mount version). The Obama pic has them using a small generic stereo bar. For some reason that got changed to a single SM57 on a black gooseneck, with the airbag donut style shock mount mic adapter hanging downward.

They might be doing the dual condensers down low to accommodate a range of speaker heights without people having to adjust the gooseneck (as [MENTION=190964]arcaxis[/MENTION] suggested).
 
57's were used since (whenever) because they require no phantom power and in this case, they're isolated *from* phantom. "Back in the day" (so I'm told by those in-the-know) there were plans found that incorporated explosives in a mic body that could be triggered by pulsing phantom power. Also recently told by those in-the-know that yes, currently using condensers in press briefings and certain other situations due to COVID. No one touches the mics once they're set up (in theory).
 
That's possibly the longest endorsement deal ever (if it is), but Nixon to Trump on the same microphone is pretty impressive really.
 
I was curious about this, so I did a bit of research. It seems that Trump wanted to change from the traditional pair of 57s to a single with a gooseneck because he can get closer to the mic, which allows him to get a more powerful sound from the proximity. He noted at the debates with Clinton that he was so much farther from the mic than she was, which gave her an advantage.

It seems that the press corps has complained that its difficult to get a good photo of the president because the big gooseneck and mic are in the way. So it may be that the smaller condensers were done to allow better photo ops. In addition, you have a lot of briefings with Dr Fauci who is about 11 inches shorter than the president.

I did run across an article about why the SM57 was chosen in the first place instead of a condenser. It was from a few years back, so it doesn't have the new stuff.

Favored Presidential Micrphone
 
Great link - thanks. The best bit was where they say the White House could use any microphone - price is not a factor, but they don't - repeatability, consistency and reliability seem to sum uo the requirements. Maybe we should remember that when people extol the virtues of some of the odder choices,
 
Certainly the fact that condenser mics don't like high humidity would be a factor. Can you imagine putting your nice Neumann 184 on the lectern in the garden during a rainy summer day in Washington?

FzzzzzzT. Testing Testing 123. Is this thing on????

I like that they had 400 SM57s.
 
I think they use a good old USA mic, how would it look if they used a Sennheiser, Rode, AKG, Neumann, or one of the Chinese companies LOL

Alan
 
witzendoz said:
I think they use a good old USA mic, how would it look if they used a Sennheiser, Rode, AKG, Neumann, or one of the Chinese companies LOL

Alan
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No, not China but Mexico! Are they going to have to throw the boxes over The Wall?!

But this whole "Made in USA/UK/Oz thing is, and always has been bollox about electronic products. Many of the components have to be imported regardless of where the device is assembled. UK for example never had its own semiconductor industry. Forty plus years ago I was servicing* Good Old British Bush CTVs that were in fact Toshiba inside.

*I use the term loosely, they almost never went wrong! Cannot say that about indigenous manufacture!

Dave.
 
The good old USA thing was said tongue in cheek, however the US president talking into a Chinese brand would look unusual?
Even if Shure is made in Mexico it’s still a US brand name.

Alan
 
witzendoz said:
The good old USA thing was said tongue in cheek, however the US president talking into a Chinese brand would look unusual?
Even if Shure is made in Mexico it’s still a US brand name.

Alan
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Fair enough Alan. "Even if Shure is made in Mexico it’s still a US brand name." So are 'our' guitar amps but doesn't stop people knocking them because they are built (very well!) in Korea.

My point was, almost nothing is totally composed of local materials. Shure's Cobalt (and everyone else's) almost certainly comes from the Congo and is mined under harsh conditions.

We still have a very long way to go to get a fair and equitable global economy.

Dave.
 
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