Room/Mic Problem

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Ed Fones

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I am having to make some videos in a certain room. The room has some sparsely placed acoustic panels on the wall and the mic I am using is a Rode NGT 2.

The problem is that I am still getting a fair bit of room noise even though the subject is in a nice padded comfy chair and the mic is overhead pointing straight at her.

So is there another mic I can use overhead?..............recommendations.

Trying to work out costs regards better mic to lots more room treatment.
 
If only head/upper torso need be in shot then putting the mic on the floor pointing up at cake receptacle might give less room effect as the chair and the person will block some of the returning energy.

Or, fabricate a 'cage' above her, lay GF or rockwool (or old duvets!) on it and 'poke' the shotgun mic through a hole in the absorbent.

Lapel mic? We are now so used to people wearing headsets on screen post Covid that a very discrete one of those could be the solution?
In short, you either have to get the mouth/mic/room ratio much bigger, i.e. closer to Cake H or trap the triple Fffs out of the room.
 
overhead as in the mic sees the skull but cannot see the mouth, or overhead as in has a clear view of the mouth?

NGT2's are not bad shotguns, and normally they're considered a 'wider' shotgun, so distance is key. if the room is too much and the person too little, you need to fix that. If they don't point at the origin point of the sound, but are pointing at hard surfaces, you need to change that. It could be a small change in position makes a difference.
 
rob aylestone said:
overhead as in the mic sees the skull but cannot see the mouth, or overhead as in has a clear view of the mouth?

NGT2's are not bad shotguns, and normally they're considered a 'wider' shotgun, so distance is key. if the room is too much and the person too little, you need to fix that. If they don't point at the origin point of the sound, but are pointing at hard surfaces, you need to change that. It could be a small change in position makes a difference.
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Ah! That shotgun mic IS pointed at the floor! Is said floor 300mm of GF? If not. Problem.

Dave.
 
At present the NGT2 is above and pointed down and at face about 5ft away. She is seated in a chair from a 3 piece suite so lots of soft furnishing. I can't put any portable acoustic panels around her because the lights have to be strategically placed because it is green screen videoing with props and jumble is an understatement. 5 x led lights. 4 x on stands and one on ceiling. Then overhead boom for mic. Subject in chair and props all pushed into a tiny space to get a good distance from green screen.

I will try directly above at skull or lap and see what happens next. One thing though the room resonance is noticeable on low sounding words. That is where it ruins the recording.

I have recently purchased a Rode Lavalier 11 mic but I have notice that a little basey in this room as well.
 
Ed Fones said:
At present the NGT2 is above and pointed down and at face about 5ft away. She is seated in a chair from a 3 piece suite so lots of soft furnishing. I can't put any portable acoustic panels around her because the lights have to be strategically placed because it is green screen videoing with props and jumble is an understatement. 5 x led lights. 4 x on stands and one on ceiling. Then overhead boom for mic. Subject in chair and props all pushed into a tiny space to get a good distance from green screen.

I will try directly above at skull or lap and see what happens next. One thing though the room resonance is noticeable on low sounding words. That is where it ruins the recording.

I have recently purchased a Rode Lavalier 11 mic but I have notice that a little basey in this room as well.
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Hi Ed, you seem to have thrown a lot of resources at the video side and precious little* (relatively) at the sound!

That Rode lapel mic I think is your best bet, hide it behind a flower. But it is a 'semi-pro' jobby in that it does not terminate in an XLR plug. There is a Rode 3.5mm to XLR male adapter that will sort that. Next you need to plug XLR into a small mixer.
A) to get phantom power and,
B) to have some EQ. If you can, find a mixer with a High Pass Filter but even the cheapest ones will have bass cut and boost. You just need cut of course.

NO FRIGIN WAY am I a pro but I am sure them as are here will tell you you will ALWAYS need to clean up VO. EQ and possibly some compression and even editing out coughs, fluffs and dogs.

*I have been in audio/PA for over 50 years and the world has always been that way. Sound is the LAST thing anybody thinks of and there is usually only a groat or two left in the kitty to fix it!

Dave.
 
I think 5 ft for the Rode is simply too far, and reveals too much of the room. Can it not go on a low stand, and point up at her mouth from maube 2ft? It will sound much, much, better. Overhead, the tip down often misses mouths. Imagine the mic converts into a torch. In a darkened room, would you be able to tell what colour lipstick she is wearing? If the lips are in shadow, then so is the mic! All you have left are reflections.
 
5ft too far? Cheers for that Rob I never knew that. I could get it possibly 2ft above her head and thats my limit because of the top light lighting her up for green screen fringe. I will try tonight.

Dave I have thrown lots at this. 20ft x 20ft room with 14 x 2" acoustic panels on walls and 6 x on the ceiling. All 4ftx2ft. It isnt enough though and I have come to the conclusion I need some foam inbetween panels and carpet instead of plywood. Money money money. Everything has gone up loads as well.

We have the greenscreen correct now I think with lighting and distances. The sound I will get there hopefully with this advice and hopefully no more money spent.
 
Ed Fones said:
5ft too far? Cheers for that Rob I never knew that. I could get it possibly 2ft above her head and thats my limit because of the top light lighting her up for green screen fringe. I will try tonight.

Dave I have thrown lots at this. 20ft x 20ft room with 14 x 2" acoustic panels on walls and 6 x on the ceiling. All 4ftx2ft. It isnt enough though and I have come to the conclusion I need some foam inbetween panels and carpet instead of plywood. Money money money. Everything has gone up loads as well.

We have the greenscreen correct now I think with lighting and distances. The sound I will get there hopefully with this advice and hopefully no more money spent.
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Well sorry Ed if you think I am being harsh but a tie tack mic, XLR adapter and a 2 mic input mixer is going to to run you about £100 and you HAVE the mic!

Is this a one-off venture? If not you are golden. If it is, flog the mixer on Ebay, bet you will get 50% of the cost back.
 
Overhead just out of view from the camera shot.
Curtis Judd has some good videos about sound for video...........





 
ecc83 said:
Well sorry Ed if you think I am being harsh but a tie tack mic, XLR adapter and a 2 mic input mixer is going to to run you about £100 and you HAVE the mic!

Is this a one-off venture? If not you are golden. If it is, flog the mixer on Ebay, bet you will get 50% of the cost back.
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No not harsh just grateful for help. but I am sure you know there comes a time when you just do not want to spend any more more than you have too.
 
Curtis Judd is the man. I watched a lot of his videos and one of his classes.

A lavalier is probably a much better solution, and there are lots of inexpensive ones (well, there *were* - haven't looked lately), that might be useful to at least augment the audio.

The misconception in shotguns is that they somehow violate the physics of microphone sensitivity and can "hear" something farther away better than your regular cardioid pattern, which of course, they can't. All they can do is narrow the pattern to attenuate noise that is coming in *uniformly* from the (360°!) sides of the pattern. If your room noise is not uniform, e.g., there's HVAC/fan noise from above or LF content from below, it's going to be there, regardless of your wall treatment. So, you still have to consider how to improve the signal, which means your "talent" needs to speak more in a stage voice than like she's talking to someone a couple feet away.

I had an NTG2 and it was a good mic, but I found that in my well treated little room, it provided no advantage over any of the condenser mics I had when placed just out of frame and the live stuff I was recording turned out to be too noisy for it to make a difference, as well, for the same reason, i.e., the noises were not the kind that it mitigated enough to provide an advantage *for me*.
 
Ed Fones said:
No not harsh just grateful for help. but I am sure you know there comes a time when you just do not want to spend any more more than you have too.
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Yes but, you need to spend enough to do the job! This is the historical problem with sound ALL THE BLOODY TIME! Way back to the Sydney Opera house. The guys that know their acoustic onions might be asked for advice at the start of a project but the bean counters will trim it down to 'just not good enough. In desperation the building owners call back the acoustics experts and they say "it is now going to cost you three times as much because you went cheap on the advice".

We can forgive the builders of the Albert Hall for its appalling acoustics (till it got fixed) because they knew no better. We do now but still don't fekking listen!

If you want to strip an engine, don't buy a mild steel socket set. With any engineering task there is a minimum price you cannot avoid to do the job properly.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Yes but, you need to spend enough to do the job! This is the historical problem with sound ALL THE BLOODY TIME! Way back to the Sydney Opera house. The guys that know their acoustic onions might be asked for advice at the start of a project but the bean counters will trim it down to 'just not good enough. In desperation the building owners call back the acoustics experts and they say "it is now going to cost you three times as much because you went cheap on the advice".

We can forgive the builders of the Albert Hall for its appalling acoustics (till it got fixed) because they knew no better. We do now but still don't fekking listen!

If you want to strip an engine, don't buy a mild steel socket set. With any engineering task there is a minimum price you cannot avoid to do the job properly.

Dave.
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All what you say is very true Dave and I too am very old school. Only two ways to do a job........wrong way and right way.

Actually I was supposed to do a another kind of job today but been resetting mic etc and discovered that I am having my Zoom F6 recorder set high because the NGT2 is rather quiet when used on 48v with it. So I think a percentage of my problem is having the gain high. But otherwise the recordings are so quiet with this mic.
 
Well we tried the mic just inches from her head. On low sounding words there is still the room boom but not as bad. Trouble is we need to have the gain turned right down under +12 and the recordings are so quiet.

We will try the Rode Lavilear11 tomorrow.
 
Ed Fones said:
Well we tried the mic just inches from her head. On low sounding words there is still the room boom but not as bad. Trouble is we need to have the gain turned right down under +12 and the recordings are so quiet.

We will try the Rode Lavilear11 tomorrow.
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The NGT2 and the R11 are within 2dB of each other in terms of sensitivity and at around -37dB/Pa ~12.5mV they are some 20dB more sensitive than an SM58 so if you have a gain/noise problem it is with the mic preamps. Almost any interface these days has pre amps that give good results with a 57/58 and $50 mixers are generally even better!

OR! The lady might just have a very quiet voice! This happens and there is very, very little you can do about it except perhaps say "don't ring us, we'll...."!

Dave.
 
That's strange. I thought the Zoom F6 was practically the same as the F4, which I've used. With an NTG2. The Pre-amp on the F4 is no more than 40%, and fader (knob) at unity. I'll get peaks of -10dbfs, occasionaly -6 or so = perfect.

I suppose that's not going to resolve your issue anyway.

When I record, in even a fairly bad room. 3-4inches or so above the head pointing down at the mouth always sounds pretty good, a lot of the time a mini stand pointing up towards the mouth 3 or so foot down is the next best thing unless you got a lavalier mic, which is great, and I would use them more but it can create a lot of extra work in time sensitive situations.

Then you can only high pass at 100hz for a guy, or 130 or so for a woman, you can go higher if room is especially low heavy but I wouldn't push it if you are recording for an edit later on.

Edit: I believe the F4 has 80db's of pre-amp gain. Which is insane powerful. Should comfortably run every condenser mic in the world with ease. Assuming the F4 and F6 are using the same Pre-amps.
 
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ecc83 said:
The NGT2 and the R11 are within 2dB of each other in terms of sensitivity and at around -37dB/Pa ~12.5mV they are some 20dB more sensitive than an SM58 so if you have a gain/noise problem it is with the mic preamps. Almost any interface these days has pre amps that give good results with a 57/58 and $50 mixers are generally even better!

OR! The lady might just have a very quiet voice! This happens and there is very, very little you can do about it except perhaps say "don't ring us, we'll...."!

Dave.
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Tried that years ago Dave. Didn't work. She's the wife and definitely NOT quiet!!!!!o_O:LOL:
 
JamEZmusic said:
That's strange. I thought the Zoom F6 was practically the same as the F4, which I've used. With an NTG2. The Pre-amp on the F4 is no more than 40%, and fader (knob) at unity. I'll get peaks of -10dbfs, occasionaly -6 or so = perfect.

I suppose that's not going to resolve your issue anyway.

When I record, in even a fairly bad room. 3-4inches or so above the head pointing down at the mouth always sounds pretty good, a lot of the time a mini stand pointing up towards the mouth 3 or so foot down is the next best thing unless you got a lavalier mic, which is great, and I would use them more but it can create a lot of extra work in time sensitive situations.

Then you can only high pass at 100hz for a guy, or 130 or so for a woman, you can go higher if room is especially low heavy but I wouldn't push it if you are recording for an edit later on.

Edit: I believe the F4 has 80db's of pre-amp gain. Which is insane powerful. Should comfortably run every condenser mic in the world with ease. Assuming the F4 and F6 are using the same Pre-amps.
Click to expand...
The gain on my F6 is non existent until half way on the fader control. Do you think I have a problem? It's hardly been used more than 10 times from new.
 
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