Why do people interfere

[witzendoz]

On the weekend I ran sound for a presentation. It involved people standing at a podium, others having interviews sitting on a couch with handhelds. The room has diabolical acoustics, square room with a skylight ceiling dome, and a simple glass wall down one side with a loud hotel bar behind it. The glass offering almost no sound reduction from the bar.

So set up the podium with 2 x Senheiser ME80 semi shotguns (so the mics pickup everything behind the podium without the mic being in peoples faces), 2 x hand held SM58s, OH and then the surprise vocal mic and DI for the performer that was playing a song or 2 as the day went on. I also had to do a AUX feed for the Video production, but I also recorded the event on the mixers attached hard drive (yes I have that all the time)

Sound checked, EQ'ed the system and the podium mics. The room had an annoying low mid boom and feedback but even with it notched out it was going to be a problem.

All was going well, however each time a new guest arrived at the podium someone would move the mics to where they thought they had to be, so they would point above the head, at the chest area, off to the side, etc etc, this usually happened when I was too far away to fix it, I was mixing from an Ipad around the room. If they just left them alone it would have been better. The event ran late and a band was going to start in the Bar area any minute, so it was filling up and the noise was increasing, so the last speaker gets up and the MC decides it would be a good idea to hand them one of the SM58s. The SM58 was out of phase with the podium mics so now we have a thin sound and flanging going on. I turn off the SM 58 but now its stuck in the persons face, in the wrong position, and it's blocking the sound to the podium mics and everything is muddy.

Why do people interfere, its my job to keep the sound going, there was no problem with the volume of the podium mics it was just that the MC was standing behind the speakers so they could not hear how loud it was.

Alan.

 

[mixsit]

Or when you do turn them up.. they back off even further..

One to cheer things up :>)


YouTube

One of the things I've found when folks come up in the break to 'announce or whatever; Mic goes up, but floor monitor send goes down.

add.. Here's a shot of Rye on me

 

[rob aylestone]

I can only echo other people in that interfering people always do this, with best intentions. As a rule I never use shotguns on a podium - I find they are too tight, and you always get comb filtering issues with small movements of the speaker's head. I tend to use thin goos neck condensers now for this job. I used to use Beyer M201 hypers which was the old BBC favourite here in the UK for radio round the table conference style multi people work, and they're not so tight as a shotgun, but able to reach a little further than a cardioid. These events are what they are - unpredictable and people holding a microphone is always the worst - sometimes they hold it around their waist to jam it almost into their mouth. One series of audience participate shows I had each radio mic fitted with a foam windscreen and had them silk screened TOUCH CHIN HERE on them, and believe it or not, this worked, people touched their chin to the foam and covered the text - and it worked great!!

 

[keith.rogers]

I had side-address SDCs set up as overheads on a drum kit. The drummer "fixed" them so they'd point straight down at the drums. Got a lovely stereo recording of the room...

 

[witzendoz]

I can only echo other people in that interfering people always do this, with best intentions. As a rule I never use shotguns on a podium - I find they are too tight, and you always get comb filtering issues with small movements of the speaker's head. I tend to use thin goos neck condensers now for this job. I used to use Beyer M201 hypers which was the old BBC favourite here in the UK for radio round the table conference style multi people work, and they're not so tight as a shotgun, but able to reach a little further than a cardioid. These events are what they are - unpredictable and people holding a microphone is always the worst - sometimes they hold it around their waist to jam it almost into their mouth. One series of audience participate shows I had each radio mic fitted with a foam windscreen and had them silk screened TOUCH CHIN HERE on them, and believe it or not, this worked, people touched their chin to the foam and covered the text - and it worked great!!

These are a semi shotgun, like a short shotgun pattern not as normal long a throw as shotguns, they sound great if left alone in the position I put them LOL, I use 2 so that when they move around they still get picked up, they are spaced so there are no phase issues, only if someone suddenly hands a SM 58 to the person standing in front of them.