Hanging Microphones

[msawyer52]

Hi Everyone,
We're looking to add some hanging microphones for sound reinforcement of our choir and theater performances. Our choir is about 50 members and we are covering a stage that is 32 feet wide and expecting to purchase 3 microphones. We are current using 2 Crown PCC-160 boundary microphones and would like to add to that.
We're considering the Audio Technica 853A, Crown CM-31, Sennheiser i30H-S and the EV RE92H.
Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated

[soundlight]

Shure MX-202 Microflex mics. Great hanging mics for choir. I've used them for choir micing and for micing my high school's musicals.

[Eboy87]

I've used the AT ones, and I'm not really thrilled with them. The handful that I've used were very noisy and hard to position. The Crown ones are nice, I prefer them over the AT. I believe a choral group that came through used a pair of Shure hanging mics that are my favorite. I think they were the MX202. Very nice sound, very little noise. They have a little gooseneck part that beat the pants off the AT wire thingy.

I've never used the Senni hanging mics (wasn't aware they had any), but Sennhiser is my mic of choice. I'll take an e935 over a 58 any day. Try out a few of the mics you're looking at to see which ones you like. Make sure you can position them the way you want too; it wouldn't do to have one accidentaly pointed at a monitor.

[Footer]

CM31's do well. Hanging microphone can be hit or miss, they work well for choirs if you can get the close, for theatre, the work well in some spaces and don't do crap in others. Just depends how much headroom you can get.

[Thefoxygranpa]

I would also recommend the Shure MX-202. Just hung 4 of these in my highschool's theater and they are just fine. They are used mostly for the chorus which ranges from 20 kids to over 100.

[msawyer52]

Thanks all, I was leaning towards the crown units. I like the PCC-160 boundary microphones except when you have too much movement on stage it picks up the foot traffic too well. I'll look at the Shure units again.

[BenFranske]

The best hanging reinforcement mics I've used are Earthworks Audio P30/HC and though they're a lot more expensive than other options they work a lot better.

[SHARYNF]

there are some tricks to getting the Crowns not to pick up foot traffic
One is take a think sheet of foam like you get in packing material and place it under the mic, the other approach is to take cotton balls, place them between the mic plate and the floor.


I tend not to usually follow tradition ;-) so on occasion I use some Oktava 012's hanging. I've made up some wire hangers that can be used to hold them from swinging

Sharyn

[6ftstudios]

All I've ever used for choir are AT hanging mics (not by choice - that's just what I had to work with). Placement ALWAYS bugged me with these cause they'd turn to the right or the left and be all weird. THEN...the guy who installed our new system taught me a trick...

to make the head turn - twist the mic clockwise & counter-clockwise in the holder. I can't remember which direction turned it left and which turned it right, but it worked!

[msawyer52]

I've used foam sheet under the crown mics and that works good on a smooth hard stage. We use a second stage that has a very rough surface and picks up all the actors shuffling their feet. I'm not familiar with Earthworks and will take a look. Thanks

[SHARYNF]

Some things to consider,
Many of the Earthworks are omni mics and so you need to be very careful with pa placement. These are very high quality, typically for recording mics that are expensive, and typically out of the range for normal High School use.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/manufacturer/Earthworks

they make excellent recording mics, many times used with high end APOGEE a to d converters for quality acoustic/classical recording.

If you try the cotton ball trick it lifts the pcc 160 plate up higher and might work better with the rougher stage. In addition, as odd as it sounds, one option is to get a carpet remnant and use it on the stage to reduce some of the shuffling noise



Sharyn