How to use crown pcc-160

[fhs-tech]

Can anyone give me some good operating guidelines for these mics? Such as how far downstage of action? Spacing? Everytime I try to use these they seem to be no help. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mbenonis]

In my experience, floor mics can be very difficult to use. When you use them, try to place them as far downstage as any action goes, so that nobody steps on them, but as close to the actors as you can get. As far as numbers and spacing, use an odd number if you can (with one in the center of the stage), and use as few as you can so you can avoid phasing issues. Otherwise, just set the gain carefully and mix carefully, and you should get decent sound out of them with a minimum of feedback.

[soundlight]

I use three, all on the edge of the apron, because we always use all of the stage (all the way up to the edge of the apron). I always phase (polarity) reverse the middle one so that I don't have interference problems. Also, the balance between gain and volume level is VERY important and must be tweaked to perfection for these mics to work to their highest potential.

[Andy_Leviss]

I always phase (polarity) reverse the middle one so that I don't have interference problems.

Polarity reversing the middle one isn't going to help you with phasing in that situation. The phasing that causes a problem in PCCs that are in overlapping pickup areas is over a much wider range than just being 180-degrees out of phase and is not linear across the entire bandwidth of the microphone. All polarity reversing does is produce an end result that is effectively the same as putting the input exactly 180-degrees out of phase across the entire bandwidth. It may help things minorly, it may do nothing, or it may make things worse. And then an actor can take two steps, and all the relationships involved will change.

The only way to effectively use multiple overlapping PCCs (or any other mic) is to actively mix them. Theoretically, a GOOD automatic mixer could work for a situation like a meeting, but for a play or other performance it's not going to be anywhere near as good as mixing manually.

[PATech]

One little trick that I recently picked up from an old hand who's been mixing professionally since far before I was born is to incline the mic slightly towards the stage. He sets the mics up on a layer of foam that is slightly sloped (about 10 degrees or so) towards the stage. We used this technique when a touring tap-dance company came through and the increased quality of the pick-up and gain-before-feedback was impressive. With a few EQ cuts to take care of some hollowness in the sound, the PCC's picked up the taps faithfully and they sounded really transparent in the mix with the live jazz band in the pit. Has anyone else had success with this technique?

[tonedeafsoundguy]

The biggest problem we have with any pcc is to get too far forward on the stage. The reason for this is that we have a speaker cluster hanging just in front of the proscenium. Moving the mic down stage puts the mic pickup range too near the speaker output range. This doesn't allow for a lot of gain before feedback. We also have an hydraulic pit and the stage is hollow from pit edge to plaster line, so using floor mics we have to put foam under the mics to reduce the drum effect of the hollow stage.
Yes tilting the mics 10 deg. does help.

[mbenonis]

I also place my PCC's on a piece of foam to reduce footstep noise. If you're wondering where to get foam cheap, you may not need to look further than your resident lampies. If they order Osram lamps, chances are they come wrapped in a piece of foam which is just the right thickness for use with floor mics. Just ask them to save it for you.

[cutlunch]

Originally Posted by fhs-tech

Can anyone give me some good operating guidelines for these mics? Such as how far downstage of action? Spacing? Everytime I try to use these they seem to be no help. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have you checked out what Crown has to say about using their microphones properly.

The link below opens a PDF from Crown on the use of their range of PZM,PCC etc microphones.

http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/mics/127089.pdf

This is the link to the info sheet for the particular microphone you have.

http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/mics/101062.pdf

It is easy to put these microphones around the wrong way. PCC's have widest part across the stage whereas PZM have their narrow part across the stage. Also as these are phantom powered has the phantom power been switched on for the channels the mikes are on?

[mbandgeek]

In a recent play for a middle school that i had worked, one of the actors was sitting on the edge of the stage very close to the floor mic. In haste to get of the edge, he knocked to off and it was just hanging there the only thing keeping it from falling was some tape to keep the cord down. A fall of a 5 foot high stage would probably have broken that mic, and from what i know is that they are not cheap.

[jacobbiljo]

from my experience with careless actors, the mic might actually have survived. it is common practise that when ever we lay down a pcc mic, we put a peice of tape across the from and back, holding the mic securely to the stage.