Ambiance Microphones?

[Anonymous067]

I recently started using wireless IEM for my gigs, as I am a piano player.

I love them, but the isolation is starting to eat at me, as I played with just a floor monitor last night to go back for a while, and I miss the "liveness".

I know I can use ambiance mics run through the aux to my mix, but I'm wondering, whats the best placement for them.

The usual venue I'm at has a 40w x 25d stage, so what microphone type (models even) and placement can I use?

 

[DaveySimps]

This is more about personal preferences than anything. On tours I have been a monitor engineer on, I have used small diaphragm condenser mics (I have used Shure KSM 137 and SM81's personally); at least one on either side of the stage on the very downstage edge. I have also had good success with shotgun mics in the same location. You will have to play with this depending on your audience proximity, main speaker placement, etc. Again, it is more about preference than anything.

I have know people to use the Shure setup that includes the clip on ambient mic, but they have had very mixed results. 4 out of the have stopped using it all together.

~Dave

 

[howlingwolf487]

We use 3 Sennheiser or Audio-Technica shotguns placed SR, CS, and SL. Each are panned according to the artist's perspective.

 

[Anonymous067]

For the current set up I have, I am limited to what isn't already in use. I found two shorter boom stands (2 ft tall), and I looked in our drum mic inventory and found two AE 3000 large diaphragm mics. They are on downstage sl and sr, panned accordingly, and I'll be trying that tomorrow.
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[DaveySimps]

That should get you in the ballpark. Let us know how it turns out. Good luck!

~Dave

 

[Anonymous067]

Today went pretty well. I was doing a lot of playing around with the compressor I recently acquired (using as a hard limiter for the IEM). It was a bit difficult at first to get a good balance of ambiance during songs, but then have too much during spoken parts, and such. And quiet piano only songs were a nightmare because all I could hear was crowd chatter. I'm not lucky enough to have [capable] hands this week to fade up and down the ambiance mics based on the song and section...so I'll make due.

As far as the actual mics go, I have them set rolling off most low freqs (as low at 120 I think), and boosting the mids and cutting highs.

I also patched an extra channel of my gate/compressor into these two mics to gate out the room when it is silent.

It seems to be working well, we'll see how the week goes.

 

[TimmyP1955]

Try a compressor on the ambient mics. Depending on what you wish to accomplish, there are at least two ways to do it:

Normal (what the mics pick up is what triggers the compressor).

Feed the sidechain input(s) with a mix, so that the ambients are compressed anytime that anyone is playing.

 

[Chris15]

There is a reason that when John Farnham did his tour back in '03 there was IEM for everyone but him - he couldn't get the perspective in where in the crowd sound was coming from with IEM and so toured 3 wedges...

Now I know this is a little out of your league, but I'm told Keith Urban tours with boundary mics mounted to sizable (metre by metre sorta thing I think) sheets of perspex that get suspended off the bottom of the line array...

I think it's probably a case of playing around until something triggers the light bulb...