Microphones Stage Microphone for Musical

Ant_307

Member
Hi all, I would like to know what you use when it comes to picking up the voices on ensemble members without body mics. Do you use wireless hanging mics or stage floor mics?
 
In my experience neither one is great but most sound designers use the PCM floor mics for this purpose. You don't pick up much though ... thre's really no substitute for close micing.
 
I use AKG hm1000 hanging bodies on stage, currently with ck31 cardioid capsules, but will be upgrading to the ck47 shotgun soon. We also have a large wireless set of mics. I like the hm1000 in that you can try different capsules without re-wiring the whole room.

Honestly, the $ is spent better on a couple extra wireless. Floor mics are great if you can figure out how to silence feet on stage, which is almost impossible .

Our hanging set took a lot of $ and time to get them functioning at all. The are good for reinforcing large ensemble numbers and need constant attention at the board. We only use them to balance the ensemble with the main characters, each of whom have a body pack.

Individual characters are hard to pick-up with any boundary set-up. It can work if actors can project through the room, but at that point, they don't really need a mic.

The key to a good boundary is minimizing the number of mics used and having good ears and experienced hands at the board.
 
I use the PCC-160s, like everyone else. If you isolate them through a clever bit of padding, you only get the footsteps that are obvious to the audience anyway.

Boundary mics are a pain, though. Hanging mics pick up feet too; in my experience sometimes more so than floor mics. The only thing they are useful for is filling in the ensemble during numbers. I still prefer miking every soloist and if possible the ensemble too.

Shotgun mics at the corners of the stage is cheesy, bad sounding, but effective in terms of isolation. STC down in DC uses them for reinforcement from their coves semi-regularly.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb here. PCCs are useless in most applications in theatre. Need a tap mic they are great, other then that I try and never use them. Depending on stage width and depth several shotgun, hyper or even cardioid mics can give acceptable to good results. It does, however, require very active mixing. Only have the ones you need at any given time, much like line by line with wireless. I have mixed musicals with 10-12 cast members with 4 cardioid mics and one LDC mic on a 4 piece band and been fine. Admittedly it was outdoors so that helps, but the rain site we used on a couple of occasions was a tent with walls and it worked in there too. The tent held 275 or so, outside we had 4-500 depending on which of our two spaces we were in. I have also successfully used similiar techniques in my other jobs 414 seat house, but that tends to be for straight plays. The down side to this is that you will need to convince the director that seeing a mic on a desk stand is better then not hearing the show. Is it the perfect solution no, a wireless on everyone is far better. Does it work for every show, I don't know, but it has worked for me so much better then PCCs that the only time in the last 8 years I've used a PCC is in a piano in a pinch.
 
I concur with most; there's no substitute for wireless and close-range mics. However, we do have two sets (L/C/R) of hanging mics dropped immediately DS of the 1st and 2nd electrics. I really only utilize them to fill-in during large ensemble numbers, and it does require active mixing and only using the specific mic(s) the talent are around. I will try to work with them as much as possible in rehearsals to get the blocking so that the mics can be better utilized.
 
You can use PCCs or choir mics or both, but you can only expect to get a couple dB of gain out of the whole system. How much depends on the design of your sound system (if the system spills a lot of sound back on to stage, your results won't be great). If you are using an analog board you should insert a DSP or parametric EQ with notch filters on the channel since you will be constantly fighting feedback.

If you go into the show thinking that you can replace close micing with PCCs and hanging mics, you will be disappointed. If you need a little bit of lift in the back of the house so your actors are more intelligible and you have a well designed system, PCCs and hanging mics will work with a little bit of fine tuning.
 
We use a combination of hanging and floor mics - most often just hanging and mostly just to drive the hard-of-hearing system when we're doing an unmicrophoned drama. Otherwise, they'd have nothing. But don't even think of doing a musical without wireless body units.
 

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