Which mixer and lav mics for recording interviews with bands?

D

dan_aka_jack

Well-known member
Hi there,

I'm planning to record lots of interview with bands. As such, I'd like to invest in about 6 lavalier mics and a mixer. So, I need a mixer which can be powered from batteries and can mix 6 mics down to stereo for recording on a DV camera (probably a DVX100). I'd like to spend about £100 on each lav mic and about £150 on the mixer. Can anyone recommend good lav mics for interviews and a good mixer?

Many thanks,
Jack
 
you can buy emw lavaliers from country man , very good for the price .
if you need good dealer in states for countryman , drop me a line , i will send you directly( he is in florida but hesends over the globe) .
about the mixer , dc power and low price dont go together , you can buy ac mixer ( berengher or something like that )and add invertor and car battery if you intend run it where you dont have ac around ,
 
he doesnt have a money for mixer , where will he take few bucks for 2 boomans and the mics , sticks , suspensionsand tones of light to make it work .
lavaliers is the way to go especially for rock groups member who mumbling anyway since stoned or drunk anyway .
cheap is good ,at least he would stay with money for subtitles
just kidding
 
I hear you Oleg but 6 open mics and the time required to wire them all?

I recently did some band interviews for a TV show where we had like 15 bands ranging from 3 to 6 members getting quick 10 minute interviews. It was tricky booming but wiring everyone would have been too time consuming.

Luckily, from my experience, most bands have like one or two guys that speak up while the rest just occasionally throw in a, "yeah" or "rock and roll!!!". Thank god for the George Harrison's of the band :)

Cheers
 
WABBIT , what i get that it is more then 2 minutes interview , so maibe they do have time .
and since they are Brits you can ask them nicely with 2 dozens cans in the hand ,(dont know how it good for the toilet situation in the middle of the thing - the difference between beer and piss is 20 minutes)
if it doesnt work ,joint for the aperitif will give him more minutes to wire every one in relex way :-)

ps - kids dont smock drugs , at least when you working
 
if you mic up 6 people, and mix it live onto stereo, you will need to hire a good sound recordist, with lightening fingers, as you will have one member of the band answering the question properly, and 5 drunks trying to talk over them.

i would Boom it. or if you really are on a tight budget use only one dynamic mic, hand it to the lead singer of the band and make the band pass it round to who ever wants to answer.
 
Ian no need to take a joke so far away , its no such a big problem spread the mics for 2 channels , keeping the less talking people on the age so you can bring them momentary to the mix , by the way , there are allot of automatic mixers on ebay from lectrosonics which can do the work -mono , but what the hake if you need it in mono anyway, whats good for almost every boarding room session may be good here as quik solution ,
by the way i see you have lot of blue in your bunner , are you a city fan :Drogar-Thinking(DBG:Drogar-Thinking(DBG:Drogar-Thinking(DBG?????
 
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Hi guys,

Thanks loads for all your great replies - you've given me lots to think about.

At the moment, the plan is that I will be doing everything technical on the interviews - setting up the cameras, setting up the mics, operating one camera during the shoot and editing the interview. So I definitely wont be able to operate a boom or operate a mixing desk during the shoot. (I realise that this situation is far from ideal but the client doesn't have much money).

Surely it shouldn't take too long to mic up the band? The mics don't have to be hidden from the camera and the band members wont be moving around (99% of the time, the band members will be seated throughout the entire interview).

I have the ability to record 4 channels of audio (because I'm shooting on 2 DV cameras) so I could have one channel for the interviewer, and then spread the band out over the remaining 3 channels so I could re-mix the interview in postproduction. Could I use the aux sends on a mixer to feed the second DV camera? (I've done some research and currently my favorite mixer is the Samson MDR1064 - it has 6 ballanced mic inputs and it's compact)

I quite like the idea of having one microphone that the band members hand round. What mic would you recommend for this purpose? What problems would this setup produce? I imagine that this would be far from perfect though because I'd get handling noise and different band members would hold the mic different distances from their mouths.

Thanks again for your help,
Jack
 
Lest me get this straight, you are interviewing 6 people. Someone must be asking the questions, would it not be easier to have the person ask the question into their handheld mic and then point the microphone to the person who is responding? This is going to be "off the cuff" we are not talking about a panel discussion I would assume and I have never known bands to be tooo serious or give extended answers. Maybe 2 mics at the most one for the band that get passed around and another for the interviewer.
My 2 cents.
 
Hi Brian,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, you're right - there will be a separate interviewer (so, in total, there will be me, the interviewer and the band).

The interviewer doesn't want to be seen by the camera.

I like the idea of having two mics - one for the interviewer and one for the band... possibly with the interviewer wearing headphones so he can ask the band members to hold the mic closer to their mouth etc (which would be edited out).

So - can anyone recommend good a good mic for handing round a band?

Thanks,
Jack
 
ooh, I know that one, Good ol' SM-58LC from Shure, the greatest mic for getting knocked around by 5 band guys :) Great sound quality for like $99, and tough as nails. Don't get the switched version! Get the LC unswitched, since one of the guys will always turn it off at the worst time.
 
Also, if you really want to do wired lavs, my best advice is to get Audio Technica AT-899 mics. I love mine. Warm and wonderful audio. Around $200, and yes, you have to buy the power module if your mixer can't provide phantom power.
 
Oleg 2 said:
ps - kids dont smock drugs , at least when you working
Click to expand...

LOL, nice PSA Oleg.

Per topic at hand: The idea of using a handheld is workable. I would point out the "George Harrison" situation I previously mentioned; certain band members being much more vocal then others. I can see the situation degenerating to one guy hogging the mic which could cause some band strife.

You would also want a condenser mic to get ambient and some band reaction vocalizations. Dynamic mics are not very sensitive and won't pick up the drummer's "Yeah" while the lead singer is holding the mic.

As for only using the lav mics. On the same shoot I referred to above, when we did lav up one of the bands we followed around, two of the four band members had several necklaces, dogtags, etc and the producer didn't want them to change their "crafted look" so the bling stayed and lav tracks have a ton of junk on it. Secondly, some of these guys had the attention span of a puppy and the figgiting habits of a junkie with the DTs. Both qualities leading to the subjects constantly touching their chests and mic. If your mics don't have to be hidden that will help but not completely solve the problem.

The end result: if I had to choose between only lavs or a boom for my particular shoot, I would have gone with the boom.

Regardless of the subjects, if I have be limited to only one sound gathering source beforehand, I would almost always choose the boom.

Just a thought to consider when making your audio plans.

Good luck
 
Cool, thanks for the advice.

I would love to use a boom but I have two concerns about using a boom for my setup (please correct me if these concerns are invalid):

1) Many of the interviews that I'll be filming will be in noisy environments and I'd worry that I wouldn't be able to get a boom mic close enough to the band members being interviewed to get a respectable signal-to-noise ratio.

2) I wont have a boom operator ;-(

I guess the ideal situation would be to carry several different mics around with me so I can adapt to the situation.

One quick question: can I use the "aux send" outputs on a mixer to pull 4 channels out of a stereo mixer? e.g. if I was using a 6-channel mixer with a stereo output and two mono aux sends then could I record 4 separate channels (to two DV cameras).

Thanks,
Jack

Thanks,
Jack
 
yes you can , but find something nicer then samson , if there is company which products falling apart , this the one of them , even beringer is a rolls when you compare it .
look for mixer you have auxiliary pre fader outs so you can pull 3 direct and 1 complete mix track , there are also y (n of channels)x 4x 2 mixers which would be better so you can run every mic what ever you like on the fly true the subgroups .
hand mic - its ugly ,it never work properly since people dont hold it in the right place , it eliminate conversation you like to get and interaction between the band members , you get one on mic and every other replicas stay away .
go with lavaliers , at least it would be equal and people would be able talk with hands ( even they are not Jews :-), with mic in hand you bring them be to stiff . not to mention one get a guitar to give some tune and have to say , hey bro can you hold the mic .stupid ,dont you think ?
but y lavalieres , why not Madonnas ?
no problem with ambient noise , free hands and the **** that make sounds on their clothes , even mumblings would be good as well
not to mention they are probably used it allot during their secend job -the telemarketing
 
If the band are all seated or at least not moving around, you could always use 2 booms on stands. One mic covering 3 members each, as long as the sit next to each other.
 
Lots of opinions, advice and choices for you dan_aka_jack. Best of luck let us know what you choose and use.
Where I come from we say:
"Vous ne avez pas besoin d'une bombe atomique pour tuer une mouche."
 
lav mics etc

lav mics etc

Hi again,

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted in this thread. Just to quickly recap:

I've recently started to get quite a few "interview" jobs where my clients expect me to record and edit videos of interviews. All these interviews are inside (usually in conference rooms, offices, back-rooms of clubs etc). Unfortunately the budget is pretty low so I'm doing everything technical (setting up the lighting, setting up the mics, operating the camera, monitoring the audio etc). There just isn't the budget to have a sound person. Quite often I have to film interviews with several band members, most of whome are usually half-cut and mumbling. Up until now I've been getting by with a lav mic for the interviewer and a 416 on a mic stand pointing at the band. I realise this is far from optimal so I'm looking to invest in some better sound recording equipment.

After all the great advice above, I think I've settled on the idea of giving each band member and the interviewer a lav mic (it rarely matters if the mic is easily visible). I think I'm also going to get a 6-channel mains-powered mixer - I'll setup the levels at the start of the interview and if any of the band members start fiddling with their mics or mumbling while another is talking then I should be able to quickly pull the offending member's level down and then go back to operating the camera. I realise that this situation is far from perfect so I'd also like to investigate the option of recording multiple channels and mixing in post (although I suspect such a recording system would be well above my budget).

So, please may I ask several questions...

1) Which lav mics would you recommend? I've got about £100 to spend per mic. The Countryman B3 has popped up many times on this board. Is that my best bet? Where can I get them in the UK? Would it be better to get something like the Countryman B3 or should I get something like a 2nd hand Sony ECM-44 from eBay? Is it a bad idea to buy lav mics 2nd hand? I imagine they get a fair amount of abuse.

2) Can anyone recommend a good mixer? It needs to have (at least) 6 mic inputs with phantom power options on every channel. It needs to be physically small. My current favorite is the Samson MDR1064. But Oleg says that Samson make crap hardware. Has anyone used a recent Samson mixer?

3) What options do I have for recording 4 to 6 channels of audio? How much would a dedicated hard-disk recorder set me back? Are there devices that would allow my laptop to record 6 channels of audio? I usually take my laptop on shoots (I use DVRack for helping set exposure and for recording DV to disk).

4) I currently have a Sony wireless UTX-B1 wireless system with a Sony omni condenser lav mic. How could I set about converting this mic for use as a wired mic? The mic connects to the transmitter by way of what looks like a stereo 3.5mm jack. I'm pretty good with a soldering iron - could someone point me in the direction of a wiring diagram that would allow me to solder together a cable that has a 3.5mm jack socket at one end and an XLR at the other end?

Thanks again for all your help!

Jack
 
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