C200: Any recommendations for a wireless lavalair mic/system to use

[puredrifting]

I've had the exact opposite experience, three ruined audio shoots with the Sennheiser G3 this year, tons of mosquito noise, wireless hits and just white noise taking over. So far, the Rødes have been flawless. UHF, for me, is dead, although if the pro sound mixers we hire want to work with it, no problem.

 

[Jaime Valles]

I've had the exact opposite experience, three ruined audio shoots with the Sennheiser G3 this year, tons of mosquito noise, wireless hits and just white noise taking over. So far, the Rødes have been flawless. UHF, for me, is dead, although if the pro sound mixers we hire want to work with it, no problem.

Same here. I used four Rode lav kits simultaneously in a conference in lower Manhattan with a crowd of around 200 people in a gigantic wi-fi dense corporate office in the World Financial Center. I had zero issues with dropouts or RF interference recording several hours over two days.

Now, I agree the cables are flimsy, but at least they're replaceable. And if I ever run into any signal issues with the Rodes, I always bring a backup UHF set with me. The Saramonic UWmic9 set is super-cheap, and works well as a backup dual lav kit:

https://www.amazon.com/Saramonic-96...d=1537761038&sr=8-3&keywords=saramonic+uwmic9

 

[Jon Roemer]

I've had the exact opposite experience, three ruined audio shoots with the Sennheiser G3 this year, tons of mosquito noise, wireless hits and just white noise taking over. So far, the Rødes have been flawless. UHF, for me, is dead, although if the pro sound mixers we hire want to work with it, no problem.

Same here. I have had great luck with the Røde Rødelink. No interference issues at all, rock solid, but.... the included Lav is not great and I also upgraded the cable so that I wasn't relying on a mini-jack to XLR convertor.

I went with a Sennheiser MKE2 Gold Lav mic and a Cable Techniques cable with a locking TRS connector.

Blog post I did on this setup with a test of the Sennheiser vs. Røde lav mics and some more info.

Same here. I used four Rode lav kits simultaneously in a conference in lower Manhattan with a crowd of around 200 people in a gigantic wi-fi dense corporate office in the World Financial Center. I had zero issues with dropouts or RF interference recording several hours over two days.

Like Jaime, I have used multiple Rødelink kits at once with no issues.

I'll also add that hiding a MKE2 Gold on someone has been easy - no cable created noise. Doing the same with the Røde lav mic almost never worked for me. Too much cable noise.

 

[Dustin Svehlak]

I've noticed here at the studio / rental house I work when I fire up some of our G3 receivers, I immediately get something broadcasting to it, as if one of the nearby productions have the same microphones and they're on the same channel. All the issues we're dropping in this thread are based on environment. There is no perfect solution...

I went two years with my 3 x Rodelink kits (2 x Lavs, 1 x butt plug kit) and never had an issue, or at least nothing I wasn't expecting - going through walls at 100' distance I expect the occasional dropout. All of a sudden on a recent shoot, I have one that cuts out intermittently if my subject goes more than 20' away from the receiver. We were near an apartment complex so I attributed it to WiFi interference and we switched to a wired setup. I took the same kit home and could recreate the issue so I figured it was probably a bad Rx or Tx. Swapped the Tx to a different Rx and the issue went away. Paired the Rx to another Tx and no issue either... It was bizarre. Again, just my experience.

I also think that although the lav mic with the Rode kit sounds ok, it has bad shielding and if the cable gets anywhere near the Tx, it will emit a very low volume, high pitched whine.


EDIT: I’ve had a couple updates to this-

1) they have a new mic cable that resolves the high pitched whine issue and they will replace the cable under warranty.

2) I found out that there was a broken piece inside one of my transmitters that was causing the intermittent connection. It’s off for repair now but I just had to salvage a shoot with a failed G3 Sennheiser with my working Rodelink and it performed flawlessly.

All that to say - I will eat some crow on this and would endorse the Rodelinks for most applications.

 

[Gweilo66]

"Anytime you could be using a wired lav, it would almost always be better to just be booming it. With regular interview framing, you should be able to get a boom mic just as close as a lav"
Easier access to multiple cameras has made "wide & tight" cameras more common.
Also, room acoustics as well as background noise location can sometimes favor a lav on body..using body itself to block noise.
And often there is not the time to test which will be better. So doing both to begin with is prudent.
I will add that the dynamic range limiters in Lectrosonics wireless (older units included) are hard to beat when you have to guess about where to set tx sensitivity.

 

[puredrifting]

"Anytime you could be using a wired lav, it would almost always be better to just be booming it. With regular interview framing, you should be able to get a boom mic just as close as a lav"
Easier access to multiple cameras has made "wide & tight" cameras more common.
Also, room acoustics as well as background noise location can sometimes favor a lav on body..using body itself to block noise.
And often there is not the time to test which will be better. So doing both to begin with is prudent.

Always, always, always double mic whenever and wherever possible. A lot of narrative people mainly just boom and that's a chance you take. Might turn out fine, boom usually sounds better than close miked but if you have any issue with that boom, you're screwed.

 

[Gweilo66]

Although narrative allows redos.

 

[cpreston]

Always, always, always double mic whenever and wherever possible. A lot of narrative people mainly just boom and that's a chance you take. Might turn out fine, boom usually sounds better than close miked but if you have any issue with that boom, you're screwed.

Issues with a boom mic? Like what? I mean, I've had issues with boom mics before, but I've had far, far more issues with lavs and lavs take more time to fix. If a person is moving about or framing isn't consistent, then put a lav on them. But if they are just sitting for an interview, then I almost never find that a lav is worth the hassle and discomfort of attaching it to the speaker. I mean, I do end up laving interviewees because most clients expect it at this point, but the only time I have found it to be useful is if the speaker is in open space with their back directly to higher pitched background noise.

Just monitor your sound.

 

[puredrifting]

Issues with a boom mic? Like what? I mean, I've had issues with boom mics before, but I've had far, far more issues with lavs and lavs take more time to fix. If a person is moving about or framing isn't consistent, then put a lav on them. But if they are just sitting for an interview, then I almost never find that a lav is worth the hassle and discomfort of attaching it to the speaker. I mean, I do end up laving interviewees because most clients expect it at this point, but the only time I have found it to be useful is if the speaker is in open space with their back directly to higher pitched background noise.

Just monitor your sound.

Boom typically picks up ambient issues, HVAC, elevator shaft noise, kitchen plates and pans banging in hotel ballrooms. I have had my bacon saved numerous times by lavs. Boom usually sounds better but if lav sounds okay and boom sounded good but is polluted with ambient audio issues as seems to happen on a good 30-40% of my shoots, lavs to the rescue! We actually had to ONLY use boom on a lot of group interviews for our film, we simply didn't have a sound mixer with 5-10 wireless lavs. We lose about 30% of it from bad off-axis sound but that's our own fault because we were a microbudgeted documentary without the money to pay a good sound mixer to do their thing. You do the best you can with what you have!

 

[cpreston]

I understand. Group interviews are a whole different mess of horrors.

In my case, I'm often called on to do sound for corporate interviews and docs. In general, I can get a boom mic just as close to the interviewee's mouth as the lav is going to be. Not only does it sound better, but it usually picks up much less ambient noise than the lav. This is especially true when I am dealing with my normal clientele of men in starched shirts and suits with five o'clock shadow, and woman in multilayered, compression fitted dresses that go up their larynx. All of whom are annoyed that they have to speak in front of a camera and certainly don't want to be touched. Also, they only have ten minutes and the producer wants them seated and speaking as soon as possible. But, we still got to get that lav on them. Just in case. Oh, and make sure to hide it.

It's not that I don't think lavs have their place, I just think that some producers and shooters assume that they are the ultimate problem solver rather than a tool with its own vast list of drawbacks.

 

[Run&Gun]

I understand. Group interviews are a whole different mess of horrors.

In my case, I'm often called on to do sound for corporate interviews and docs. In general, I can get a boom mic just as close to the interviewee's mouth as the lav is going to be. Not only does it sound better, but it usually picks up much less ambient noise than the lav. This is especially true when I am dealing with my normal clientele of men in starched shirts and suits with five o'clock shadow, and woman in multilayered, compression fitted dresses that go up their larynx. All of whom are annoyed that they have to speak in front of a camera and certainly don't want to be touched. Also, they only have ten minutes and the producer wants them seated and speaking as soon as possible. But, we still got to get that lav on them. Just in case. Oh, and make sure to hide it.

It's not that I don't think lavs have their place, I just think that some producers and shooters assume that they are the ultimate problem solver rather than a tool with its own vast list of drawbacks.

Oh, I know plenty of shooters and producers that are tools. ; )

 

[rob norton]

Boom typically picks up ambient issues, HVAC, elevator shaft noise, kitchen plates and pans banging in hotel ballrooms. I have had my bacon saved numerous times by lavs. Boom usually sounds better but if lav sounds okay and boom sounded good but is polluted with ambient audio issues as seems to happen on a good 30-40% of my shoots, lavs to the rescue! We actually had to ONLY use boom on a lot of group interviews for our film, we simply didn't have a sound mixer with 5-10 wireless lavs. We lose about 30% of it from bad off-axis sound but that's our own fault because we were a microbudgeted documentary without the money to pay a good sound mixer to do their thing. You do the best you can with what you have!

Shouldn't the booms pick up less ambient issues because of their polar pattern vs. the lav's omni-directional pattern?

Please go easy on me..

 

[brettsherman]

I've had the exact opposite experience, three ruined audio shoots with the Sennheiser G3 this year, tons of mosquito noise, wireless hits and just white noise taking over. So far, the Rødes have been flawless. UHF, for me, is dead, although if the pro sound mixers we hire want to work with it, no problem.

I've certainly had G3 failures over the years. However, nowhere close to the percentage of time of problems with the Rode. On the G3, I think maybe only I have issues 2-4% of the time. With the Rode, so far, more like 25%. And performance of the G3 is dependent on which frequency block you are using. Though I travel all around the country and can't think of a time I haven't found frequencies to use.

Like I said, Rode works great in close proximity. More than 20m I would not trust it at all. So it depends on your use. If you need more than 20m distance I'd say look elsewhere. And it's entirely possible the plug-on unit suffers from range problems that the lavalier unit does not have.

 

[brettsherman]

Seconding a negative vote on the Rodelink stuff- they’re really unreliable in WiFi congested environments and I’ve also had no less than three of the receiver cables fail on me, to the point that Rode sent me three replacements for a single failure to basically get me off their case lol

Are you sure it's not a bad jack? I'm currently having problems with my Rode Receiver with a cable that works perfectly fine with my Sennheiser. I have to say, I really hate the Sennheiser 1/8" connector standard. So much can go wrong with it. Wish they had used a TA3F.

 

[Dustin Svehlak]

Positive, sir. Replaced the cable and the issue went away. This was also tested on multiple cameras and receivers and the issue always followed with the cable.

To add - I think what broke my cables was trusting the coiled nature a little too much and stretching it. It seemed like the right angle that went into the receiver is what failed on me as I could pinch it and the audio would come back (there are others that reported similar experiences online). I've since bought some non-coiled, nylon reinforced cables off Amazon and primarily use those, especially when I'm mounting the receiver pack at a longer length away from my XLR input, and the issue have never come up again. I think the cables that are supplied with the RodeLink kits are really only good when the port is right next to the receiver, such as a DSLR when mounting the receiver on the cold shoe.

 

[puredrifting]

Shouldn't the booms pick up less ambient issues because of their polar pattern vs. the lav's omni-directional pattern?

Please go easy on me..

It's all physics my man, proximity effect. Lavaliere is placed within 6" of sound source, boom is usually going to be at least 2' from source. Also study polar patterns on shotguns and cardioid variants, they reject off axis pretty well but also typically have a well defined pickup area at the rear of the mic that on indoor shoots, will hear most or all of the room reflections, reverbs, echoes, more so on shotguns than cardioids and hypercardioids. In practice, because a lavaliere is so close miked to the source, it's s/n ratio is going to be better than a boom mic. Boom mics generally sound better precisely because they include some of the room characteristics, have more bass and a smoother, more real to life sound quality. It's a double edged sword, hearing some ambient/ reverb through a shotgun is good but that same characteristic picks up on all of the ambient issues. Lavalieres typically sound sterile, close miked and not natural at all because even though most are omni, it's the super high s/n from the proximity effect that makes them sound that way. Sound mixers often will use a lav but bleed in some of the boom, just to "loosen" the sound up so it doesn't sound so sterile, if there are no phasing issues. I know I have many times.

 

[Run&Gun]

It's all physics my man, proximity effect. Lavaliere is placed within 6" of sound source, boom is usually going to be at least 2' from source. Also study polar patterns on shotguns and cardioid variants, they reject off axis pretty well but also typically have a well defined pickup area at the rear of the mic that on indoor shoots, will hear most or all of the room reflections, reverbs, echoes, more so on shotguns than cardioids and hypercardioids. In practice, because a lavaliere is so close miked to the source, it's s/n ratio is going to be better than a boom mic. Boom mics generally sound better precisely because they include some of the room characteristics, have more bass and a smoother, more real to life sound quality. It's a double edged sword, hearing some ambient/ reverb through a shotgun is good but that same characteristic picks up on all of the ambient issues. Lavalieres typically sound sterile, close miked and not natural at all because even though most are omni, it's the super high s/n from the proximity effect that makes them sound that way. Sound mixers often will use a lav but bleed in some of the boom, just to "loosen" the sound up so it doesn't sound so sterile, if there are no phasing issues. I know I have many times.

And a lot of times production asks for both lav and boom on interviews because they'll mix/"bleed" them in post where they have more control and better monitoring conditions, instead of it being done in the field mix. It's all very trivial today to give them the ISO tracks for post, compared to 10 years ago, when we were usually limited to just two tracks and everything was mixed down to those. Especially in the TV/ENG world.

 

[rob norton]

It's all physics my man, proximity effect. Lavaliere is placed within 6" of sound source, boom is usually going to be at least 2' from source. Also study polar patterns on shotguns and cardioid variants, they reject off axis pretty well but also typically have a well defined pickup area at the rear of the mic that on indoor shoots, will hear most or all of the room reflections, reverbs, echoes, more so on shotguns than cardioids and hypercardioids. In practice, because a lavaliere is so close miked to the source, it's s/n ratio is going to be better than a boom mic. Boom mics generally sound better precisely because they include some of the room characteristics, have more bass and a smoother, more real to life sound quality. It's a double edged sword, hearing some ambient/ reverb through a shotgun is good but that same characteristic picks up on all of the ambient issues. Lavalieres typically sound sterile, close miked and not natural at all because even though most are omni, it's the super high s/n from the proximity effect that makes them sound that way. Sound mixers often will use a lav but bleed in some of the boom, just to "loosen" the sound up so it doesn't sound so sterile, if there are no phasing issues. I know I have many times.

Thanks for the response. I'm glad I didn't forget all my training!

You're saying the lav's close proximity overcomes issues an omni directional polar pattern may cause because you have a better s/n ratio.

I was confused because I often boom a hyper cardioid (AT 4053b) nearly as close as I'd place a lav. Other than being off axis, is there any harm in doing this?

- If proximity is the same, should the hyper reject ambient sound better?
- Or is it the hyper's pickup area at the rear that still picks up ambient noise (via reflections)?

 

[puredrifting]

Thanks for the response. I'm glad I didn't forget all my training!

You're saying the lav's close proximity overcomes issues an omni directional polar pattern may cause because you have a better s/n ratio.

I was confused because I often boom a hyper cardioid (AT 4053b) nearly as close as I'd place a lav. Other than being off axis, is there any harm in doing this?

- If proximity is the same, should the hyper reject ambient sound better?
- Or is it the hyper's pickup area at the rear that still picks up ambient noise (via reflections)?

I don't think there is a blanket conclusion to your question, you have to actually study the individual polar pattern and s/n ratio of each mic. As far as placing your 4053 close, no, not a problem as long as it doesn't intrude into your headroom. If you think about it, you really only can get a boom mic super close to the talent's mouth hole in a CU or ECU framing. The trend lately in general, at least for me, is wider framing with a wider FOV, it's more cinematic in general a lot of people feel. Most of my single interviews for my recent documentary I shot with a 28mm or 35mm FOV on S35 I used my 85mm FOV very sparingly as I wanted to see our characters in their environment and to see their hand gestures, etc. So in a wider FOV, you cannot place the shotgun really close them as it will intrude into frame.

Also, as far as better, that too is in the ear of the beholder. To most sound mixers, "uncolored" sound sounds best, where the sound is presented pretty much as your ear would hear it, without exaggerating the bass, treble, presence or mid-range. A microphone like the Schoeps CMC641 is famous for doing this well, it's one of the most neutral mics available. OTOH, a mic like the Sennhesier MKH-50 is NOT at all neutral, I liken it to an action movie, it colors the sound with a pleasant sounding bass boost and has a lot more presence than the Schoeps. Neither sounds better, they just present the sound in radically distinctive ways. FWIW, I've used the AT 4053 a few times, it's okay but nothing special to my ear. Definitely competent and useful but I prefer the sound of the Audix SCX1 in that price range, it's more Schoeps like, but that's just personal preference. I don't think a close-miked 4053 is going to sound much better or worse than a Sanken COS11D or DPA 4060 lavaliere. It's just going to sound quite different.

 

[rob norton]

I don't think there is a blanket conclusion to your question, you have to actually study the individual polar pattern and s/n ratio of each mic. As far as placing your 4053 close, no, not a problem as long as it doesn't intrude into your headroom. If you think about it, you really only can get a boom mic super close to the talent's mouth hole in a CU or ECU framing. The trend lately in general, at least for me, is wider framing with a wider FOV, it's more cinematic in general a lot of people feel. Most of my single interviews for my recent documentary I shot with a 28mm or 35mm FOV on S35 I used my 85mm FOV very sparingly as I wanted to see our characters in their environment and to see their hand gestures, etc. So in a wider FOV, you cannot place the shotgun really close them as it will intrude into frame.

Also, as far as better, that too is in the ear of the beholder. To most sound mixers, "uncolored" sound sounds best, where the sound is presented pretty much as your ear would hear it, without exaggerating the bass, treble, presence or mid-range. A microphone like the Schoeps CMC641 is famous for doing this well, it's one of the most neutral mics available. OTOH, a mic like the Sennhesier MKH-50 is NOT at all neutral, I liken it to an action movie, it colors the sound with a pleasant sounding bass boost and has a lot more presence than the Schoeps. Neither sounds better, they just present the sound in radically distinctive ways. FWIW, I've used the AT 4053 a few times, it's okay but nothing special to my ear. Definitely competent and useful but I prefer the sound of the Audix SCX1 in that price range, it's more Schoeps like, but thats; just personal preference. I don't think a close-miked 4053 is going to better or worse than a Sanken COS11D or DPA 4060 lavaliere. It's just going to sound quite different.

Great information, thanks.