Compare 4 lavs

R

Richard Crowley

Veteran
I recently did sound for a 13-episode TV series now playing on a global satellite channel (3ABN).
We had four guys seated around a 4-ft/1m square table, each with a lav hidden under his shirt collar.
The first episode is up on Vimeo here:


See if you can guess which mics I used on the different guys:
Ty Gibson, James Rafferty, David Asscherick, and Jeffrey Rosario
You can see the identification of who is who in the tags in the first shot after the opening sequence.

Here are the mics I used (NOT in the same order as the names above!
They were all wired, XLR mics, not wireless. Even though they are all runners, we managed to keep them seated long enough for each 18-minute segment(!)
One Rode Lav Rode Lav with MiCon5 XLR ($275)
Two Oscar Sound Tech OST-801 ($170 each)
One MXL FR-350 ($50) (as 1/2 of 2-pack)

For subsequent series, I intend to get two more OST-801 and a bunch of vampire clips(!)
At least to my ear, the Rode Lav did not sound "$100 better", and the MXL held its own.
 
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Richard: Sounds great, how did you deal with having 4 lavs in such close proximity without the inherent 'roominess' or phasing that I often hear when editing multimic productions. Did you have to constantly ride the levels in post to isolate whoever was talking?
 
Yeah, we had five EX1 cameras on this production. Our producer (Jim Huenergardt) was running the dolly camera on a circular track.
As normal, :undecided we didn't have the time/budget to do a proper sound mix with the tracks gated, so what you are hearing is pretty much the raw mix of the tracks. it came out better than I would have expected. But all the guys have pretty strong voices so it eased the signal-to-ambient ratios.
 
No, the MXL mic is not on James. As others have observed in other forums, the significant amount of cross-talk and bounce from the table tend to mask more subtle effects (and mic identification).
 
OK here is the revelation...
Ty Gibson (gray shirt) and James Rafferty (blue shirt) had the Oscar OST-801 mics.
James Asscherick (plaid shirt) had the Rode Lav, and
Jeffrey Rosario (charcoal sweater) had the MXL mic.

TT-mics.jpg
 
When you list the MXL mic, you have it as the 350. Interested in you verifying that you used the omni-directional mic from the MXL Lav kit. Did you have a reason to choose the omni over the cardioid for this shoot?

Thank you so much for posting!!
 
TheReverend said:
When you list the MXL mic, you have it as the 350. Interested in you verifying that you used the omni-directional mic from the MXL Lav kit. Did you have a reason to choose the omni over the cardioid for this shoot?
Click to expand...
Yes, it was the bean-size omni mic from the kit. In a limited test, it seemed less sensitive to clothing noise and positioning repeatability through wardrobe changes over 13 episodes.
 
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