How do you monitor sound w/headphones when the subject is talking in front of you?

B

Bschwartz

New member
Hello: I've been thinking about something and wondered what you experts think. I recorded an interview recently where I did not monitor the sound. As it turned out, the gain on my preamp was turned up at max and the air conditioning ended up sounding like a jet airplane. Noob mistake.

If you are runnin' and gunnin' interviewing a talking head, how can you monitor sound well with headphone when the subject is talking a few feet away?

Maybe it comes with practice. Just curious for your thoughts.

Thanks,
Brian
 
Are you on-camera as well?

Unless you're actually in front of the camera, I'm not sure what the problem is. I occasionally shoot interviews as a one man band, from behind the camera, and always monitor through headphones. The only slight challenge I find is that the monitor delay occasionally trips me up when I ask questions (hearing my own voice in a slight delay can be disorienting).
 
Are you concerned about being too isolated from the subject/environment with the headphones on all the time?

An old recording studio trick is to put the headphones over just one ear - lets you monitor but you can still hear what's around you in the setting.
 
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Use your microphone(s) as your ear(s). IMO, that's the essence of monitoring voice recording. If your mechanical "ear" is too unidirectional and you have a spare channel, add an omnidirectional lav to the spare channel to give you an extra ear to monitor the ambient sound as well.

Anyway, what's your problem really? Are you someone who has to be included in the interview video that you are shooting on your own?
 
Bschwartz said:
Hello: I've been thinking about something and wondered what you experts think. I recorded an interview recently where I did not monitor the sound. As it turned out, the gain on my preamp was turned up at max and the air conditioning ended up sounding like a jet airplane.
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That reads as though you used the mic on the camera which wasn't close enough to the voices so you boosted it way up and ended up recording the room aircon louder than the voices.

If you were asking the questions from behind the camera with the subject on camera, you need to change your technique. In that case unless you use 2 mics, you won't get the proper audio balance, IMO too difficult at your stage.

One way to produce a satisfactory result is to re-record the questions after the event and edit them in, it needs experience to do this. Another way is set the camera up on a tripod, it'll run by itself and you get in front with the subject after you adjust the framing and voice levels. A third way is take a friend along to ask the questions on camera.

Bschwartz said:
If you are runnin' and gunnin' interviewing a talking head, how can you monitor sound well with headphone when the subject is talking a few feet away?

Maybe it comes with practice. Just curious for your thoughts. Thanks,
Brian
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Use closed heaphones which block out much exterior sound, but if you're new and asking the questions that's hard to do when you hear your own voice, even for some pros.

Yes it does come with practice, you need to find your best way to do all this, working with a buddy before the next gig. Hope this helps.

Cheers.
 
Thanks all...sorry I could not reply sooner. I think, Raster nailed it. I should have provided more specifics up front. Essentially, I don't need to say anything. I would be behind the camera (which is also on a tripod) Once I hit record, I do not have to do anything. The thing is that it can be tough to know if you have all the gain etc settings right unless you monitor the sound. As Raster point out, it can be tough, as a newbie, to monitor the sound with good over the ear headphones if you can hear the subject at the same time. I suppose it wouldn't matter if the headphones could cancel out the voices that are standing close to you. Thanks for your thoughts.
 
Bschwartz said:
The thing is that it can be tough to know if you have all the gain etc settings right unless you monitor the sound.
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To an extent. However, deciding it's "loud enough" just based on what you hear in the headphones isn't exactly accurate. It can vary depending on how loud the headphones are. Monitoring, which should be done at all times, will allow you to detect distortion, extraneous sounds (background), and other audible signal problems.

When it comes to gain settings, you need to go through your system before recording and ensure proper gain staging. To that, what camera are you using, are you recording to camera or another device, and what other sound gear (mic, mixers, etc.) is in the chain?
 
Bschwartz said:
Thanks all...sorry I could not reply sooner. I think, Raster nailed it. I should have provided more specifics up front. Essentially, I don't need to say anything. I would be behind the camera (which is also on a tripod) Once I hit record, I do not have to do anything. The thing is that it can be tough to know if you have all the gain etc settings right unless you monitor the sound. As Raster point out, it can be tough, as a newbie, to monitor the sound with good over the ear headphones if you can hear the subject at the same time. I suppose it wouldn't matter if the headphones could cancel out the voices that are standing close to you. Thanks for your thoughts.
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You don't monitor with phones to verify your "loudness" settings .. that's what meters are for. Let's say the sounds in your can's are too low ... is that because the recording level is set too low or is it because you've set the headphone playback volume too low? There's really no way to know. Yet one effects the recording quality, the other does not. You monitor so you can tell if that dog barking across the street stepped on the important comment your subject just made or there's an AC buzz getting picked up by the mi cable, that sort of things. You have to do both - monitor aurally to evaluate subjective qualities like interfereing background sounds and monitor visually on properly set up meters to insure correct level settings.
 
Also, just because the volume sounds good in one place, does not mean it is good into the recorder. Now this is more for people flying a rig, but the principle still applies.

Always check outputs throughout your rig (mixer, pre, recorder, foldback if to camera) to verify a good clean signal path. When shooting, monitor post-recorder. (this is where a lot of people make mistakes, by not listening to what is recorded, versus listening to what you feed the recorder.)

And always watch your gain staging.

Steve: Meters are notorious for inaccuracies. The way my rig is set up, I barely see a bump on the needles when recording, yet the recording are nice and full. So believe your ears over your equipment. They have the final say. Plus it help to know the equipment......
 
Doc Bernard said:
...Steve: Meters are notorious for inaccuracies. The way my rig is set up, I barely see a bump on the needles when recording, yet the recording are nice and full. So believe your ears over your equipment. They have the final say. Plus it help to know the equipment......
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Granted some meters are pretty marginal, which is why for serious work it's a good idea to opt for professional-grade gear with proper metering whenever possible. As for seeing barely a bump on the meters when recording yet getting good files, I find that passable strange. Not doubting what you say but would love to know what setup and gain-staging gives you that experience. My own kit includes an SD442 and I set up the meters to show average+peak levels. After setting 0dBVU tone from the mixer to -20dBFS on the recording device, I adjust gain in the mixer with the channel faders to put the average dialog reading in the high green levels, occasionally just tickling the orange zone starting at +4 on the meters. Definitely shows more than 'barely a bump' on the meters on either device when recording. You may have clean enough files to add enough gain in post to bring them up to normal levels but assuming the meters are working properly, recording with 'barely a bump' showing certainly sounds like you could record with a lot more gain for even better signal/noise ratios. IMHO, real-world signals like speech are at their optimum when the nominal level is bouncing somewhere around -12dBFS on a typical peak-reading digital recorder or camera.
 
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