Mics for indoor and outdoor: what differences and why?

Baluardo

Baluardo

Well-known member
Hi all,

even though i learned a lot lately (and i'm still learning) about audio, i still dont quite understand which types of boom mics are supposed to be better for indoor/outdoor shooting, and why.

intuitively, i can't understand why the polar pattern of a mic should be different from indoors to outdoors situations. My only guess would be that a narrower polar pattern would reject reverb a little better indoor, but i think to remember i've read the exact opposite (ie wider polar patterns are better indoors), but never read about the reasons.
Also in Jay Rose's book didn't find too explicit details about this.

Thanks for all of your advices.
Andrea
 
Excellent tutorial on this topic:
http://homepage.mac.com/tyreeford/.Public/Video/Ty Ford Mic Tutorial VIdeo.mp4

WHAT I LEARNT: Shotguns don't work well indoors because they are not very directional in the low frequencies. So the room reverb ends up changing the character of your audio. The funny thing is that all you have to do is move the microphone close enough to the subject. I think what makes lavalier mics "better" for indoor use is that they can typically be brought closer to the speaker's mouth than the shotgun. At the same distance, nothing beats the shotgun, afaik.

I have one question though. Even if the audio is changed by the low frequency noise, can't that be fixed with a simple high pass filter in post?
 
I learned the hard way about this. I shot a number of indoor short films using a decent , high quality shotgun microphone. On a couple of them, we got lucky and they sound pretty darn good. A few others... not so much. I mean, they dont sound TERRIBLE... but i know better.. i know they can sound MUCH better with the right mic...

So we went out and purchased an AKG CK93 Blueline Microphone to use indoors. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!! And i never realized the difference until we compared the two. (indoor scenes shot with shotgun vs. akg) It (AKG) sounds WAY better than the shotguns we were using inside. That mic is amazing and we plan on using it for our feature film. But the mic is only amazing if you use it right. ie, proper boom operation and mic placement, etc...


Regarding the high pass filter... i have spent a lot of time trying to make indoor shotgun audio "better" with those types of filters in FCP.... i could never seem to get it right. There may be a way, and audio experts may know just the trick, but i would rather use the right mic for the situation in the first place.
 
when low frequencies are mentioned, these arent TOO low at all! almost any frequency from the mids downwards can get pretty darn screwed up by room acoustics coupled with what is known as "off axis colouration" of mics with shotgun patterns - its a complicated word of phasing and standing waves and live surfaces out there, but essentially what you need to know is that the shotgun pattern is COMPLETELY UNNATURAL - its like the frankenstein of mics. that directivity we all like is achieved at the cost of other side effects (namely, rear lobing in the polar pattern - which is contributing to helping you scoop up reverb as it bounces off the ceiling - and off axis colouration - which is a combo of phasing effects as the rear lobe picks up off axis audio and frequency response not being the same at all parts of the polar pattern.)

this is all very complicated, and i dont even know everything about this effect (who does, except maybe oleg), but ill be happy to answer any direct questions you may have.

for the first one - you cant use high pass filtering to correct this problem because its not only in the lows! its ALL OVER the frequency spectrum...
 
Ok, so I'm new to this concept of different mics for indoor/outdoor use.

However, I do have some experience with studio recording. Would it be worthwhile to use something like a sennheiser md421 or ld condenser for indoor use?

I'm probably not going to use a shockmount (dont have one yet), so I'll probably opt for the md421 vs. sennheiser shotgun
 
cgecko1219 said:
Ok, so I'm new to this concept of different mics for indoor/outdoor use.

However, I do have some experience with studio recording. Would it be worthwhile to use something like a sennheiser md421 or ld condenser for indoor use?

I'm probably not going to use a shockmount (dont have one yet), so I'll probably opt for the md421 vs. sennheiser shotgun
Click to expand...

If the mic is going to be in the shot, no problem. For example, for "Prairie Home Companion" the EV RE-27s on stage were the actual practical microphones. But for speech your optimum working distance with the MD421 is going to be measured in inches so if you're recording documentary sound or dramatic dialog your talent is going to be so far off-mic as to render it useless.
 
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