mixing two lavs and boom

[rafaeldelauz]

Hi everyone, something out of curiosity. I want to find what 's the most common practice among you guys when your are working with three mics, going to a video camera,just two channels. what I normally do is to send one lav to one channel, the other lav to second channel and the boom to both of them. This way if I run into a lav problem I cancel that channel and keep going. Is this a good way of doing this? Or would be better to send two lavs to one channel and the boom to the other?

 

[SMuir]

One of the problems with mixing two or more mics together to a single track (which would occur on both channels in the situation you described) is that
the two mics may start phasing as they move (in relation to themselves and the sound source).

A more common practice is to pan the boom mic hard left (ch1), and pan all the wireless (and wired) lavs hard right (ch2). Wireless mics are less prone to phase problems, so mixing them together is usually a safe practice. The boom, on the other hand, is far more prone to phase problems when mixed with other mics, but is impervious to the dropouts and interference that bedevil wireless mics. Moreover, keeping the dry-sounding lav mics sepperate from the roomier boom mic will give you more flexibility when mixing the two channels together in post-production.