Poor man's laveliers

Lucas Adamson

Lucas Adamson

Well-known member
Has this been considered as a poor man's lavelier mic:

Wireless mics of any worth are very expensive, so...

A wired quality and cheap lavelier, and a minidisc recorder or cheap solid state recorder in the talent's pocket, either with AGC on or levels preset by the sound guy.

This is cheap and would likely give good to excellent results, providing the levels were in the right ballpark. Obviously the limitations exist, like monitoring, time consumption, sound syncing etc. but I may invest in two pocket recorders and two wired lavs for this purpose.

What do the experts think?
 
2 wired lavs: $300 each
2 recorders: min $300 each

So, that's $600/channel right there, and you can't monitor the audio, you can't control the levels properly, you can't keep an eye on battery state, you simply have no clue if the "poor man's lavs" are recording anything at all, let alone anything useful.

Guess how much the basic G3 kit costs? $600.

If that's not in your budget, rent the gear when you need it.
 
If you really need to go wireless, the G3s are the bottom line of anything worth investing in.
You didn´t state what you are shooting for, but if sound is of any concern, treat it with the same importance as your images.
Actually, good sound and the dated picture quality of a VX1000 is preferable to HVX images with crappy recorded audio...
Also remember that you most likely will buy audio equipment only ONCE, while changing your camera from time to time...
 
what is the best g3 kit to get? what's the difference between the m4 mic and the other mics?
 
what is the best g3 kit to get? With a lav is it best to have omni (me2 mic), or cardiod (me4)? I realize it's situaional, but let's say mostly for sit down interviews or event videography.
 
JordanBlock said:
2 wired lavs: $300 each
2 recorders: min $300 each

So, that's $600/channel right there, and you can't monitor the audio, you can't control the levels properly, you can't keep an eye on battery state, you simply have no clue if the "poor man's lavs" are recording anything at all, let alone anything useful.

Guess how much the basic G3 kit costs? $600.

If that's not in your budget, rent the gear when you need it.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ. Secondhand minidisc walkman recorders are available for peanuts on eBay, like $50. wired lav mics, like the stereo one vivanco make, are $50 too. Now, they may not be projection presentation grade, but they do give you a nice clean signal to work with in post, and are good enough for tv, internet.

I've just finished producing a 35mm short I made with prize money from a Kodak competition I won last year, and the sound came out patchy in places, despite being recorded onto an SD744 with a 416, etc etc. Now that is annoying, so I am quite well aware as I have been for many years about the importance of good sound. So often, however, I hear people arguing the toss over subtle nuances in mic qualities, eager to spend hundreds more on a slightly more refined mic or recorder, which is all well and good, but what really matters is getting a nice clean, good level, clear signal to work with in post. If you fail to get that, you're doing ADR, and nobody cares if you used a £3000 pro recorder or an old sanyo tape recorder. We used expensive shotgun mic & radio lav mics in this case but we're still looking at ADR, and we shot entirely in a studio!!! The one used for a scene or two in The Dark Knight, no less.

What I'm saying is posh equipment is necessary if you're shooting a feature for projection and big bucks and need super-low noise floor levels and lovely warm sexiness, but for the rest of us, having poor man's lavs, as opposed to not having any, might make more difference than if you have a $1000 416 or a cheapo $175 AT475r.
 
Lucas Adamson said:
What really matters is getting a nice clean, good level, clear signal to work with in post.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Taking a crappy minidisc recorder with a mic you found in a cereal box and strapping it to the talent is not a situation that lends itself to getting the good, clean sound that you're after, particularly if you have no idea what you're doing.
 
Your right on a few points and not so much on others.
Your not going to spend $300 on a lav if your going down this route so that is just silly and you don't need and probably don't want a $300 flash recorder for this job either. If your replacing a wireless lav then you probably want it small so the really small recorders are a better choice and cheaper. Your going to have to set and forget so most of the features of a better recorder are moot.
You DON'T want MiniDisk except as a last resort. It has a number of issues especially with the small "walkman" type recorders. Things like really icky mic paths and loosing the whole disk because the batteries got too low. The last on is a killer and happened to me more than once. MD doesn't write the directory till you hit stop. Stopping takes some juice and (at least on the Sony's) a notch or two before the batt. was dead it was too low to write the directory and you loose whatever you haven't saved and sometimes it partially writes the directory and you loose everything. The second "bad" is that the only way to get the sound out on most of those is through the "line out" another icky path. So when I was using them I had a SD MixPre as the front end and transfered from a MD deck digitally into the computer. Do all that and it sounds really good most of the time. But you still have the battery issue and by the time you have added the MixPre and the deck your no longer in your working fund range.

Also cheap lavs are going to want the kind of power that you can only get in consumer recorders so that is a win win.

A place to look for often pretty good and very affordable lav's that work with consumer recorders is Radio Shack. That may be was in your area because RS has decided to become a cel phone store and dump almost everything else. RS doesn't "make" anything so that really cheap lav is probably a Sony or maybe a Shure, the PZM's they used to sell were made by Crown. So while it's not a guarantee, a lot of times you can get real quality at a big discount. Last time I bought some they had a stereo pair that was wired to go into the stereo mini input of consumer recorders. I used them and the MD to do the kind of ambiance stealing then the small flash recorders do so much better now. But a friend tested a bunch for a doc project and went with the RS lavs over a $400 pair because voices sounded better in the RS pair. Her normal interview mic is a Schoeps so she does have some sense of quality.

So yes you can but should you? If you had decent equipment and it sounded bad either your sound person wasn't very good or you hamstrung them by location, time and just not letting then do a decent job.
So you should take a careful look at the reasons you had bad sound before you decide what to do to fix them.

I have a friend who I have posted two shorts for that had just god awful production sound. The sound person was either not listening or was deaf. The mic was loose in the mount and rattled every time he moved the pole and there was a bad connection so there was a buzzing that popped in and out. It was recorded LOW and in the out door scenes they used NO wind protection. It doesn't get much worse, unless one of your outdoor locations is at a beach!

Anyway he is doing a really short sort of ad so he asked me to do the recording, short day in a studio really simple. I said yes and showed up to the studio. It was a photo studio. Hard cyc, windows on a VERY busy street next to a fire station and in this converted industrial building there was no ceiling, just rafters and the roof. It was almost like being on the sidewalk but with out the wind. Of course there was the building going on next door. So after all the hell he had gone through on two films he still didn't listen to his location AT ALL when he chose to shoot there. For what he needed it was OK since it was a bunch of people making a LOT of noise but he probably lost an hour and a half to sirens and planes etc because I would speak up when we need to hold for the really bad stuff. So before you start spending money and changing work flow make sure you aren't part of the problem. Maybe all you need to do is make sure your sound man knows you want him to speak up about problems AND listen to her concerns. And have them check the space ahead of time etc.

If I had to guess I would say that probably you had a not very experienced sound person, shot in a problematic location and he/she got paranoid about dipping into the frame (35mm film isn't cheap) and so stayed too far out. Of course they could have just been awful so?



Lucas Adamson said:
I beg to differ. Secondhand minidisc walkman recorders are available for peanuts on eBay, like $50. wired lav mics, like the stereo one vivanco make, are $50 too. Now, they may not be projection presentation grade, but they do give you a nice clean signal to work with in post, and are good enough for tv, internet.

I've just finished producing a 35mm short I made with prize money from a Kodak competition I won last year, and the sound came out patchy in places, despite being recorded onto an SD744 with a 416, etc etc. Now that is annoying, so I am quite well aware as I have been for many years about the importance of good sound. So often, however, I hear people arguing the toss over subtle nuances in mic qualities, eager to spend hundreds more on a slightly more refined mic or recorder, which is all well and good, but what really matters is getting a nice clean, good level, clear signal to work with in post. If you fail to get that, you're doing ADR, and nobody cares if you used a £3000 pro recorder or an old sanyo tape recorder. We used expensive shotgun mic & radio lav mics in this case but we're still looking at ADR, and we shot entirely in a studio!!! The one used for a scene or two in The Dark Knight, no less.

What I'm saying is posh equipment is necessary if you're shooting a feature for projection and big bucks and need super-low noise floor levels and lovely warm sexiness, but for the rest of us, having poor man's lavs, as opposed to not having any, might make more difference than if you have a $1000 416 or a cheapo $175 AT475r.
Click to expand...
 
JordanBlock said:
Exactly. Taking a crappy minidisc recorder with a mic you found in a cereal box and strapping it to the talent is not a situation that lends itself to getting the good, clean sound that you're after, particularly if you have no idea what you're doing.
Click to expand...

Now now, MD can sound decent and you can also get a decent lav for less than $300.
BUT what you hint at and the OP completely missed is that the person using the boxes is a LOT more important than the boxes.

What really matters is getting a nice clean, good level, clear signal to work with in post.
Click to expand...

Neither spending $100 for a cheap body recorder/lav nor spending a stack on the best wireless system made is going to guarantee you that.

What I'm saying is posh equipment is necessary if you're shooting a feature for projection and big bucks and need super-low noise floor levels and lovely warm sexiness, but for the rest of us, having poor man's lavs, as opposed to not having any, might make more difference than if you have a $1000 416 or a cheapo $175 AT475r.
Click to expand...

Actually that is kinda BS. A noisy mic that sounds bad sounds just about as bad on your TV as it does in the theatre. Lavs are rarely the hero sound in "big budget films". The boom is king because it sounds better almost all the time. This may be extreme but I suspect that indi film sound would improve if lavs were made illegal. Directors think that if they slap lavs on everyone the job is done.
 
Noiz2 said:
Now now, MD can sound decent and you can also get a decent lav for less than $300.
BUT what you hint at and the OP completely missed is that the person using the boxes is a LOT more important than the boxes.
Click to expand...

What I'm trying to say is starting out with crappy gear and no idea how to use it isn't going to magically get you good sound. Can we get good sound out of crappy gear? Sure, sometimes, but why handicap yourself right off the bat?

Noiz2 said:
This may be extreme but I suspect that indi film sound would improve if lavs were made illegal. Directors think that if they slap lavs on everyone the job is done.
Click to expand...

I'd bet you're right on that. People get way too excited about wiring everyone up.
 
Microphones and recorders always produce replies like this. Microphones sound different and some are good for one subject and others good for those. However, once a certain price point is exceeded, then the differences start to get smaller and smaller. Swapping some DPAs for Countrymans simply because I broke my last DPA just produces a small change in the sound, and with a small tweak to the eq, is perfectly fine. Through choice, I love the DPA 'sound' - BUT it is not essential to use kit this expensive. I really hate it when people insist on slagging off anything other than 'the best' when 'the best' is simply what they like. For every Sennheiser fan there will be somebody else with their own favourite. Why is is that audio gets bad treatment on forums whenever anyone has the temerity to suggest using anything other than premium price equipment. It is results that matter.

It is quite possible to find better audio quality coming from a budget price lavalier mic on a Sennheiser G1,2 or 3 than a 416 in some circumstances. The recording format is less important than many people claim. The BBC were quite happy with the quality of the MD walkman, and firms such as Canford Audio produced add on housings with big knobs, balanced audio input and decent headphone facilities. We can hear the compression artefacts on MP3 audio with certain sources, but not by any means on every recording, yet the audio quality from a boom mic of any make is so variable depending on source distance and aiming accuracy. That horrible thin-ness as a shotgun goes off axis is far, far worse to my ears than the data reduction.

I have in my racks here MD kit from broadcast, professional and home user ranges, DAT machines from when they were popular and now solid state and hard drive recorders - and I really don't care which I use for many projects - I'll select the most appropriate one. The current crop of card storage devices like the Zooms have quite sufficient quality, and any attempt to talk this down is just snobbery.

The only bad thing about older MD kit is reliability, and that is the only reason I'm gradually running away from it - however, I still use almost weekly one of these.
images

Which has been ultra reliable, has big chunky buttons and big display. Nobody has ever questioned the quality!

I have even used my radio systems with a really cheap lav mic costing less than $50 and you know what, it did the job. with a bit of eq it was quite useable, and it mixed in fine with the others.

On the G3 mic front. The ME2 mic isn't as good as the MKE2, and is quite a bit bigger, and sounds a little less crisp. The cardioid ones really aren't much use for anything - theatrical use generally wants omni 2 - cardioid clip on mics are just to difficult to point properly, a turn of the head meaning the audio just drops right off.

Don't buy rubbish, but don't automatically right off less than the top ticket kit - it could do the job quite well.
 
Noiz2 said:
Actually that is kinda BS. A noisy mic that sounds bad sounds just about as bad on your TV as it does in the theatre. Lavs are rarely the hero sound in "big budget films". The boom is king because it sounds better almost all the time. This may be extreme but I suspect that indi film sound would improve if lavs were made illegal. Directors think that if they slap lavs on everyone the job is done.
Click to expand...

A "noisy" mic is not what I'm talking about. Nobody wants that. The difference between a good cheap(ish) mic and a pro mega-expensive mic is mostly the cost, in my opinion. The difference between good sound and **** sound can come down to how close you can get the mic, whatever it is, to the talent. A tentative boom-op can be the culprit (I think it was on my 35mm production in the studio). Sure there is a difference in quality of kit, but it's mostly operation and knowledge that defines "pro".

I do agree with you that lavs are rarely the hero, but they can be. They do give a dangerous false sense of security, akin to the dangerous phrase "don't worry - we can do all that in post!" but I've done enough sound edits to know that I'd rather have them than not.

Maybe you're right. Maybe cheap lavs and md recorders is a **** idea. Maybe I'll hire. Thanks for your help.
 
Lucas,
were you asking for opinions here or simply hoping for a thumbs up for (theoretically) finding the ultimate "poor man´s" sound solution?
So you have shot with all the bells and whistles so far and know believe that you will get similar results with used minidisk recorders and no-name lavaliers from ebay.
Well, ok.
But why the arguing about sth you obviously have never tried before? No need to convince anyone of sth that so far sounds only good in your thinking.
Just try it and show the proof. Saves everyone a lot of typing...
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Maybe you're right. Maybe cheap lavs and md recorders is a shi* idea. Maybe I'll hire. Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

I don't think you read my posts very carefully if that is what you thought I said. Low end MD I'm not a fan of because of reliability. There are a few circumstances where the compression will make the audio unusable (mostly the same kind of sounds that HD compressed audio (used on some HD camcorders) will freak out) but not often with vocal recordings. As I think I mentioned I have exactly what your talking about using. I still use it from time to time because I have a really big stock of blank MD that I don't want to waste and it works fine for some things. So you might want to reread my posts.

There is/can be/ a very large difference in quality when your going as cheap as you are. The catch is that you really need to know more to use cheap gear well that more expensive gear. For one thing your on your own. Sony doesn't have a hand book for using their orphaned consumer MD recorders for sync film work. You have to tes and work out the limitations and the problems. You have to figure out how to set them up optimally. And in the end if your sound person (or you) don't place the mics well it doesn't matter if it cost $$$$$ or 0.$ it's still going to sound bad.

My general point was that equipment is maybe 10% of the equation. What you described was not an equipment failure it was a people failure. Spending less on equipment wont fix the people problem unless you take the savings and invest it in... People. So to shore up you point. Cheap equipment badly used is not going to be any worse than good equipment badly used. So while I question the wiseness of the cheap lav + MD solution I would equally question a $$$$ wireless lav solution.

I am by no means an equipment snob. I have some really nice expensive gear and some very cheap gear, and some I built my self. Most of the (Oscar award winning) water sound in THE BLACK STALLION were recorded with a Sony cassette deck and the stereo mic that came with it. It's MUCH more about how you use what you have than WHAT you have.
 
alternative lavs

alternative lavs

Spartacus said:
If you really need to go wireless, the G3s are the bottom line of anything worth investing in.
Click to expand...

I respectfully have to disagree with this statement. I bought Audio Technica as my first eng wireless and had some decent results. The nice thing is you can switch the RF on the Tx's. (10 - 30mW) No sense in burning up batteries if its not necessary. G3s can do this as well but the sound quality (noise floor) on the AT units is better in my opinion.

The negative to the 1800 series is their size and weight. However, I would rather have better sound, then lighter weight units. The 1821 model (dual channel receiver) is great, as I have two that I use for lower budget gigs. I feel they are the best in their class, other than their big boned nature, the only con i feel is you cant monitor Tx battery levels, but normally this isnt an issue as they are fairly conservative on power consumption.

I do own G2s and G3s as well, and think they are great units. If you cant afford lectros, buy either of these units and upgrade the mics. You will get some surprising results.

Cheers:beer:
 
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