Question about mic quality.q

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ironpony

Carbonite Member
I've been doing location sound for my friend's productions since I'm much more knowledgable than they are, but still learning myself. My friends all keep telling me that the shotgun mic (NTG-3) sounds better than the hypercardioid (AT4053b), quality wise, even indoors it sounds better. I am good at keeping it on axis. They want me to use it all the time, and no hyper at all for all the sound, but is that a good idea? Can an NTG-3 sound better for everything as long as I keep it aimed in the right places?
 
Do your own test, and see if you agree with your friends. If you do, ignore contrary advice. While grounded in fact, there are no real rules, just suggestions, and blindly following things others say cannot be good practice. Everyone tells you on forums that you don't use shotguns indoors and everybody wanting good quality uses hypers.

I tend to agree that with good mic control, a shotgun indoors can be the best, but with an idiot on the end of it, a hyper would have been safer.
 
I know that but every room I have recorded in and compared the shotgun sounds better. So is there any type of room the hyper would? It always sounds better to me, always, and have not found a situation yet where it did not. But maybe I will. So when people say that the hyper is better for indoors, is that advice only for people who don't know how to aim it right, boomwise? Is there more too it than just aiming?
 
What happens, or can happen with shotguns, and not all of them, is that reflections from walls will hit the side of the mic and come in out of phase. What you get is an echoey and kind of thin sound. If you are not getting that then the mic is fine for the space. The shot gun probably sound more "in your face" in the interiors and that is what they are hearing. It might actually be a bit of a problem in post but? But YOU are the sound person. Folks who know the script will be able to understand it even in a bad recording so most directors and especially writer/ directors opinions are less than useful. It's your ears if it works it works. As a general rule shotguns tend not to sound better indoors and hypers tend not to sound better out doors. It's not a rule but a guide based on millions of hours of experience (that's a cumulative number of a LOT of recordists, I haven't been alive that long..;~) ).
 
Well maybe me and my friends are missing something. I mean it we don't have big expensive studios to listen to it to, so I hope we are not. I have always been using one indoors, and one out as a rule. Sometimes I bend the rules to get certain sounds, but so far, I am not seeing a problem indoors. The hyper actually might sound too thick, if there is such a thing in the pro audio world. I told that echoey thing to my friends, but they said the quality is so good compared to the AT4053b, that they would rather have the echo. Can a great mic with an incorrect pick up pattern, sound better than an okay mic, with the correct pick up pattern? I wonder if this is a good thing when showing a movie in theaters later. But here's a sample of both mics. Is their a difference in pick up pattern quality?

http://youtu.be/KbenHi6JlSU
 
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My ruler is always dialog intelligibility. Can you clearly understand what the actors are saying? Try testing each mic while they are blocking or rehearsing and then make your decision.

Inexperienced boom-ops - usually whichever PA is not busy - lack the skill to use a shotgun properly, especially indoors, so you end up with that hollow roomy sound so prevalent in indie productions. A hyper will mitigate this to a degree.
 
Well as far as I know my friends say I my shotgun sounds better, but what am I doing right, if I am doing it right? What's doing it wrong? Besides not aiming on the mouth directly? Noiz2 said it was SOME shotguns that are echoey. Is the NTG-3 maybe just not one of them?
 
Ironpony,

The NTG-3 is a really good microphone, regardless of the price. Hence, it's a really good shotgun. I've always said that a GOOD shotgun works just fine in MOST interiors.

It just so happens that this mic has very smooth off-axis response which trails off like a volume control vs. very rough frequency changes... so, it actually works like a hyper already. There's a minimal "tail" on this mic as well... not as good as something like the Sanken CS3e, but still, very good. The NTG-3 is the poor man's 416... and I've had great luck with 416's in many interiors... at times, like when you'd prefer a hyper, the NTG-3 can actually sound better than the 416.

So all the conclusions are no surprise to me. I've used the NTG-3 recently for a national show... indoors... because it sounded good in the application. If you have a decent ear... trust it.

Many years ago, I started using a 416 handheld... suggesting my on-cam talent "boom themselves" like they would with a stick-mic, when the production didn't want a mic right in there faces. I never saw anybody else do this anywhere... it was like people just thought a shotgun HAD to be boomed... and hand holding it was a stupid idea. I noticed that it worked great like that... so we did it anyway. Now I see that done everywhere... constantly see it in local and national news shows when it isn't practical (or desired) to have a stick-mic in somebody's face... yet the reporter is the best one to get the mic where it needs to be.

Moral? Do what works... and what sounds best. It's no surprise to me that the NTG-3 is working great where many people say it shouldn't. Everybody trusts labels and expectations over their ears.
 
unclebob6958 said:
My ruler is always dialog intelligibility. Can you clearly understand what the actors are saying? Try testing each mic while they are blocking or rehearsing and then make your decision.

Inexperienced boom-ops - usually whichever PA is not busy - lack the skill to use a shotgun properly, especially indoors, so you end up with that hollow roomy sound so prevalent in indie productions. A hyper will mitigate this to a degree.
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You can still "clearly understand what the actors are saying" while at the same time have 'that hollow roomy sound so prevalent in indie productions". Nothing screams "amateur hour" like that boxy sound of early reflections.
 
Richard Crowley said:
You can still "clearly understand what the actors are saying" while at the same time have 'that hollow roomy sound so prevalent in indie productions". Nothing screams "amateur hour" like that boxy sound of early reflections.
Click to expand...

That's how I convey the value of quality lavs (mounted close)... and a CS3e... (boomed close). They say sound is 70% of what you see... well QUALITY sound is at least 75% what you DON'T hear! :)
 
Okay thanks people. Well I was thinking of selling my AT0453b. I don't really have much use for it, and the quality never seems to be as good as the NTG-3, but should I keep it? I mean will it come essential in the future where I would need it for any environment? Or I could sell it and put that money to better use, if it's worth it.
 
We once got really bad sound from our rode shotgun mic, the echo as described earlier. It was a small place and we held the mic really close to a super reflective desk. Bad idea. That is where we should have used our other mic. The sound was obviously really bad, not just for an audio geek to hear. Since then we have become much more selective which mic to use where, and in many cases we'll set up both. And yes, mostly the shotgun wins for us too even in interiors.
 
Okay thanks. I won't sell it I guess but do you have any advice on making it sound just as good as the shotgun? It can be much more sensitive to shock, even with a shock mount. And even so the sound just sounds flatter and a little less fuller.
 
I'm firmly of the opinion that the unpleasant sound we hear is simply a good microphone used poorly. Sort of the premise that goes - I want to record good sound, but the cameraman moans about the boom in shot, so if I buy a shotgun, I can stand at the side of the cameraman and point the mic like a torch and it will be magic! A total misunderstanding of what is going on. A hyper at a distance has less room sound - but still sounds distant. A shotgun, just out of frame, aimed carefully and most critically, MONITORED by the sound person - sounds better. All the talk about room sound is simply about the ratio of wanted to unwanted sound. A shotgun, too far away can't 'not' hear reflections and other sound. Closer in, the narrower acceptance angle works for you. Further away, it's the reverse.
 
I agree with Paul I have done may network TV drama's with just a sennheiser 416 shotgun, no hypers no cardioid for exclusive use inside just one 416 shotgun and have never had any complaints about reflections or unwanted reverb.

I think there is a lot of people who are too used to hearing dialogue recorded using lav's which is so tight that it doesn't even match the perspective of the shot, a close hyper will emulate that but if the shot demands the mic to be out of frame or a distance away then a shotgun will still give a better sound.

As a side note I don't even own a hyper cardioid mic for dedicated use on a boom and tend to use either a 416 or more likely an AT875R these days.
 
Shotguns in an indoor non-reflective environment such as on a soundstage would be just fine. So assuming you're not just ignoring bad sound, those of you who report using them sucessfully must be working in situations where reflections aren't much of a problem for one reason or another. But in a non-conditioned space the short-term reflections can interact with the direct sound in the interference tube and create comb filtering effects that will change the timbre of the sound. The comb filtering causes some frequencies to be emphsized and others supressed. The problem is not one of echos or reverb - echos are long-term reflections - but a hollow, sometimes almost metallic ringing, tonality to the sound. It can happen outdoors as well, say with a shot set up next to a brick wall on a paved area. The rule-of-thumb of hyper indoors and shotgun outdoors all depends on the specifics of the space where you're shooting.
 
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I pay no attention to the 'rule' and find it works for people who know what they're doing, but falls down with beginners who haven't trained their ears. The stipid thing being that by the time you really understand what your tools do, you don't need a rule! My hyper is probably the least used mic in the box! Same with fig-8 mics. I could easily bring out some hardly used kit and record m/s, but I just find my shotguns work. I've still got a fairly old AT815 that's quite long - and it still gets used alongside the more common shorter ones.
 
paulears said:
I pay no attention to the 'rule' and find it works for people who know what they're doing, but falls down with beginners who haven't trained their ears. ...
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Yep, such 'rules' are really just general guidelines to get the evaluation thought process for a given setup started.
 
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