recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

In article ,
Geoff Wood -nospam wrote:
does anybody know if the PZM will be a good choice?

Sure is a good choice. It's often what the cops use for interview rooms.

And it sounds crap. Trust me. I've tried it for broadcast in a real room
with the real gear.

Interview rooms are also usually pretty dead and quiet. I doubt the OP's
meeting room is.

--
*If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

Dave Plowman wrote:
In article ,
Geoff Wood -nospam wrote:
does anybody know if the PZM will be a good choice?

Sure is a good choice. It's often what the cops use for interview rooms.

And it sounds crap. Trust me. I've tried it for broadcast in a real room
with the real gear.

The PZM will eliminate reflection problems from the table surface. If
that is your only problem, it'll be fine. If that isn't your only problem,
and the room is too live to begin with (which is usually the case but not
always), it will be much too hollow.

Three very tight spotmikes are your best choice from an intelligibility
and clear solid voice standpoint, but they might not look right on-camera.

Interview rooms are also usually pretty dead and quiet. I doubt the OP's
meeting room is.

That's another set of nightmares.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

"Dave Plowman" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Three very tight spotmikes are your best choice from an intelligibility
and clear solid voice standpoint, but they might not look right
on-camera.

Absolutely. But if looks are more important than sound in a meeting room,
someone has their priorities wrong.

This statement is a little too general to be useful. As a producer/director
I can think of many reasons that I might make picture/sound compromises. I
think that Scott got it right.

--
*When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say? *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

In article PBOXa.71129$o%2.34512@sccrnsc02,
Steve King wrote:
Three very tight spotmikes are your best choice from an
intelligibility and clear solid voice standpoint, but they might not
look right on-camera.

Absolutely. But if looks are more important than sound in a meeting
room, someone has their priorities wrong.

This statement is a little too general to be useful. As a
producer/director I can think of many reasons that I might make
picture/sound compromises. I think that Scott got it right.

Well, I'd have thought at a *meeting* the words were all important. The
pictures of talking heads merely wallpaper. YMMV, though.

And the usual reasons for picture/sound 'compromises' are purely to save
money.

If you don't want to see any mics, the contributors can be rigged with
radio mics - this will also allow them free movement if this is needed.
But it will cost. More than a crappy PZM.

--
*If all is not lost, where the hell is it?

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

In article G7WXa.73276$o%2.35024@sccrnsc02,
David McCall wrote:
Perhaps you just got hold of a bad PZM.

I've tried a few. But not found them to work in this sort of situation.

Many recordist in the US swear by them.

I'd love to actually hear an example of one used for this sort of job and
make up my own mind.

They feel that a well placed PZM (mounted to walls, Ceiling, large
tables, the floor of a stage, even large sheets of Plexiglas). A PZM is
a "boundary" mic. It needs to have a proper surface to work.

I know the principle well. I use it for miking up cars - a decent small
omni on the windscreen works very well, a sort of mixture of boundary
effect and parabola.

Your suggestions are all involve individual close mics on everyone.
That creates a very dry sound.

Indeed. That's the whole idea.

Not everybody likes a dry sound,

The meeting is to be relayed to a large hall. That will provide all the
'wet' you need. When have you ever heard a radio speech studio that isn't
dry?
For drama, a bit of controlled acoustic is nice, especially when it
changes scene by scene, but plenty, it seems, don't agree. ;-)

and multiple mics moving around in close proximity cause nasty
acoustic phasing errors.

I'm assuming at a meeting they're fairly fixed. But if someone moves and
talks, they'll be the important one so dip the others.

Multiple mics are a Band-Aid solution that
is often used out of necessity, or laziness, but it isn't ALWAYS
the best or only solution (according to some audio purist).

If we're talking internally balanced acoustic music, then yes, a good pair
can sound great. But life is rarely that easy, and if you're going to use
one mic for several people talking you'd best have a good boom op waving
it around...

Multiple mics are safer. The room acoustics play a much smaller
role with the mics closer to the speakers.

Which is exactly what you want for clarity. It's possible to add reverb or
acoustic, but not remove it.

--
*Reality? Is that where the pizza delivery guy comes from?

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

"Dave Plowman" wrote in message
...
In article PBOXa.71129$o%2.34512@sccrnsc02,
Steve King wrote:
Three very tight spotmikes are your best choice from an
intelligibility and clear solid voice standpoint, but they might not
look right on-camera.

Absolutely. But if looks are more important than sound in a meeting
room, someone has their priorities wrong.

This statement is a little too general to be useful. As a
producer/director I can think of many reasons that I might make
picture/sound compromises. I think that Scott got it right.

Well, I'd have thought at a *meeting* the words were all important. The
pictures of talking heads merely wallpaper. YMMV, though.

And the usual reasons for picture/sound 'compromises' are purely to save
money.

If you don't want to see any mics, the contributors can be rigged with
radio mics - this will also allow them free movement if this is needed.
But it will cost. More than a crappy PZM.

--
*If all is not lost, where the hell is it?

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

Perhaps you didn't see my earlier post in reply to the OP. The OP said:

Group: rec.audio.pro Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2003, 9:53am (EDT+4) From:
pete smith (p s)
hi all,
i am recording on location a conversation in a meeting room whilst it is
being videoed (recording straight to audio track of the video). this
video will then be played back in a large hall on a big screen, at a
loud volume.

He went on to ask if a PZM would be a solution. I suggested that it was
unlikely, that individual mics might provide a better result. I explained
that I had just completed a shoot with the same set-up and that I had chosen
to go with a professional mixer and individual lavs... they didn't need to
be radio because all participants were sitting around a small conference
table. In the particular of using a professional sound mixer I believe that
we are saying the same thing. What I was questioning was your reply to
Scott...

Scott said:

Three very tight spotmikes are your best choice from an
intelligibility and clear solid voice standpoint, but they might not
look right on-camera.

And you said:

Absolutely. But if looks are more important than sound in a meeting
room, someone has their priorities wrong.

....which I think A) makes an assumption about the nature of the video. I
understand that the video is going to be shown at a meeting. It might be a
dramatization of a conversation or any number of other things, all of which
might be compromised by having great honking mics in the shot. And B)
Placing some idea of sound perfection above all else in a production you
know no more about than the rest of us do from the original posters
description, which is above, seems a little extreme.

I would also like to point out that most all compromises in the videos I
produce are about money. Sound is not singled out. I'd like to shoot a
sentence or two by the program host from each of those sixteen foreign
business locations. I'd like use that $10K idea from my graphic artist in
my $15K production. I'd like to have Sean Connery as the narrator. I'd
like to have two or three PAs to run around and take care of things so I can
sit on my fat ass and direct, oooh la la. So, don't feel like the Lone
Ranger, when compromises in sound have to be made.

Steve King

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

"Dave Plowman" wrote in message
...
SNIP (a bunch of reasonable stuff)

I'm talking about the *basics* of making a technically competent
recording. You're bringing production values into the equation.

From my perspective they can't be separated in the real world.

You can
make a technically competent piece in your back room, and have a disaster
shot in foreign climes regardless of budget.

Perhaps you don't see the sort of footage where the pictures are
reasonable but the sound near unintelligible?

You're right. Not on my shoots, save for the time I had to shoot on the
ramp of the Minneapolis, MN airport with an idling 747 in the BG, a
requirement of the shot, and departures overhead every minute in order to
get a 40 second clip of an on-camera presenter. It became my introduction
to ADR ;-)

I'm sure that we are on the same page with this. Sound is important. Good
sound often requires professionally selected equipment and experienced
operators, no less than picture. What I don't get is why sound mixers the
world over are so bloody sensitive, seem to feel as if they are the only
ones asked to make compromises. There must be good reasons, because so many
of you have the same knee-jerk reactions. But, the conditions and treatment
so often alluded to by mixers don't happen on my jobs, nor was I aware of
such treatment or conditions on theatrical, episodic, or industrial shoots
over a 25 year career as a fairly busy on camera actor, who liked to hang
out with the sound guys because of experience early in my career working in
sound studios as a music and production mixer along with some location sound
for film.

*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Just another thing that I don't know.

Steve King

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

"Dave Plowman" wrote in message ...
In article G7WXa.73276$o%2.35024@sccrnsc02,
David McCall wrote:

Which is exactly what you want for clarity. It's possible to add reverb or
acoustic, but not remove it.

I'll have to agree with you that close micing would be might be
the safest way to go in this situation. I'm just very resistant to
using lots of mics in any situation where 1 might do. I would
rather have a little room tone, than to take a chance of a mic
not being open when somebody starts speaking. Being that I'm
not a clairvoyant, I've always lost the first word of someone that
decided to interrupt or speak out of turn. Another thing that has
really turned me off to close micing is the way it is being used
in the theater. I know it has nothing to do with this situation.

Has anybody, besides me noticed, that the more equipment a
theater uses for theatrical performances, the worse the sound is?
The worst sound I have ever heard was Phantom of the Opera,
when it played Boston a couple years ago. They had mics on
just about everybody, several racks of hardware, and 2 huge
mixing desk. We were sitting first row, and I couldn't hear the
direct sound of the orchestra, or any of the actors. All I could
hear the sound blasting from the public address system. I call
any system that you are aware of, a public address. I was taught
that sound reinforcement was supposed to be totally transparent.
You should be able to switch the system on and of, and the only
difference will be that it sounds a little clearer when it is on. This
is easily done, in any theater that has decent acoustics, as long
as the actors can project to the 10th row on their own. If your
actors can't speak loudly and clearly enough to be heard in the
10th row, then better actors should be hired. PZMs can do it
quite nicely, but that is another thread. I just appreciate natural
sound. If I want to hear sound coming out of speakers, I might
as well stay home.

I responded to you because of your blanket statement implying
that PZMs total are crap. I just don't buy it.

David

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

In article Cz7Ya.79691$uu5.8302@sccrnsc04,
Steve King wrote:
I'm talking about the *basics* of making a technically competent
recording. You're bringing production values into the equation.

From my perspective they can't be separated in the real world.

Of course they can. You could have *the* most boring programme ever shot
with the presenter purely in mid shot up against blacks which is
technically competent. And you could have a stunning multi million dollar
stunt ruined by an exposure mistake on the camera(s).

You can make a technically competent piece in your back room, and have
a disaster shot in foreign climes regardless of budget.

Perhaps you don't see the sort of footage where the pictures are
reasonable but the sound near unintelligible?

You're right. Not on my shoots, save for the time I had to shoot on the
ramp of the Minneapolis, MN airport with an idling 747 in the BG, a
requirement of the shot, and departures overhead every minute in order
to get a 40 second clip of an on-camera presenter. It became my
introduction to ADR ;-)

Well, that's where you need a lip ribbon - a BBC design of mic that will
work pretty well anywhere. Doesn't look good in shot, but it'll make the
point about where you're shooting. ;-)

I'm sure that we are on the same page with this. Sound is important.
Good sound often requires professionally selected equipment and
experienced operators, no less than picture. What I don't get is why
sound mixers the world over are so bloody sensitive, seem to feel as if
they are the only ones asked to make compromises. There must be good
reasons, because so many of you have the same knee-jerk reactions. But,
the conditions and treatment so often alluded to by mixers don't happen
on my jobs, nor was I aware of such treatment or conditions on
theatrical, episodic, or industrial shoots over a 25 year career as a
fairly busy on camera actor, who liked to hang out with the sound guys
because of experience early in my career working in sound studios as a
music and production mixer along with some location sound for film.

I'm finding cameramen and lighting directors getting just as sensitive
when the suits decide a researcher with a DV cam can do just as well. Oh -
and directors when being replaced by yet another line producer straight
out of junior school.

--
*On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

recording a 3 way conversation in a room - PZM mic?
 

"James Perrett" wrote ...
I'm not sure what programmes Dave Plowman currently works on but I
believe he has worked on The Bill which is a Police drama series in the
UK and prominently features (or used to feature) PZM's in shot. If they
produce a better sound than the solution he proposes then I'm sure he
would have used them.

Is that the mic used for those recorders they use in interview rooms?

Seen them in British TV, but never on the left side of the pond.