Source
r/LocationSound•
Sentient_Blade

Seeking recommendations for an XLR microphone suitable for whole room / teleconferencing

Gear Advice

Greetings,

I'm looking for help identifying a mid-range microphone that would be good for recording a whole room in a teleconference style setup.

I have a small classroom environment which I need to record in, I have the main professor hooked up with Rode Wireless Go's going into a Zoom H5 which provides ample quality for the main content, and a Deity D3 Pro mounted on top of the recording camera as a secondary, but am struggling to find a solution pick up the audio from other people in the room while they are participating in group discussion.

I tried placing the H5 within the middle of the room (everyone is at most a few meters away from this central point, and facing in towards it) and using its stereo mics, but the audio quality on them is abysmal and the amount of gain needed introduces an awful lot of noise.

Ideally I would like to isolate these microphones from picking up too much bleed from the main professor who is roughly the same distance as they are from the centre, but has a side to himself so I was thinking maybe a cardioid with him in its low-pickup zone, or alternatively use both the remaining XLR ports for a pair of stick mics?

Advice and recommendations for suitable products / configurations would be appreciated, ideally something available in the UK for less than £150.

Posted Sep 30, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

36
toastworks•

One microphone for many people is never going to cut it, no matter how much money you spend on it.

Unless you have a person running from person to person with said mic (aka, a boom op), it’s a losing proposition.

Your main problem is the distance from the mic to the sound source is too far. You’re picking up too much reverberation from the walls of the room, and not nearly enough direct sound from each person’s mouth.

14
Sentient_BladeOP•

Thank you for the feedback.

2
terencebogards•

Would this be the right situation/application for a Pressure Zone Mic?

5
PSouthern•

This is a pretty tall order actually... sorry. Can’t really think of anything that’ll sound good for that price.

3
aLEXANDERhsTEVENS•

One (maybe two or four) of these guys has done well for me.

Omnidirectional.

1
JSSVoices•

Just an idea...what if you didn’t worry about bleed from the professor.

Go with an Omni and send a gated, polarity-inverted feed of the prof’s mic to a buss with the Omni (audience track). If you play around with time aligning and gain matching the prof’s audio first, you could probably get some decent cancellation, leaving you with a clean copy of just the audience.

1