Should I be using multiple mics to record dialogue and sound effects?

[Ryan Elder]

Yes, I suppose that is a good thing :).

I was just surprised at how much better it sounds in post. As for recording dialogue, I read from some sources not to let the gain and volume go over 75%. But some people's voices are kind of quiet, and I need to go over 75% I read. Is this because of the pre-amps of the FR2-LE, or is this normal on other field recorders?

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan - this is recording 101!!

forget totally any kind of percentage. Input gain is set appropriately to make best use of the available dynamic range. So A quiet voice, recorded with a rather insensitive microphone will require more gain than a loud voice with a sensitive mic. You cannot go over, even by a tiny amount, the maximum the equipment can handle. It can sound horrible, nasty and very distorted. At the other end, if you accidentally record too low, then when you boost it in post, it gets noisier.

So forget the idea of recording at 75% on the gain control, or even at 75% of the maximum scale on the meter - not really sure what you meant, or what your friends meant - but they sound the kind of friends who are best asked about video rather than audio, to be honest.

What you really MUST do quickly is get to know your equipment. Learn how it responds to low and high level inputs. Learn how it sounds when you accidentally go too high or too low. Learn how far you can push.

I'll give you an example. Today I've plugged in a new bit of kit to a mixer. The device is set to deliver what's called +4dB output level, which is pretty hot. It's connected to a Soundcraft mixer that does not have a pad control, and could really do with one, as a track mastered to -3dB peak manages to light the peak light on the mixer with the gains only a gnat's whisker above minimum. However, I know this mixer well and it can cope with this considerable overloading. It is impossible to connect to my Tascam interface without sounding dreadful, even on minimum gain. The Soundcraft just copes better with hot signals.

You say your recorder sounds better on proper monitors? Compared with what headphones? Comparable ones or hifi ones? Again, not all headphones are equal.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but as far as turning it up to the max goes, I've done that a few times to get the voices louder in some locations, and it didn't sound nasty or horrible at all. It sounded fine, so it it normal for the equipment to be turned up max, and still sound decent, as long as the voices are not clipping of course?

As for comparing headphones to monitors, what counts as a hi-fi headphone exactly?

As for mic sensitivity, so far I have the NTG-3 and the 4053b mics only, and the 4053b seems slightly more sensitive but only slightly, it seems.

[Richard Crowley]

As @Paul R Johnson said, Recording 101 reduced to a single sentence is: Record the sound as accurately and appropriately as possible AT THE OPTIMAL LEVEL.

We keep going around and around on "accurately" and "appropriately" but you seem to have some goofy scheme of using "multiple mics to record dialog". But apparently, the only way to cure you of such a delusion is for you to try it for yourself so you can see why it won't work.

Recording at the optimal level means recording as high as possible (to stay above the noise-floor), but to keep the level low enough so that you never hit absolute zero clipping. There are no absolute rules about what level to record at. Adjusting recording levels properly is essentially the primary job of the sound recording person (the "A1") It requires experience and judgement. There is no cookie-cutter rule-of-thumb. And getting the microphone in the right spot is essentially the primary job of the boom operator ("A2") The definitions of A1, A2, etc are not the same for production audio as they are for live sound (like a rock concert, etc.)

The noise floor is a combination of all the noises from ambient noise, echo and reverb, source loudness, microphone sensitivity, microphone self-noise, microphone directionality, microphone working distance, mic preamp signal-to-noise ratio, recorder self-noise, etc. etc.

OTOH, clipping is very simple and totally unforgiving. If you allow the recording level to hit 0dBFS (clipping) then you are recording too loud. Period. Full stop. No debate. Some gear (like premium preamps in Sound Devices gear) are designed to have graceful behavior in the event of modest overload. But most gear simply falls apart at clipping.

If you are recording something very predictable, then you can set your levels high enough to stay well above the noise-floor but avoid clipping. But if you are recording something unpredictable, then you must select a lower recording level to leave yourself some "headroom" between the audio peaks and the absolute maximum (clipping).

You can set recording levels properly during rehearsal while leaving a bit of extra headroom for unexpected exuberance during the actual performance. We often prefer to use 24-bit recording which gives you a very comfortable 144dB dynamic range vs. the 96dB dynamic range from 16 bit recording. Remember that the release format may be 16 bit, but that is quite acceptable once you have properly mixed all the audio elements together. But during live recording, you don't have a crystal ball to predict exactly what the audio peaks will be.,

Perhaps you missed the discussion of headphones including mention of the top 3 favorite models used by production sound people. Sometimes it is not clear why you keep asking things that we thought we had answered?

Mic sensitivity is only one of a dozen factors that affect the signal-to-noise ratio of your recorded tracks.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh sorry, I didn't mean to ask the same questions, there are just certain variables, I am trying to understand more in depth, that's all.

But I never recorded with multiple mics, it was just suggested to me, by two people in the audio business, but they are much more experienced in recording music and musicians. But I will stick to recording with just one boom mic, like I've been doing and won't do what they say, like you said.

[Paul R Johnson]

no Ryan - that isn't what we are saying at all! None of us have said just use a boom mic and ignore your friends - we're saying that as each project is different, there can be no single rule. For my last three video outings I have never even taken the shotgun out of the case, and the boom has had of all things, a camera on the end, and I used the audio the cameras shot. You seem to be a little like Gibbs in NCIS - but you only have rule 1 and maybe rule 2. You get to rule 100 after more than 100 jobs where you keep writing new ones to fill in the "what if?" holes.

In my career, I have never been good enough at any single discipline to earn the tag expert, because for me, every job has involved learning new things, so I have had consistent work since the seventies because I'm know to be good at lots of things rather than expert at one. I still make mistakes, but I'm proud to have never have made the same one twice. You seem desperate to learn as much as you can in advance, and frankly, because people cannot write sound down, you just have to learn by experience. I have two different shotguns in the same Zeppelin mounts, and I should probably colour code the handles so I know which is the 416 and which is the slightly longer AT815. I've done loads of jobs on what was probably, on paper, the wrong one - but I have never been able to tell the difference. They sound different, but as they get used on different sound sources all the time, this colour difference gets lost. I just tweak the EQ and always get sound that does what it should.

Richard made a good point about levels. We guess. We even get quite good at guessing. I did a single man, multiple job classical choir job a few weeks ago, and needed to set the gains from just a few minutes between the end of my rigging and the choir being broken before the live performance. I picked a level based on maybe 15 seconds of the end of a movement. No idea if this movement was typical, or was the loudest, or what. I knew the musical style, but not the piece. I watched the singers to see how loud they were singing compared to the conductor's hand waving, I listened to the organ, than I knew would be the same volume in the performance as it wasn't on the swell. I picked a level and I actually guess a little low - I had nothing recorded above -10dB on the meters, most being considerably lower. The preamps managed fine, noise was so low that I could hear the rumbles and motor blower on the organ NOT noise.

You have got to start to learn your equipment, and learn how it responds to your adjustments. We have an ex-BBC guy locally, who is in his late 80's and he still records on a Nagra (Google it) in analogue on reel to reel tape that has probably been erased a million times. The paper spec of this recorder, with two Coles (STC) mics is really not remotely the best compared to modern equipment, but his recordings are stunning in clarity and if I'm honest, a low noise floor. He simply rolls off the upper HF, and takes the hiss with it. Probably has always done this. He never makes a bad recording with this gear. He just knows how it works. this is where you should start! please don't think we're criticising - we genuinely want to urge you to stop planning and thinking about absolutes and get you into experimenting.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. I don't mean to say I will operate by one rule only, but as for the multiple mics thing, they are too hard to hide on a set design, without getting in the way of things. So I haven't found a reason yet to plant mics around that don't move with the actors.

As for gain on the field recorder, I can just keep on doing what I am doing then and turn the gain and volume up to around 75% since that gets the levesl at around -12 db most of the time, if that's best.

[Paul R Johnson]

Hiding mics on set - movies, TV and theatre is actually a tried and tested system - but remember it's planned carefully. If you are using a boom but one shot needs a wide shot that makes the mic too far away, you will get that nasty hollow, weak audio from it. If the actors are grouped around a table with a central plant pot, or light fitting, then hiding a small lav there is a great idea. BUT - you only do it when it's a problem solver. It's the distance thing again - closer the better. If you have tight budgets then many options are simply unavailable - but at the pre-production meetings this is where people discuss and sort these things. You find it often is the same things. You discover the director wants the really wide shot, and asks you about lavs. You are happy, because if they ask, the budget for them is easier to get, but then wardrobe jump in and point out the actress has a tight cropped top and nowhere for a mic to be hidden, let alone the pack. You point out that so far that means no sound, so you'll have to budget for an ADR session. The producer vetos this and you ask wardrobe for a solution, and they ask if it's possible to hide a pack and mic in a hat the actor might be wearing? This is the way it gets planned. No reason why a production of any scale cannot do this process, and find answers.

If your 75% system works - then go with it. I'm just surprised it doesn't need tweaking.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. When you say you are surprised my 75% does not need tweaking, but tweaking do you mean adjustments in levels, here and there? Cause I do do that too, if that's what you mean.

Also, in my past experience, the director will always allow the DP to call the shots on where the mic is placed, and the DP picks places too far away, leading to not the closest sound as it could be. Is this common on a lot of shoots?

As for plant mics, I don't really like the idea of planting them for close ups, but not a master, cause I am worried about something messing with the continuity if I do that, but maybe not.

What about movies where they don't use lavs in wide masters and they used boom mics, but the mics are further away, and they just go with the audio anyway? Take the wide master shot from this scene for example:

Paths of Glory (5/11) Movie CLIP - Closing Argument (1957) HD - YouTube

The boom mic is further away then usual, and the audio sounds more distant, but the filmmakers chose to go with it anyway, so is further away boom mics in wide master shots, acceptable sometimes then?

[Richard Crowley]

Note that movie was shot in the mid 1950s when there were no reliable wireless microphones.. And clearly nowhere close enough to bother with plant mics. The only other alternative would have been ADR, but it seems quite possible they left the dialog extremely "wet" in order to capture the large, reverberant space in which the scene takes place. You won't find 1 in 10000 feature films that has such distant dialog track. It would normally be considered unusable. Note when they switch to a close-up, the sound is correspondingly close and clean. (Because of proper mic location.)

I would refuse to work on a production where the DP decides microphone placement. If the DP has that responsibility, what do the need you for? That is just insane in my book.

[John Nantz]

Ryan -after reading all these posts about recording levels, just wondering out of curiosity ... what recorders do you have with a safety track?

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Richard Crowley

Note that movie was shot in the mid 1950s when there were no reliable wireless microphones.. And clearly nowhere close enough to bother with plant mics. The only other alternative would have been ADR, but it seems quite possible they left the dialog extremely "wet" in order to capture the large, reverberant space in which the scene takes place. You won't find 1 in 10000 feature films that has such distant dialog track. It would normally be considered unusable. Note when they switch to a close-up, the sound is correspondingly close and clean. (Because of proper mic location.)

I would refuse to work on a production where the DP decides microphone placement. If the DP has that responsibility, what do the need you for? That is just insane in my book.

Yeah it's just on a couple of shoots before I would say where I need to place the boom mic to get the best sound possible, and the DP would jump in and say that I cannot do that cause it will interfere with the lighting they have planned, and the director would always give the DP final priority on that. One off the movies I worked on, I saw later, and the cinematography was actually pretty good, but the sound was not as a result.

As for wet dialog during the master shot, I find that during the master it's more acceptable cause everyone is further away in the master, so it's okay for the dialog to sound further away, especially if the actors are distance in a courtroom such as that. But I am wrong, on not minding wet dialog on a master? Of course you have to make sure that the master dialog stays on the master shots, and you cannot swap it with any of the close up shots of the characters speaking, but is wet dialog okay like that as long as it stays on the master?

Originally Posted by John Nantz

Ryan -after reading all these posts about recording levels, just wondering out of curiosity ... what recorders do you have with a safety track?

Oh I have the FR2-LE, which doesn't have safety tracks unfortunately, so I just have to use one track when using that.

[Richard Crowley]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

Yeah it's just on a couple of shoots before I would say where I need to place the boom mic to get the best sound possible, and the DP would jump in and say that I cannot do that cause it will interfere with the lighting they have planned, and the director would always give the DP final priority on that. One off the movies I worked on, I saw later, and the cinematography was actually pretty good, but the sound was not as a result.

Doing a production is a TEAM EFFORT where all the departments are supposed to work cooperatively.

"Light the set so that a boom can swing overhead."
An Open Letter from your Sound Department - A Production Sound Manifesto written by audio professionals

If the Producer and Director let the DP get away with that, I won't be working with them again.
Unless, of course, they are making a silent movie.

Strongly recommend reading the "Open Letter from your Sound Department"
An Open Letter from your Sound Department - A Production Sound Manifesto written by audio professionals

As well as:
sync.sound.cinema: The Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part One)
sync.sound.cinema: The Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part Two)

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, I will check those out!

I also like to see the storyboards cause I would like to get ideas for mic placement based on those, but the directors did not show me the storyboards, with one even saying the sound department does not get to go over storyboards. Is this common or no, and the director should do so for the sound department?

[Paul R Johnson]

I thought you only used one mic? So you have a spare track you can set a different level on, so just split the input to the two XLRs and you have a hot channel and a safe one.