Soundproof/muffle an XH-A1?
 

I was shooting a rapper in a recording booth tonight, and his mic was so sensitive it was picking up sound off the tape transport and zoom motors. Anybody have suggestions on reducing the noise? Anybody have any experience shooting inside the booth? Am I stuck with lipsychs?

I had the same problem with my sennheiser until I got a shockmount for it.

If you were positioned in front of him (to the rear of his mic) he was either too quiet, his mic was on omni or you were way to close to him.

Whatever the case, try putting something like a Porta Brace rain cover on your A1 to quiet it down.

Cheers.

Wow. That must be one sensitive mic. You shouldn't pick up any camera noise if you're more than a couple of feet away. The camera just isn't that loud.

Are you recording straight from the mic or through the studio's console? If through the console, is any dynamics processing being applied? Too much compression can suck up all kinds of unwanted background noise, but to get what you're hearing there would have to be a lot of it.

I'd agree with Allen about the PortaBrace rain cover. It should markedly cut camera noise.

Omni Mic
 

Its all making sense now, the engineer made a comment about my body partially blocking reflected sound, I think the booth was built to be used with an omni.

The sound was being run through the console, from the mic to an eighties-era tube pre-amp, to a compresser/limiter (very moderate compression, to the board. I got my audio from the headphone monitor over a wireless.

I like the rain cover idea, maybe stuffed with a little foam for good measure, though it might be pointless if my body is changing the booth acoustics. I can live with lipsychs if I have to...or we can saw a window into the booth. ;-)