My Sennheiser me66 issues at Reception!
 

Hello,

Recently a friend of mine asked me to film/video His wedding as He would do the editing himself. Three nights before the wedding I called him to ask whether He wanted to use my wireless mic on his tux. He told me that the audio was being monitored by the church mixer so all I needed to use was the onboard mic on my xha1 then switch to a shotgun for the reception.

The audio for the ceremony was fine. As always I use phatom power, at the reception I made sure all switches were off before I plugged the mic into the xlr input. Turned it on and nothing happened for a while actually, I was meddling with it for almost 5minutes before I saw the feedback on left and right channel then I knew the audio was live. But that was beginning of my issues, while recording somewhere in the dance flour, I noticed the audio feedback indicator wasn't presenting anything. So I checked the cables made sure everything was plugged in correctly, the audio feedback indicator started showing response of audio going through the mic. I didn't manually check audio with a headset unfortunately. :(

Well, today I captured the footage and almost all of the reception is nothing but white mumbled static noise. Its like my me66 freaked out. Once in a while I hear a few words then it goes to static again. What is my problem and can this be fixed? I just checked my shotgun and it was working fine so I cannot understand the issue here. The mic also worked fine at my last wedding project. Plus I monitored the audio feedback indicator through out because it was in full manual mode.

What do I do from here? I am at an utter loss of ideas.

thanks

Could be a bad XLR calbe, check the cabel or have another cable ready in your bag. Check the XLR connector in the camera. Always monitor the audio, at least have the audiometer alway on. If you are only after ambient sound but not actual sound of a speaker then I would check if you can loop the audio you have.

It sounds like a bad mic cable connector. Change your cable that goes from the microphone to the camera. One of the soldered wire connections inside the cable connector is loose and shorting. You can confirm this visually, by taking the connector off with a tiny jeweler's screwdriver. You can also confirm continuity with a multimeter. In the future, besides monitoring your audio with headphones, always record 2 channels of audio from 2 sources. One source would be your shotgun mic, the other would be your wireless mic on the other track.

I was after the speeches and ambient sound from the shotgun. The wireless mic would not have worked because the microphone they used was from the dj and it was being moved around.

So they is no way I can recover that sound, its gone forever?

Was the reception really loud? ME66's aren't great in loud environments.

Now I feel extremely bad. How do you even approach the groom/bride about this problem? I left the groom a voicemail earlier today but I have gotten a call back. So I wait for my death. :/

and now my me66 is functioning well using the same exact cable. :/ terrible!

Have you tried bending, twisting, pulling and pushing your cable terminals to try to re-create the problem at home? Just because your cable works fine now doesn't mean it will work again next time. You need to positively identify the problem before your next shoot. The problem could be in the microphone, the cable, or the camera. Do tests on both channels and try to isolate the problem.

Also:

There are (obviously) very low voltage electrical connections between the ME66 capsule and the K6 (or K6P) powering module (where the XLR plug is). Try unscrewing these two modules apart/back together - to see if those connections are bad/dirty.

I think we are all missing the point here. There's no audio recorded in the Reception, what needs to be done other than making sure it does not happen again. My 2 cents is to be honest with the Bride & Groom, ask around if any of the guest have recorded the speeches, maybe you can synch the audio, give nice refund.

1. Symphatize ( I am sure you are upset, I will be for sure, blah, blah, blah)
2. Offer suggestion; (do you have guest who might have recorded the speeches, I can do magic wit that)
3. Apologize
4. Pray

[[[[Have you tried bending, twisting, pulling and pushing your cable terminals to try to re-create the problem at home? Just because your cable works fine now doesn't mean it will work again next time. You need to positively identify the problem before your next shoot. The problem could be in the microphone, the cable, or the camera. Do tests on both channels and try to isolate the problem. ]]]]

No I have not tried to replicate the error, only checked to make sure the shotgun was functioning well. It worked on first connect without issues.



[[[[There are (obviously) very low voltage electrical connections between the ME66 capsule and the K6 (or K6P) powering module (where the XLR plug is). Try unscrewing these two modules apart/back together - to see if those connections are bad/dirty.]]]]

I will check on the connections on both the camera and mic/cable.



[[[[I think we are all missing the point here. There's no audio recorded in the Reception, what needs to be done other than making sure it does not happen again. My 2 cents is to be honest with the Bride & Groom, ask around if any of the guest have recorded the speeches, maybe you can synch the audio, give nice refund.

1. Symphatize ( I am sure you are upset, I will be for sure, blah, blah, blah)
2. Offer suggestion; (do you have guest who might have recorded the speeches, I can do magic wit that)
3. Apologize
4. Pray ]]]]

All I got was static white noise with audio going in and out. I will suggest to the groom about getting secondary footage from another camera. I offered full refund(its their wedding day) to them on that same voicemail to the groom. I will also see if by any chance the dj recorded the audio while mixing.

Another thing I thought of today was getting some of those speeches again since I am friends or know most of the ppl in the wedding party. Basically just record new video/audio(speech) by going to their homes then adding that to the wedding video. I know its not the original thing but still good wishes and words of wisdom.

What do you all think?