Who cares if it works? I've seen people put an entire lav TX pack and an omni inside a zepplin. I understand looking professional, but hardly anyone would notice the handle pointing the wrong way. Any ham fisted bodge that works is a win.

Ryan - do you have a toolbox? Do you have a favourite screwdriver? no reason it's your favourite, but its the one you would like to lose the least. Sometimes you use others when they'd be more suitable, but you go back to the tired, beaten old one. Just how life is, I guess.

Any ham fisted bodge that works is a win.......Do you have a favourite screwdriver? no reason it's your favourite, .....Just how life is, I guess.Now THATS plain East Anglian advice. Paul, luv it!

What are we up to now, on this Thread? 20 pages on the Binternet? I’ve learnt stacks from the input of others. DVInfo, where the World Comes to Share The Vision.

I was in a theatre on the east coast last week, and decided to gut the control room because I could not fit the new kit for the next three months shows in. I found a cable with a join in it. A lump of messy green tape, and a knot. It fed the show intercom loop. No need to investigate. I remembered doing it with a kitchen knife, and twisting the bare ends together to 'fix it' ten minutes before a Paul Daniels show in ............ 1984. No solder. No connectors. Just two bits of bare ended mic cable. 35 years of crackle free DC and audio. Nowadays we throw a panic attack if cable isn't oxygen free, or we accidentally recorded at 44.1 instead of 96K.

This topic (and other recent ones) does bring back the basics. This quest for no hum, no noise and absolute silence. At some point, it's good enough for what you need and people forget. At a gig on Friday night my fender jazz toppled off it's stand and slapped into the ground. Big chip out of the headstock, but it broke the volume pot. Totally dead. Got out my spare for the first time in years, and used that one. The sound guy said it was better sounding than the fender. I didn't say but it was also different to play, actually easier, with a lower jazz action than the fender set up to play harder. I've fixed the fender. Which one do I play next show? The easier to play and better sounding number two? No, back to the fender because it looks better with the set of fluorescent strings that glow in the LED lights. Sound is NOT everything.

Or if the look on set is vital to you there are options that may give the desired appearance.

https://mymic.rycote.com/devices/at-4053a-at-4053b/

Other brands are available.

interesting - the fact there are numerous systems for this mic suggests that it's a worthy mic for the design and build of the products, and of course, absolutely needs them because it's too sensitive to wind!

I really think that vocabulary for describing sound needs a revisit. Most of the participants seem absolute on terms, others vary so much and for sound people this is critical stuff.

We have had in the topic some common terms used to ask and answer questions, but some have been misunderstood. Clarity of language is problematic sometimes between us Brits and our Stateside friends, but I guess most of us have got a reasonable handle on the trouble free ones where it is just amusing and more important ones. Pants always makes me smile - as an instruction to quickly frame the one in pants could be er, interesting. Tights and panty hose often confuse too. We can live with hood and bonnet and petrol and gas we can interchange. We've even got bucks and quid sorted - but we use the same technical terms by and large, apart from perhaps jack and phono plugs which can mess things up.

However - some universally get mangled by new people to our area of work.

Hiss
Hum
Crackles
Static
buzzing
whining
distortion
clipping
wind noise
clicks
pops
thumps
bangs
tapping
rubbing
banging
wind noise
electronics noise
data noise
mechanical noise

Some of these continually get used badly. I think I can identify all of these and have my own limits to where one becomes another.

Maybe at some point we should have an audio clip of all this stuff. Until this topic I'd never really thought about how problems we hear are difficult to put down in words. I'm not sure we have quite so many words of description in vision.
This is quite possibly one of the most valuable posts in this sorry thread. I have been thinking about creating a database ("sound-base"?) of examples of all of these kinds of noise. It seems to me that it would be very helpful for communicating online with people who perhaps don't know what these different things sound like. Or they have associated the wrong word for them. I have several times gone around and around with a question only to discover that the OP was referring to "hum" as "hiss" (or vice-versa).

Can we collect Real-World examples of all these different sounds together. I would volunteer to assemble, curate and publish the sounds. But if Mr. Johnson or someone else would like to do this, I certainly don't want to step on any toes. Thanks for the comprehensive list, Paul.

That's not a bad idea Richard - I'm up for collecting some of these. Give me a few days and I can collect and pass some on. Could be quite useful, I agree. So now I need some hums and noises - oh yes, I forgot. I have a studio, some most are in there somewhere!

My personal favorite was the bit about how large indoor space might as well be an outdoor space and an outdoor space with beadboard and hard surfaces all around might as well be an indoor space, where reflections and mic choice purposes are concerned. Blew my mind right outta my head.

Remember those “I love the 80s” etc. shows on VH1? We should do a doc series where we reminisce about this thread.

grab a teddy bear and make a hole up its bottom and stuff the mic in

Thank you for that! It's SO appropriate for this thread ... and for this "project" if there ever is one. I keep expecting an entry from the OP saying, "I'm really Allen Funt and you're all on Candid Camera" because the whole thing has been a spoof. I am so glad I've stayed out of this one because the frustration level would have been more than I could survive. You all are to be commended.

All Ryan's threads run this way, I'm not saying he's starting threads as spoofs and being deliberately obtuse, but that's a possibility.

I must admit that many of the topics Ive added to, I've discovered are ryan's and then he just vanishes and starts another one. I was frankly surprised how many there are and I just didn't pick up they were all the same member.


I've just plugged in a spare computer to do some work, and it's producing some wonderful noise - I'm going to see if I can capture it!

All Ryan's threads run this way, I'm not saying he's starting threads as spoofs and being deliberately obtuse, but that's a possibility.
I don’t want to be an arm chair psychologist or cruel. I think there is something else besides lack of experience going on here. All his threads seem to go round in circles. My biggest pet peeve with him, he uses this place as a data mine. I’m sure he doesn’t mean any harm, it’s just exhausting. The only benefit I derive is picking up some new perspective from the wealth of knowledge from members here that and reinforcing why you shouldn’t do all the bad practices he puts forth. In the end seems like a thank less job trying to help him.

Arrrgh. You guys are gonna make me do this. Hopefully I'm not way out of line here, and someone touched on it briefly pages ago, but I think he might literally be on the spectrum. Would explain a lot. So..uh...tread lightly.

I really think that vocabulary for describing sound needs a revisit. Most of the participants seem absolute on terms, others vary so much and for sound people this is critical stuff....

However - some universally get mangled by new people to our area of work.

Hiss
Hum...

Add to list:

RFI hits on wireless mics
Ground loop hum (specifically)
The ringing sound created by slight feedback


We had a slight feedback in our studio last week; I was the only one to identify that what we were hearing was wrong, we needed to cut, fix, and start again with a second take. Others just didn’t know what that sound was, didn’t hear it as a problem. Granted I have decades over others in the room, but, it starts with “What is that I’m hearing? It doesn’t sound as typical, right?” Anybody can and should do that!

Part of what we’re talking about here is that people with any longevity in this have made many, many, mistakes, and, have learned from as many of them as they possibly could. I would say that one measure of success is making any particular mistake only once!

Part of creating learning experiences as a college instructor is developing a learning environment where students have successes and make mistakes, and, have an opportunity to learn and apply that learning in future projects... all in a safe environment where they won’t get fired or not get the call for the next job because they screwed up.

I got a yelled shout in the theatre today - "I have a mic that needs to go through the PA", I replied "stick it in 23".

A few moments later channel 23 started to flicker its meter. I pushed the fader and got a very strong 70Hz or thereabouts honk, every time I raised the fader. It would go from silent to massive feedback with none of the usual ringing. I wandered down to stage. Followed the cable and found this.


Anyone care to even guess what it was actually doing? The US folk won't have a clue, but for the UK people, it's a 'sport' that people up North play, although there are world champions, I have discovered. It's a two person game, and usually involves beer and stretched waistlines.

I guess you need the mic when they're playing it in an arena with several thousand people.

10am call, total chaos, but mega money changing hands. Far too loud, but attempts to low the level met with failure. I've never been so bored in my life. One of the experts managed full score 5 times in a row.

Arrrgh. You guys are gonna make me do this. Hopefully I'm not way out of line here, and someone touched on it briefly pages ago, but I think he might literally be on the spectrum. Would explain a lot. So..uh...tread lightly.

Yeah I'm on the spectrum, why? Is it cause I ask to many questions about it? I just feel there are some variables that are not explained, and in order to understand the concepts of why I should do something a certain way, I just need to cover all the variables, that's all.

I really wasnt trying to be offensive. Some others mentioned your repeated questions and Im trying to suggest maybe they not be so hard on you.

Oh yeah, for sure, I wasn't offended by you or anyone :).

I was actually meaning that response to be to the earlier posts about me being repetitive, not directed at your response so much. I don't mean to be repetitive, there are just variables and exceptions that I feel I need to cover, cause if I leave them unaddressed, then I do not fully understand everything in why to do it in such a way, when there is this variable, that variable, etc.

Ryan, One of the hardest things for you to do is assess how we respond to your posts. I have a fella with mid range autism on my crew at the moment. He's home from uni, and this is now his third year with us. He struggles because he cannot actually ask the questions he needs answers to. He has to take what he knows and instigate the correct processes himself. Yesterday was a challenge, and he found himself a role that involved being away from the people who cause him processing grief. By next week, he'll be fine again and a useful team member. We're glad to help you, but remember that it's irksome to have to explain things that we would learn as experiential, not by advance info.

I think this is the problem we have. We have a really simple problem. We know that for us, it's not a problem at all. We know that with your boom and mic we could do a noise free job. You could too, but you believe other people's advice and have trouble accepting the good and dismissing the bad. To you, it's all good, and frankly some of the advice you got stinks badly. Because you are a human sponge, they can make bland, incorrect statements as to a job they really have no clue about, and a warning bell rings in your head, so you ask us.

Go back to the boom wind noise. Can you hear wind when you do a certain move? You can solve it by changing physical things, adding home made wind protection or a combination. You have a shotgun but didn't use it. Ask yourself why you made the choice? If the shotgun would have been better, it was the right tool.

It's incredibly frustrating, NOT annoying, when you reject or question, or to us, deliberately mangle what we say. How many times did you say "so what you're saying is ..." When we didn't. Please carry on asking questions, but get out of the binary response requirement. Sometimes we cannot say yes or no, but we MUST say , it depends. On Internet forums, when you know nothing about people, it's hair pulling sometimes when people respond in ways that were unexpected. That's what for me, rang the warning bell, and I spotted it. Very early in the topic but not responded to. Many of us would say things we knew were right, only to have our responses ignored or misunderstood, or suddenly provided with new and different information we couldn't have been expected to guess.

Think about this. Plenty of people boom exactly your mic successfully. A perfectly good combination of equipment and task. You can't make it work. You miss the fact that we know it can be done, but you think there is a problem. I bet that if we saw a YouTube clip of how you are booming the talent we'd all spot the errors straight away. Kind of like "ah, that's where the noise comes from" moments.

The ball is in your court. The solution in your grasp. We just cannot help unless you can communicate effectively the real problem, not a sanitised explanation of it.

I also suspect that you simply don't stand up for your role on the job. If you need something, communicate how essential it is, and also deflect blame. I did it numerous times yesterday with a chaotic job. A video crew. A production manager totally green. Those lights are to bright and shining in their faces, dim them. Sure, but the camera folk won't be happy. Ignored. I dimmed the lights, the camera people took ten seconds to start yelling. I looked at the production manager. Two words. Your call. Lights went up again. The talent are front facing. Lights in their eyes is just tough. However, not everyone can win.

Oh okay sorry, I don't mean to mangle what you say, it's just that there are un-discussed variables in some of the advice, and I feel I have to cover those variables in order to understand and apply everything correctly. I don't mean to come off as repetitive, I just feel that the un-discussed variables in the advice, needs to be addressed, if that's okay, that's all.

I didn't use the shotgun before, because the shotgun is very sensitive, to going off-axis easily, so when I put it in someone else's hands, I don't want it to go off axis. That is why I chose the hyper in the past. As for making my own wind protection, I thought I would just by some from the pros, cause the pros can probably make it sound better than something I made myself I thought.

Plus, I did upload a youtube video that shows how I boom and how the mic makes noises. Didn't the video I posted show what was happening, wind wise?

Sorry if I gave a sanitized explanation of the problem, I just tried explanation the problem as best as I could. How was I sanitizing it exactly?

What you are doing in this thread and the other one about dollys etc, is asking endless questions so that you can cover every aspect in discussion then go out and buy or borrow the perfect piece of equipment to give you the exact result you want. IT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!!

No matter what you get, you haven't got the experience to understand how to use the equipment properly. You can ask questions for twenty years on this forum, but unless you try out the suggestions, not once, but regularly enough to get good at it, you will never get the end result you want. The only other alternative is to pay experts to do it for you.

I used to teach people to fly, and it took hours of hands on by them to get good at it. You can't just buy the perfect aeroplane based on other's experience and expect to get in it and fly, but that is exactly what you are trying to do here.

Roger

All the answers to your issue are within the replies. There reaches a point where you need to test, test, test to find which works for you and your mic. There are commercial products available as a solution.

Sometimes, you just can't do things. Roger made me smile. Three times I have tried to learn to fly. Twice in fixed wing and once in rotary - 3 different instructors at different locations. Two were terminated first lesson. The third instructor persevered a little longer (5 lessons) and then I asked him the question. "Is this the weather, the conditions, the aircraft, or is it me?" He said, with a pause - "It's you". It seems I have very poor spacial awareness in 3 dimensions. With concentration I can fly straight and level, but changing the frequency on the radio would wipe me out. I'd have gained or lost 500ft, or changed my heading, or actually be in a bank. I could stop the bank, and get back on the heading but not notice I was going up! I asked if I could learn this, and he thought about it and said that frankly, he doubted it and taking my money would be wrong.

I also discovered the same lack of coordination when one of the TV dance show people tried to teach me to waltz, to prove anyone could dance, the only question was how well - and he dumped me after ten minutes as 'unteachable'.

One camera job I really fancied was with an aerial video company. All their freelancers had, by their policy, to be able to keep the helicopter in the air in case of emergencies. The test was simply to hover at 500ft above the airfield, with a drain cover in the centre of the frame. On the words "you have command", you had to keep the drain in the monitor image for ten seconds. I came bottom out of ten of us on the training day. One second!

Ryan - everyone is right. All the answers are in the topics. The problem is that you keep morphing the questions into similar but different ones.

Why would you think a home-brew solution would always be inferior? Perhaps less pretty, or tricky to put on - but most work amazingly well - like my "make one" idea for a dolly. 4 casters, some wood and glue. Who cares if it's not pretty?

You did make the video about the booming noise - but you didn't;t make a video about how you practiced and solved it. I can only say again - our booms in our hands don't do this. YOU have the power to cure it, we can't do this for you. You have blinkers on. You don't listen, and you certainly don't seem to put any effort in - apart from typing.

Ryan, there are infinite variables in everything, if you go down to the subatomic level. You cannot anticipate, describe, answer, and remember the answers for every variable.

Consider driving a car. What happens if I'm driving down the road and come to a bend in the road? What should I do? What if it's raining? What if there's only 1/16" of tread on the tires? What if there's a pothole on the road? What if the air pressure in the left front tire is 2 PSI lower than the other tires? What if there's 500 pounds of tools in the trunk? What if the ambient temperature is 31ºF? What if the road is asphalt instead of concrete? What if a skunk runs across the road? What if it's nighttime and one of my headlights is burned out? What if there's an oncoming pickup truck and he's 2 feet on my side of the centerline? You get the picture.

Audio is like that, only moreso. Almost anyone can learn to drive a car (albeit not all at a professional level). I don't think everyone can learn to be good at audio. Audio is complex. You cannot anticipate, describe, answer, and remember the answers for every possible situation. AND you need a good ear to hear what's going on.

I think you would really benefit from an apprenticeship with a mentor who can relate to your detailed thought process. He might actually enjoy all the detailed discussion. But he would have the advantage of being able to demonstrate by doing. The "by doing" part is extremely important. I was lucky enough to have two such mentors when I was in my 20s (which was distressingly long ago). But I can't hook you up with such a person where you are.

I also had the advantage of getting my brother interested in audio when I was ~18 and he was ~14. Neither of us knew anything to begin with, nor did we have a good mentor at that point, but luckily we found a few good books in the local library. More importantly, we thought it was great fun to *play* with audio. Much more interesting than learning Latin, or the names of all the native American tribes in Pennsylvania, or playing touch football, or whatever all the other kids were doing. (We learned about wind noise, me driving down the road in my Rambler, my brother holding a mic up to the open passenger window; then we went home and listened to the tapes with a good woofer. I learned about binaural sound by recording a rainstorm, then listening on headphones. We recorded a lot of local music, including our family piano.) We learned audio *by doing.* That was the beginning of careers (in audio and technology) for both of us.

I find that I learn better by experience than by words alone. I think this is especially important with audio because it's difficult to describe the results, but it's easy to hear the results. (Or, if you can't hear what's going on, you are in the wrong business.) I once had a guy from Poland on my crew. He knew what he was doing, his English was pretty good. But e.g. one day he told me that something was "brooming." So I was trying to picture a broom, sweeping, etc. ... but with no success. Finally I said, let's go over to that room and you can let me hear it. And, yup, that channel had a bad hum. Apparently the Polish word for "hum" is "broom." Actual experience -- doing and listening -- is the key. Words just try to explain what you did and heard.

If you were here, and if I weren't retired, I'd probably enjoy having you on my crew. Unfortunately, you aren't; and I am. Look for a good mentor. Look for someone to be a "partner in crime" when you spend time playing with audio. Hook up your gear and record stuff. Try different things. In time, you'll have more understanding and less questions. This will become intuitive.

Above all, do not listen to those people who are telling you to use a lot of mics to record dialog. They are clueless -- their advice is not good! Maybe they are in business selling mics.

Good luck!

Regarding home brew, many of the tools used in Film and TV started out as home brew creations of a technician on a production trying to solve a problem. Then, either they or an equipment manufacturer took this initial prototype and put it into production (having tidied it up and put a nice label on it).

Yeah that's true, I gotta solve my own problems more, and not worry about shakiness or equipment noise so much. Well I am budgeting for a gimbal for some shots, and if the DP says we need something else for the slower, more complicated and precise moves then we can talk about what else we need, if that sounds best.

Well, you should worry about shakiness and noise by not having them. Home brew that works is totally fine. If it squeaks cure it, if it wobbles sort it. Ryan, what your role? I figured you were doing cameras on this one, if you have a DP, then these things are that persons responsibility. They do the planning, and spend the money. In all my years, gimbal shots have been very rare base there were other ways of doing them. I bought one and while it's often out with other people on projects, I rarely even get it out. I've got a project coming up where I've got one particular camera guy doing it for me, because he can produce excellent hand held stuff that frankly, I can't, so I pay him! Much easier than me faffing around trying to develop technique for 30 minutes work.

Now I've got perhaps 5 years left in me, I've come to the conclusion that my career 'rule' was perhaps risky. I get my work because I can organise, manage and do practically anything at a reasonable level. Certainly good enough to get paid for it. However, it means I am an expert at NOTHING! I'm average at loads of stuff. Rarely do I say no to a job because I like collecting skills, but they're too spread out to ever get brilliant at them. My advice to you is to be specific. So far you appear to have dabbled in sound and cameras. You struggle at collecting the skills and craft necessary so narrow your field down so you can increase your skills in that area by repetition. Get known for one thing you can do without thinking, or without having to learn. Otherwise you will be the gofer. The person who works really hard at a basic level and everyone bosses around. Find a niche. Somewhere you can excel. Somewhere that people will turn to you because of reputation. Have you tried gimbal work? I i just don't have the coordination to walk one way, point a camera another and then pan and tilt it appropriately while not crashing into things. It isn't technical, it's an art. I failed miserably at steadicam. I got through the course but while my shots were level and fluid, and I could go up and down the steps and avoid obstacles, the shots were dull and uninspiring. I haven't got it. My work ends up on out of the way TV channels, never on an awards show!

Oh okay. Well I could excel at directing I suppose since that is what I have feel the most experienced at so far.

I can hire a separate gimbal operator yes, I just like knowing what I need equipment wise, before making the budget.

Ah - but that's the snag, you don't, so why don't you delegate.

Now I'm older, I don't feel the need to be the central axle any more. I let the experts think and put in their opinions, then I take this and cost it. Sometimes, one of the younger ones with less experience will suggest crazy budget items, often because they're the flavour of the month, but expensive and pointless. I reject these and ask them for a more budget friendly solution. If the expert comes up with something I'd not thought about, and it's a good suggestion - you go with it. My job is overview. Can I do it better? Sometimes I think I can, but I don't have time, or inclination. Let it go - let the expert take it on. I now take things over only when the project will be impacted. When it goes wrong, it's my fault - if they've done what I said. As a Director, you need to know when your teams are pulling a fast one. They will. It's not about just shouting 'action'. Bad directors get confused. They then confuse others, and worse, if the team are confused of why things are done, they produce worse results. You don't need to understand makeup to use it - you are concerned with end result not application.

I'm deeply suspicious about the quality of your friends. They have given you wrong and confusing information before. As Director, why would you use these people and assume they will save your bacon?

You have made up your mind to hire a gimbal operator? Why? Do you need one, or just a decent ordinary cameraman. Surely, you use a cameraman who looks at what you want to do and then that person uses the kit best able to do it.

Oh I'm not using those friends for recording sound during shooting. Those friends are much more knowledgeable in post production areas, rather than production so I will get other people for production.

I think I really could use a gimbal operator for the running chase scenes, as well as some other shots, cause I think it would add to the feeling of the story. But I don't want a lot of technology for the sake of it of course.