Crowd Mics for Live Streaming Audio

oh i feel like i'm singing in a tin can my broadcast mix just isn't sounding like it matches the room yep you need room mics [Music] room mics or crowd mics are critical if you're gonna do in-ear monitors or a broadcast mix with everything close mic to reduce noise you lose some of that natural feeling and when we've lost that loving feeling whoa that loving feeling now it's gone gone gone whoa whoa whoa in today's video i'm going to show you what mics to use and where to place them to get the best results no matter your budget if you're new here go ahead and mash the subscribe button ding the little bell and turn your notifications on to all you don't want to miss when i drop another video and especially when i go live now you don't have to have expensive microphones to get started with crowd mics if your budget is exactly zero see if you can find some extra sm57s or sm58s lying around if you do you can put them on the front of the stage facing out and spacing them is going to help a lot especially when you're running it to in-ear monitors mono is fine if you've got that but stereo and spread out is way better be sure to roll up the high pass filter so that you get rid of any rumble or muddy feeling from the mics send that to your in-ear monitors or your broadcast mix and prepared to be amazed instantly your singers are going to be happier and it's more likely that they'll keep both in your monitors in and that's going to help them sing better and then your mix sounds better now if they need help learning to mix their in-ear monitors you can send them to this video over here now if you're planning an upgrade or an install and you've got some budget for crowd mics you'll want to invest in shotgun microphones best case scenario is to hang them up high near the front of the stage pointing out into the audience height is your friend when it comes to crowd mics because you want to be able to get the biggest widest picture of the crowd that you can they have a very narrow pickup pattern so if you keep them down low and someone is close to it in the front it could be just them getting picked up by the microphone and that's kind of awkward kind of when the weather reporter switches to that outdoor camera and there's a hornet crawling over it now let's take a look outside as we look over sunny skies now these microphones polar pattern or the direction by which they pick up sound is very narrow but that narrow pickup pattern in the front comes at a price we get a whole lot of rejection from the sides of the microphone but the back of the microphone picks up as well and this is the other reason why it's good to have it up high if you've got the crowd mic right at the front of the stage and it's facing straight out the back side of that microphone is going to pick up any noisy drums guitar amps or monitor wedges on stage so to avoid that and get more crowd and less drums and reject the sound from the speakers all at the same time putting your microphones up high and angling them down into the crowd is a win-win-win except nobody has to wear a t-shirt with a picture of jazz babies playing the saxophone on it at 4runner church they've got the sennheiser shotgun mics on the lighting truss and they work great now the bummer of actually hanging these crowd mics is actually getting there and running the cable personally i don't love getting out the scissor lift if i can avoid it i will the only thing is when they're way up high you have to be really careful about how you point it and when you're up in the rafters all your directional senses kind of feel a little bit off and it's hard to get it pointed just right so here's a pro tip get a laser pointer and put it right alongside the microphone that way you can know exactly where the mic is pointing your goal when you have a little bit shorter room is to aim at about a third of the way into the crowd you don't want to be picking up reflections off the back wall and you want to be getting the best signal to noise ratio you're trying to get the crowd as loud as you can and the people that are much further away they're not going to be picked up by the microphone quite as well unless you're in a really big space and the people are really loud anybody can blab on and on about this stuff but you come here for the goods so i'm going to give you some audio examples of two different sets of crowd mics from the same room on the same performance one stereo pair are sennheiser shotgun mics hung up in the rafters near the speakers the other pair are heil pr22s on the stage it's important to know too that this is a place where the background vocals aren't singing from on stage so everyone you hear in addition to the lead vocal are people in the crowd [Music] singing things are not okay [Music] right [Music] now if this is making sense so far type crowd down in the comments below now if you're mixing broadcast from front of house or a dedicated console you might want to include some of the ambience or the sound of the pa in your mix to make it feel like you're in the same space in this case you can either put the mics at front of house or in the audience although i don't recommend having a microphone right in the middle of the crowd it's just kind of awkward you can either put these at front of house facing back toward the stage or in the ceiling hanging down now you have to be careful not to add too much of this into your mix because the timing differences between the direct sound coming out of your console and the ambient sound that has to travel through the air and get to the microphones it's going to be later so we want to avoid timing issues and use these sparingly and even roll off some of the top end so that you don't hear two different hits on the snare drum or the cymbals the other solution to this is to add a time delay to your direct signal so that it matches the timing of the ambient mics but usually i'm just using these mics sparingly and filtering them to add a little bit of that ambience i'm not relying on them for the main part of my mix they're the sprinkles not the cake i have two more warnings for you but first if you're mixing broadcasts and you want to take it up a notch you can download my free guide how to lead your church audio stream team it'll help you identify what's holding you back and how you can make things better there's a link down in the description below okay first warning if you're going to hang mics in the ceiling make sure that they're not going to pick up hvac noise this is really hard to get out in post and it's usually not totally consistent so it might be nice and quiet one moment and then it kicks on and you hear this it's not really fun and the second warning is this if you have mics at front of house you have open mics at front of house your private conversation might not be so private anymore that's it for this time and remember it's all about the low end avoid the sound tech solo and nobody leaves church humming the kick drum we'll see you back here next time you

Channel: Attaway Audio

Views: 13,500

Rating: 4.9642859 out of 5

Keywords: live stream, live stream audio, church live stream, church live stream audio, best crowd mics for church, broadcast mix, crowd mics, audience mics, room mics for church, church crowd mics, church room mics, room mics for in-ear monitors

Id: SFEVZkiS0J4

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020