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[Jason Lavoie]

For auto-gain applications outdoors are there any fully weatherproof and windproof mics that are vandal-resistant?
I have a small football stadium where we want to cap the gain based on audience size/noise but there is nowhere with shelter to mount a mic, not even eaves on the pressbox, so it'll have to go on a pole or railing somewhere completely exposed.

I'm sure I could find a weatherproof drive-thru mic or something, but I'm worried about wind affecting the measurement

Jason

[David Sturzenbecher]

For auto-gain applications outdoors are there any fully weatherproof and windproof mics that are vandal-resistant?
I have a small football stadium where we want to cap the gain based on audience size/noise but there is nowhere with shelter to mount a mic, not even eaves on the pressbox, so it'll have to go on a pole or railing somewhere completely exposed.

I'm sure I could find a weatherproof drive-thru mic or something, but I'm worried about wind affecting the measurement

Jason

I wouldn't look much further than a Telex WP-300.   It's omni, so wind noise will affect it less than if it wasn't.

[David Sturzenbecher]

The biggest problem you are going to have those is removing the sound from the PA, from the ambience sense level.   You could try the AEC processing on some DSP's, but good luck in a stadium.

[Jason Lavoie]

I wouldn't look much further than a Telex WP-300.   It's omni, so wind noise will affect it less than if it wasn't.

That's the first thing that comes to mind also, except it's not weather resistant

The biggest problem you are going to have those is removing the sound from the PA, from the ambience sense level.   You could try the AEC processing on some DSP's, but good luck in a stadium.

I was planning on using a Symetrix Jupiter4 which has their "SPL computer" module (lots of other DSPs have similar) which has a few tricks to measure crowd noise during gaps in music (and sometimes during the music itself) and adjust the output level accordingly to keep on top of the changing ambient noise
In my case it'll be quiet most of the time with bursts of music or speech so it should work quite well.

Jason

[Josh Millward]

I was planning on using a Symetrix Jupiter4 which has their "SPL computer" module (lots of other DSPs have similar) which has a few tricks to measure crowd noise during gaps in music (and sometimes during the music itself) and adjust the output level accordingly to keep on top of the changing ambient noise
In my case it'll be quiet most of the time with bursts of music or speech so it should work quite well.

Jason

The problem with most of those "Ambient Sensing Leveler" devices in most DSP's is that they do not react fast enough.

Consider how dynamic the crowd is at a typical sports-ball game. They can go from quiet to loud to quiet again in quite short order. A lot of those ambient sensing algorithms can not react faster than 1 second, which is often too slow.

It's been a while since I looked at them, but maybe the one in the Symetrix box is improved since I last explored this.

[David Sturzenbecher]

That's the first thing that comes to mind also, except it's not weather resistant

Jason

I have had these in outdoor installs directly exposed on the face of a press box for 10+ years without issue.

[Jason Lavoie]

The problem with most of those "Ambient Sensing Leveler" devices in most DSP's is that they do not react fast enough.

Consider how dynamic the crowd is at a typical sports-ball game. They can go from quiet to loud to quiet again in quite short order. A lot of those ambient sensing algorithms can not react faster than 1 second, which is often too slow.

It's been a while since I looked at them, but maybe the one in the Symetrix box is improved since I last explored this.

In this case I'm not looking to fix the difference between loud and quiet parts of the event, but more to cap the level for smaller events where there may not even be an audience, so that the few times that there IS a big audience the extra volume may be tolerated a bit more by the neighborhood.
I'm pretty sure I can set it so that any appreciable audience would bump the system to level 2.

Essentially what should be done with a toggle switch and some presets except it is an un-supervised system with no staff present

Jason

[Jason Lavoie]

I have had these in outdoor installs directly exposed on the face of a press box for 10+ years without issue.

Awesome. thanks!

Jason

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