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[Aaron Baxter]

I've not had any experience with this so please forgive my ignorance.  I'm trying to setup a mic in the front of house facing our congregation, however, as far as I can tell even the best shotgun mics are only good up to about 10 feet.

Where my confusion, and questions, comes in is if this is true how can the simple, mic on my cheap camcorder can pickup pick up even voices, 30 feet away?  Mind you ambience is low and there cannot be another voice closer, but it still works.

[Tim Halligan]

Could you be a little more specific about what you're actually trying to achieve?

Are you actually going to put this mic into the PA, or is this for recording a show?

More details yields better answers.

Cheers,
Tim

[Robert Lunceford]

I've not had any experience with this so please forgive my ignorance.  I'm trying to setup a mic in the front of house facing our congregation, however, as far as I can tell even the best shotgun mics are only good up to about 10 feet.

Where my confusion, and questions, comes in is if this is true how can the simple, mic on my cheap camcorder can pickup pick up even voices, 30 feet away?  Mind you ambience is low and there cannot be another voice closer, but it still works.

I use a pair of Crown PCC160 to record the audience at live shows.

[Art Welter]

..as far as I can tell even the best shotgun mics are only good up to about 10 feet.

Where my confusion, and questions, comes in is if this is true how can the simple, mic on my cheap camcorder can pickup pick up even voices, 30 feet away?  Mind you ambience is low and there cannot be another voice closer, but it still works.

Aaron,
It is not true that "shotgun mics are only good up to about 10 feet", they are often used in sporting events and wildlife to pick up detail at long distances.

The narrow pattern of a shotgun mic could be used to isolate a specific area of the audience sound, but the sound of the rest of the audience would be compromised by the comb-filter sound of the out of phase off axis pick up of the interference tube used to achieve the very narrow high frequency pattern.

You want to choose the polar pattern (omni, cardioid, supercardioid, hypercardioid, supercardioid/lobar or hypercardioid/lobar) that best fits your application- whatever it is.

Art

[Craig Hauber]

I've not had any experience with this so please forgive my ignorance.  I'm trying to setup a mic in the front of house facing our congregation, however, as far as I can tell even the best shotgun mics are only good up to about 10 feet.

Where my confusion, and questions, comes in is if this is true how can the simple, mic on my cheap camcorder can pickup pick up even voices, 30 feet away?  Mind you ambience is low and there cannot be another voice closer, but it still works.

Ambient pickup for the in-ears?
Audience response for video recording?
Either way you will pick up the loudest thing in the room first and foremost -the PA!
So you probably will want some basic directionality beyond an omni
I've found pencil type condensers works just fine for this. (KM84, C451 and SM81) and any of the millions of modern variants of these -even the cheap china clones work just fine if you're  not live amplifying their output.
Even a plain-ol '57 has performed this duty for me in the past.

[Dave Pluke]

I'm trying to setup a mic in the front of house facing our congregation...

Assuming you want to capture the congregation for streaming/recording, I've had good luck with cardioid Small Diaphragm Condensers in an X-Y configuration at the rear of the sanctuary (or edge of balcony) facing the altar. As mentioned, they needn't be particularly expensive but be sure to locate them out of HVAC blast range and High Pass them to lessen room noise. A notch may be required at the paper-shuffling frequencies. Experiment.

Dave

[Aaron Baxter]

Ok, the 6-10 ft limit was from sites like audio-technica.

My goal is to face 1 or 2 (if necessary) mics to capture people responding to questions or giving testimonies for recording/streaming.  The room is pretty small for a sanctuary (about 60Wx100L).  My original thought was to have them facing back from FoH, but I hadn't thought of a x/y from the back corners (would make cabling easier).  Corners are the farthest away from HVAC and the central door, but would put one above my head.

The PA won't be emitting anything other than whatever idle noise might exist from them as the speaker will be waiting for response and I have ~65dB noise gates on the mics.

I get that I'll have to be quick on the mute button for them else I'll have some fun echo like I do with the camera's mics.  Wish my DAW was smart enough to do a "subtraction" of 1 mic from the other but I don't see how that would be possible without a significant delay at least.

[Doug Jane]

Ok, the 6-10 ft limit was from sites like audio-technica.

My goal is to face 1 or 2 (if necessary) mics to capture people responding to questions or giving testimonies for recording/streaming.  The room is pretty small for a sanctuary (about 60Wx100L).  My original thought was to have them facing back from FoH, but I hadn't thought of a x/y from the back corners (would make cabling easier).  Corners are the farthest away from HVAC and the central door, but would put one above my head.

The PA won't be emitting anything other than whatever idle noise might exist from them as the speaker will be waiting for response and I have ~65dB noise gates on the mics.

I get that I'll have to be quick on the mute button for them else I'll have some fun echo like I do with the camera's mics.  Wish my DAW was smart enough to do a "subtraction" of 1 mic from the other but I don't see how that would be possible without a significant delay at least.

If you want good audio doing this,you need a couple of wranglers with wireless mikes that can get to the person speaking. Otherwise the audio will sound like some one at the back of the room. Think it through properly. Audio is all about garbage in garbage out.

[Mike Caldwell]

So are you wanting to send these mic to the main PA speakers or just use them as part of a live stream audio feed?
Your response kind of makes me think you want to send those mics to the PA system, bad idea if that is the case.

[Tim McCulloch]

Ok, the 6-10 ft limit was from sites like audio-technica.

My goal is to face 1 or 2 (if necessary) mics to capture people responding to questions or giving testimonies for recording/streaming.  The room is pretty small for a sanctuary (about 60Wx100L).  My original thought was to have them facing back from FoH, but I hadn't thought of a x/y from the back corners (would make cabling easier).  Corners are the farthest away from HVAC and the central door, but would put one above my head.

The PA won't be emitting anything other than whatever idle noise might exist from them as the speaker will be waiting for response and I have ~65dB noise gates on the mics.

I get that I'll have to be quick on the mute button for them else I'll have some fun echo like I do with the camera's mics.  Wish my DAW was smart enough to do a "subtraction" of 1 mic from the other but I don't see how that would be possible without a significant delay at least.

You might have luck with parabolic reflector microphones (sometimes used in sports broadcasting), but getting intelligible speech pickup over distance ain't really gonna happen.  "Shotgun" microphones work by creating acoustic cancellations (the barrel of the 'shotgun' is call and interference tube) to make the spot pickup.  What you get at the diaphragm is the 'left overs', acoustically.

You'll need spotters and mic runners if you want high quality pick up.

[Adam H Burgess]

You'll need spotters and mic runners if you want high quality pick up.

This is the way. Possibly cheaper, even, if you have a few 58 handhelds around.

[Aaron Baxter]

....getting intelligible speech pickup over distance ain't really gonna happen.

This is where my question really originates.  The cheap camcorder's mics pick up the voice pretty dang well as long as there isn't a closer noise (the last part is obvious as to why).  Even though the speaker is facing away from it (reflected sound I'm assuming).  So why wouldn't 8K worth of equipment (with the right mic) be able to do the same.  I realize if it was a larger room, it wouldn't work without many mics and headaches, but this small room should be possible given the cameras ability.  I don't like using the camera as it's audio isn't processed through the board and it's difficult to toggle mute.

An no, these wouldn't be fed to the FoH speakers, only recording and broadcast to the other viewing areas in the building (e.g. nursery). I mentioned the mute/echo as the stream would hear the direct pickup of the podium mic and then the audience mics would pickup a delayed version from the PA.

I'm not going for super quality, just enough so the stream doesn't see the pastor standing there looking dumb and smiling while the congregants are speaking.  (PTZ cameras later but that's a whole other budget I don't have lol).

[Mac Kerr]

This is where my question really originates.  The cheap camcorder's mics pick up the voice pretty dang well as long as there isn't a closer noise (the last part is obvious as to why).  Even though the speaker is facing away from it (reflected sound I'm assuming).  So why wouldn't 8K worth of equipment (with the right mic) be able to do the same.  I realize if it was a larger room, it wouldn't work without many mics and headaches, but this small room should be possible given the cameras ability.  I don't like using the camera as it's audio isn't processed through the board and it's difficult to toggle mute.

An no, these wouldn't be fed to the FoH speakers, only recording and broadcast to the other viewing areas in the building (e.g. nursery). I mentioned the mute/echo as the stream would hear the direct pickup of the podium mic and then the audience mics would pickup a delayed version from the PA.

I'm not going for super quality, just enough so the stream doesn't see the pastor standing there looking dumb and smiling while the congregants are speaking.  (PTZ cameras later but that's a whole other budget I don't have lol).

A couple of shotguns should be fine for this, at least better than the camera mic behind the audience.

They should be placed at the stage, not too far from the PA, facing the audience. Near the PA so that any bleed from the PA will be relatively in time with mics. You should use the auto mixer if your console has one, but you will still have to actively mix them or they will cause a hollow sound in the stream and recording. This can be made easier if your console has GPIO and VCAs. You can control the mics with the VCA, and control the VCA with a volume foot pedal.

Mac

[Aaron Baxter]

A couple of shotguns should be fine for this, at least better than the camera mic behind the audience.

They should be placed at the stage, not too far from the PA, facing the audience. Near the PA so that any bleed from the PA will be relatively in time with mics. You should use the auto mixer if your console has one, but you will still have to actively mix them or they will cause a hollow sound in the stream and recording. This can be made easier if your console has GPIO and VCAs. You can control the mics with the VCA, and control the VCA with a volume foot pedal.

Mac

I'll look for some mid range shotguns and give them a go.

I know the X32 has automix, but I've never used it nor do I know how well it works.  I'm not aware of it having gpio/vcas but having never needed them.

I'll try putting them above the PA, but I think I'll have much more issue with the sound bouncing off the back wall.  The bane of my existence lol.  Wish I could carpet the front and back walls (or knew someone that was good a trigonometry and could calculate where I need sound panels).

In my engineering mind, I would think a DAW could be made to reject the same signal from one channel on another even on a delay but of course would need to introduce a fair bit of lag to do it.

[Mac Kerr]

I'll look for some mid range shotguns and give them a go.

I know the X32 has automix, but I've never used it nor do I know how well it works.  I'm not aware of it having gpio/vcas but having never needed them.

I'll try putting them above the PA,

You want the mics as close to the sound you want to pick up as possible. Above the PA may be unnecessarily far away.

Mac

[Caleb Dueck]

You want the mics as close to the sound you want to pick up as possible. Above the PA may be unnecessarily far away.

Mac

Agreed, sounds like you're trying to fight the inverse square law with hardware rather than at the source, puns intended.  Loudest source at the mic wins.  Start with getting the mics as close to the mouths of the desired people as possible, then use polar patterns to attenuate the undesired sounds a little further. 

The best is to take a recording feed off the sound board to video, and mic all people speaking at their source (mouth).   The built-in mic on a camera should never even be considered, IMHO. 

[Eric Snodgrass]

If possible, rent a couple of shotgun microphones and try them out in different configurations.  Then you can decide if this is the best solution for your issue. 

[Aaron Baxter]

You want the mics as close to the sound you want to pick up as possible. Above the PA may be unnecessarily far away.

Mac

Actually the speakers are slightly closer to the audience than where I had planned on sticking them.

Ideally, if it were a Q&A forum and not just a bunch of random people poping up giving impromptu testimonies, I have to do what I can to get the best possible result.

All the sound comes from the board with the exception currently of testimonies/audience interaction where I will kick on the camera mics.  Hence , why I'm getting the info that I can to get the audience through the board.

Renting is a good suggestion as well.  I'll see if there's any place around to rent shotguns from.  I know 1 place, but I don't think they rent shotguns.

[Kevin Maxwell]

Long shotgun mics are not good to use indoors because of the way that the long interference tub on them works.

[ProSoundWeb Community]