Best mic for recording multiple people indoors?

[Matt Ryan]

I will be recording a "round table" shot in an upcoming film. I have always opted for individual lavs, and a sennheiser mkh416. What would be the best mic to capture audio from multiple people in an interior setting? I want to stay away from lav's and the shotgun mics. There will be some movement so I wanted something with a wide response range. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I know the different mics available but specifically wanted feedback and advice.

 

[Tom Visser]

Your ambient noise level is going to increase, but if you have good control over your environmental noise, an omni or a pair of omni mics, depending on the table shape, would be your best bet. I like the DPA SMK4060 or 4061 kit which includes a boundary layer shroud for the 4060/61 mics. This would allow you to place the mics more or less invisibly on the table, with the drawback that any finger tapping or mugs being set down would be captured too.... definitely use high pass filtering, but if you can't control table noise, then consider suspension overhead instead. Again, DPA omni mics would be good, or even quieter, but still relatively economically priced would be a stereo pair of the Sennheiser MKH8020.

 

[Matt Ryan]

thanks Tom for your response. There will be plenty of table sound so overhead would be the viable option. How close does the sennheiser need to be to pick up decent usable audio?

 

[Tom Visser]

The MKH 8020 are incredibly sensitive and have some of the lowest self noise specs around. The quieter the background noise is / more dead the room, the further away you can get. If your on the stage of a typical theater and it is a closed set with quiet crew, 10-15 feet or more would still be quite useable. If you talking about a live audience situation or a non-acoustically treated room, such as a typical hotel conference room, then we're looking at something more in the line of 3-5 feet or so.

If ambient noise is going to be an issue, then omni is simply not the right mic. Instead, perhaps look at the MKH8040, which have a cardioid pickup pattern and would reject more of the off axis noise pollution, but sacrifice a small amount of the natural sound of the omni mics.

No matter what you do, in addition to simple background noise, remember that the ratio of direct sound to reverberations will increase as the distance increases from the sound source. That is why a theater stage would allow for more distance, because of the room treatments and multiple noise deadening curtain lines hung above, where audio in a typical untreated room will begin to sound "boxy" as you pull the mic away from the sound source, even if the ambient noise is quite low.