The Documentary Sound Guy

B3 were always my go to for disposable lavs. They don't sound as good as Sanken, but I have had one submerged in salt water and restored it by soaking it in distilled water for three days. I used the stock Sennheiser ME-2 with my Sennheiser gear for ages, and they sound fine for the price. A bit hissy (like the B3s), but the tonality is fine. They are also on the larger side to hide, but they are cheap. The MKE-2 is a decent upgrade. I can't speak for any others ... I'm all DPA these days with a couple B6s for when I need an *extremely* small capsule. I would try Tram TR-50s, Shure's lineup, and maybe higher-grade Sennheisers, but I have no direct experience with them.

I think you could BOOM with these. I can only imagine the handling noise.

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly my experience. The best luck I've had was on a documentary in a remote location, and we were able to designate "ambience recording" time slotted in whenever camera was shooting B-Roll. We would coordinate to be close but far enough away that I couldn't hear them (>1 km most of the time), and I had several blocks lasting an hour or more to find interesting ambiences. This past weekend, I was hired as "swing" crew to help out when camera needed me, and the rest of the time I was able to move around the location independently and find what I needed. I had the better part of a day and a half to myself. I didn't get everything we wanted because we were filming in a resort town and the more "pristine" ambiences that we wanted simply didn't exist. But we definitely got a decent amount of usable recordings. I'm very curious to find out how much post ends up using. In both cases, I had support and a rough wish list from post. I'd say less than 10% of my clients are organized enough (or well funded enough) to take advantage of it, but I'm getting better at making clear how and when it can be done. I've also managed to get some very unique ambience recordings on an arctic documentary where I was able to record away from camp a little bit. That one was difficult because I required a guide to escort me for safety when I was out of visual range of camp (and when I was in visual range, I could hear the camp).

All that tracks with my experience. I was doing mainly exterior ambience with no obvious directionality, and I think I would have been better served with 2x ORTF, or perhaps the IRT cross for what I was doing. I'm very keen to set a double MS setup going, because I think that would be most practical for me to carry with me on regular shoots. What mics / wind protection were you using? I wish I could find a rig that would accommodate my all my MKH mics, because heavy as they are, they are quiet and bulletproof. I might have to consider jumping to the 8000 series now that the 8030 exists. I've also heard a DMS setup for a guitar-playing singer-songwriter type setup, and I absolutely loved what that sounded like. Interesting thought about using lavs as spaced omnis. I hadn't thought about that for ambience, though I've considered doing it for music / choral. The downside for me is I don't have the capability to run them all hardwired, and I'm using Zax wireless, which makes me hesitate to use them for music because I lose the half octave above 16K at the top. It probably doesn't matter for casual usage, but I'd prefer not to be in that situation for professional recordings.

I used to use JVC flats (HAS160) ... wish I could still find them. They were the best compromise I've seen for durability, price, compactness, and audio quality. The swivelling earpieces were great for both size and comfort. Could get them for CAD$25 until they were discontinued.

Well, that was an interesting experiment. I probably won't do it that way again, but it was interesting. I was plagued by issues that weren't to do with the mic configuration ... My Neumanns are susceptible to RF interference, and I had an unshielded 10" jumper cable on one that made it that much worse. Then, the bar I was using to mount the array had holes in it and started turning into a flute in the wind. And my wind protection wasn't really adequate overall (especially for the ORTF pair). Add in a location that didn't justify a 360° recording, and it was a disappointing day overall. I don't think I'll use hypercardioids again ... the rear lobe really muddies things. And I think I even prefer my shotgun as centre channel in Mid-Side, and I didn't think Mid-Side and ORTF complemented each other very well. I like Mid-Side for the convenience, and I might build a double-Mid-Side rig for lightweight surround recording in the future, but it's clearly not the best choice. So ... learned a lot. One last question: Is there any good way to monitor a surround setup using headphones? How do people monitor this in the field? I had front, rear and a stereo mixdown as headphone presets, but I didn't feel I got a good sense of what I was doing. Maybe that just comes with experience.

Double MS is actually my preference. That would massively simplify things. But I can't fit the third mic in my zeppelin with any sort of coincidence, and I don't think close is good enough for MS matrixing. Eventually, I hope to build a permanent DMS rig for this kind of thing, but it will mean switching to less chunky mics. This is good to know, and it makes good sense to me. I think in the future I will aim for 4ch ambience rather than 5, either with DMS or two back-to-back pairs. I think I kind of knew this in the back of my head because I know the centre channel is mainly used for dialogue, but my inexperience in post and ambience recording convinced me I needed to record a separate centre. At this point my shoot is happening today, so I'm committed to the frankenmic that I cobbled together last night. No time for configuration changes at this point, but I'll be able to experiment with putting the ORTF forward. I'd imagine it will be a flawed experiment, but at least I can give the editor a front and a back pair, and they can ignore the centre channel or lack thereof. Thanks for all the suggestions ... I wish I had more time to incorporate them all. I've learned lots already.

Thanks! My mic locker is pretty limited, so yes, I'm stuck with hypercardioids everywhere. I'm eyeing some AK40 capsules for the Neumanns so I at least have cardioids to count on in the future, but I won't have those for this gig. It's a learning gig for me, and post is grateful for whatever I send back ... they weren't expecting anything other than mono or at most stereo tracks. I think you are right about swapping the direction ... I like the directional tracking of ORTF better than MS, but unfortunately, then my centre channel (mid) ends up facing backwards, and I'd have to add a mic to the middle (and then widen the side mics into a more conventional tree?). I'm just dipping my toes into surround, so this is what I've got for now ... thanks for widening my horizons! I'll have to get a second MKH50 try an IRT cross at some point! I'm basically just using what I have as a way to learn a bit more about it and hopefully I'm more informed next time.

I'm frankensteining together a surround tree with a Mid-Side front and an almost-ORTF (ORTF with hypercardioids) rear. I'm using it for ambience recordings for what will ultimately become a 5.1 theatre mix for an indie film. The sound designer is more than happy to accept any form of multi-channel ... he was pleasantly surprised and very enthusiastic when I told him I was capable of doing this setup. I've done next to no 5.0 recording, but I know a little bit in theory. I know what I'm doing doesn't really fit into standard practice, but I also know there's close to a dozen varieties of mic configurations that get used, so I'm assuming there's some room to play. I'm doing this with the mics that I have (i.e. hypercardioids and shotguns), not the mics I want, so I'm sure that will affect things as well. There's no way this would pass muster for music recording, but I think for ambience it should work well enough. My mid-side is Sennheiser: MKH30 with either a MKH50 or MKH60 in the middle. The ORTF is a pair of Neumann KM150s. I'm looking for opinions on a couple things: 1. What's a good front-rear distance between the Mid-Side and ORTF pairs? I typically see 45-60 cm, but I don't think Mid-Side front & ORTF is a particularly common pairing (probably for a reason, but, again, I'm using what I have). 2. Suggestions for the Mid mic: MKH60 or MKH50? My assumption is that MKH50 will be more natural, and will probably be my first choice, but is there any merit to using the MKH60 to provide a more distinct centre channel? Would that be useful in a theatre mix? I'm not planning to record any particular subject, just ambience, so I'm imaging all the MKH60 will do is create phase imprecision ... but then the whole setup is pretty janky. 3. Any reason to consider X-Y instead of ORTF for the rear? I'm not sure if I should be worrying about mono-compatibility for all channels (and I'm assuming the non-coincidence between front and rear will be more serious than the 17cm between the rear pair. 4. I don't imagine the Sennheiser / Neumann split will match very well (the Sennheisers are quite dark, and the Neumanns are spicy and bright). Any suggestions for how to mitigate this? Or should I just leave it for post?

For sure! I choose a poor alternate example. You are right or course that near-coincident techniques will cause more phasing issues than coincident. That said, in the mono-compatible conversation, usually it's a question of whether the two channels will straightforwardly sum to mono, not whether there's fancier processing that can convert it. The original concern with mono-compatibility came from summing stereo mixes to mono for either TV transmission or AM radio, and the assumption was that most consumer equipment would either drop a channel or sum them to create a mono signal. That assumption probably still holds today for all sorts of mono conversions, even though TV is no longer mono and AM Radio is mostly not thought about.

It's compatible in that it doesn't turn into a mess of phasing when you sum the channels like some other stereo techniques do. Mono inherently has "half the data" of a stereo signal, so compatibility is not a question of how do you preserve all the data, but how to you throw away the "right" half of the data and still end up with a listenable signal. Mid-side does this by throwing away the side channel. Some other techniques (<cough> X-Y) don't sum to mono nearly as well, and there isn't a good way of mixing the two channels together without causing really awful phasing.

I had it happen to a Canare XLR cable. It happened to the one on my mixer bag, which had *more* air circulation than my other cables. I noticed it right after someone had been using epoxy in the next room, so my conclusion was that the epoxy fumes had something to do with it. Total speculation though...

I was under the impression that it happens when the cable comes in contact with certain solvents (which may be aerosolized). I vaguely recall epoxy fumes could cause it? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all though, so I could just be spreading rumours. And I don't know how to stop it. But I'm eagerly watching to see if anyone here knows.

I don't recall exactly how I got hold of it, but I was eventually able to find a direct phone line to a US service centre. I think I may have either pulled it from a forum or an archive.org copy of an old Sennheiser website, but it's been too long to say for sure.

Even Senny USA doesn't have any power to do anything ... When I sent mine it, I sent it to Sennheiser Canada, they sent it to Sennheiser USA, and Sennheiser USA shipped it to Germany. It came back the same way. Utter madness. The reps I talked to (and I spoke to both Canadian and USA reps) were totally demoralized and were quite frank about how broken the system has gotten. This was last year, just after the change was made, so it might be better (or at least different) now. The techs I spoke to didn't really seem to think their jobs would last much longer ... the regional offices have basically just been trimmed to sales offices I think.