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Lavalier distortion


MikeMarkiw

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Have you ever had one of those guys with a real gravely voice that seems to rattle the capsule of a Lavalier mic? The gain structure is good through the chain so it’s not a peaking thing.

We have also tried proximity from his mouth/throat. I’ve tried a cos11, a b6, a tram and a dpa too. Also tried an SM and a UM400.
Ideas?? Thoughts?

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The boom is fine thank goodness.

We are on a tv show however that sadly forces us to the wires a lot.

Same old story. 

It’s clearly a “vocal fry” thing, but sometimes it becomes apparent that it’s not just the voice, but what it does to the capsule. We have been working along the chain and trying different placements, wires and packs. Mostly we are wondering if there is a post fix that can help, or if the wire tracks are even salvageable when that happens. 

So far we have been able to get everything of the boom as well, but there will be a day...

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Some people sound lousy on lavs (wired or wireless), it is an unfortunate fact of sound work.  I have made the phenomena described a little better via various post tricks.   As Mike seems to indicate, it could be that this speaker has so much low-freq audio coming right off their chest that the capsule is having trouble with it, so using what would normally be a non-optimal mounting position might help. 

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i have worked on a couple "My 600lb. Life" TV shows for TLC. These unfortunate people are very large, very damp and their voice boxes/diaphragms are very gravelly with thick-tongued speech. Have I painted the picture for you? The first time I lav'ed one of these individuals I was amazed to hear virtually no high frequencies. I mostly use COS-11d lavs and tried half a dozen locations (didn't try scalp). I told the producer I had to figure out a way to minimize the over emphasized low end at the mic head and enhance the top end. I asked her what other mixers have done. She didn't know. I settled on placing two thicknesses of index card (about 2"x3") taped to their upper chests and taping the lav to the outside of the card. Wow, it sort of collected and reflected the high freqs into the mic while getting it a bit further away from the skin and the damp. It seemed to reduce the low end too (or I simply had more gain on the top end). It sounded much better. Since then, I have 3x5 index cards in my kit.

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My problem voices have mainly been women!

 

Worked with a wonderful Australian male actor with a beautiful voice but so much low end

that was impossible to capture on a lav.

 

I did find that with some American voices that a Sonotrim worked better than a Tram TR50

so I currently only use Sonotrims and B6

 

mike

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