Challenge: quiet VIP speaker

Jon Goin

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Apr 26, 2019
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A VIP speaker at international conferences has a quiet voice. His Schoeps CCM41 and Audix M1280B mics have LED reading lights on the booms and need to be away from his mouth. He can't wear a headmic or lav because of mobility concerns.
I'm still looking for a mic that can pick up his voice better and reject feedback in large halls.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Jon
 
Hello

Since the mics are that good - low-cut as high as possible is first thing that pops up here - 200Hz or even higher depending on slope. Methinks that more important than his sound is that his message gets delivered. Even if the sound is a bit thin.
 
There's no magic bullet here that I've run across. The CCM41 in particular is a pretty well-behaved mic, with an appropriately tight pattern for this application, and I'm not convinced that simply swapping out the mic with something else will give you better results.

Assuming that the person speaking is within the critical distance of the microphone (i.e. you are getting more direct sound than reverberent sound), I'd be looking at system-level improvements. This means appropriate high-pass filters (as Timo noted), keeping as little output from the PA as possible on the microphones, and perhaps a touch of delay between the microphones and the speakers (makes it harder for feedback loops to start). It may also mean you need to use a distributed speaker system to get sound towards the back of the room, and not just rely on speakers at the front of the room.
 
Thank you for the helpful info and suggestions. I don't have access to work email at home, so a little late getting back.

I understand that one can't defy basic audio/physics principles regarding mic distance and live sound, and agree that cutting low mids helps.

The delay idea is interesting and something new to try. Even the highest-end shotguns create too much feedback with the distance factor. Whatever mic we use, it has to be closer to get more gain coming in.
 
Hello again

This might be too late for this event, but still maybe useful some other time. How about inserting minimal pitch-shift ? This would change the room sound only slightly, but at each time coming back to mic it would be further off pitch - thus helping battle against feedback.
 
Hello again

This might be too late for this event, but still maybe useful some other time. How about inserting minimal pitch-shift ? This would change the room sound only slightly, but at each time coming back to mic it would be further off pitch - thus helping battle against feedback.
Thanks for the idea--I see what you mean and will look into it.
I have a DBX AFS2 feedback killer that gets most of it out but always something else to try...