which diaphragm for lavaliers on TV?

[kevin nowhow]

Hi folks!
I'm working as a sound engineer at a local TV station for 2 years now.Since this is my debut on the broadcasting world i was wondering what types of Lavs are commonly used for indoors shows.We've been (ab)using the AKG c417 which sounds natural to me & a real workhorse but since they are omni they tend to capture any nearby non-direct sound(& gates don't help much).Do TV stations usually bias towards cardioids or is it just the poor acoustics of our studios?

Cheerz!

[philper]

Originally Posted by kevin nowhow

Hi folks!
I'm working as a sound engineer at a local TV station for 2 years now.Since this is my debut on the broadcasting world i was wondering what types of Lavs are commonly used for indoors shows.We've been (ab)using the AKG c417 which sounds natural to me & a real workhorse but since they are omni they tend to capture any nearby non-direct sound(& gates don't help much).Do TV stations usually bias towards cardioids or is it just the poor acoustics of our studios?

Cheerz!

In film and video virtually all lav mics in use are omnis. There are too many issues w/ head turns and mic placement to allow directional lavs to work well in most situations. That said, they CAN help a lot w/ BG rejection in certain very specific situations--worth a test if you are doing the same sort of thing in the same environment over and over. (I carried a cardioid lav around with me in my kit for probably 15 years and never used it.)

Philip Perkins

[kevin nowhow]

Originally Posted by philper

In film and video virtually all lav mics in use are omnis. There are too many issues w/ head turns and mic placement to allow directional lavs to work well in most situations. That said, they CAN help a lot w/ BG rejection in certain very specific situations--worth a test if you are doing the same sort of thing in the same environment over and over. (I carried a cardioid lav around with me in my kit for probably 15 years and never used it.)

Philip Perkins

Thanx a lot mr Perkins!Head movement can definately become an issue(i've tried a couple of directional mics & it proved the statement)but still i wondered 'cause I regularly see anchormen with 2 Lav mics placed on opposite sides so my guess is that they were cardioids.But i guess when a guest wears just one mic it's always an omni fella...

[huub]

We actually use cardioids a whole lot, mostly senn MKE40's.. Also we have dpa 4080s (or some number like that), and headworn omnis get used alot also..
Mostly in PA situations (it's reaaaaally hard to get omni lavs loud on a PA system), but since producers are used to seeing those ugly MKE40's, we also use em in situations without PA..
I really don't like omni lavs, altough there's plenty of situations where we use em..

You can easily regognise a card lav, since theyre always quite a bit bigger..
the smallest one is this one http://broadcastengineering.com/prod...ic-italy-0622/
most common is this one
http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser...mics-mke-40-ew

[josh broome]

People use two lavs so if something in the signal path fails you already have a backup ready to go.