Location of audience mics?

[lembeaux]

I've recently been doing a good amount of remote location recording, and although the recordings are turning out good, I'm consistently upset with how the audience mics sound. I've tried at least a half dozen ways to setting them up, using X/Y, spaced pair, suspended, on the floor, etc. The three best choices I feel I have as far as mics go are a pair of SM81's and an AKG 414, which I run through two Presonus Firestudio mic pre's. Still, the results are less than satisfactory. I know there are many factors that can effect the house mics, but any tips or ideas would be awesome.

[bishopthomas]

What do you not like about them? Where are you placing them? Are you time aligning them (if necessary)? Maybe it's the sound of the room that you don't like.

[JP66]

like almost everything else it's very situational. there isn't one correct answer. generally speaking I prefer near coincident stereo pairs in a perfect equilateral triangle with the PA. However there are number of factors that may cause me to change my opinion on that. One thing I can say with relative certaintity is that it is very very hard to get a good sound from a pair of audience mics particularly for loud rock music.

[tnjazz]

Are you using the mics to record the stage sound, or are you pointing them outward to record just the audience response?

I set up hypercardioid or shotguns at the edge of the stage and typically compress the hell out of the two channels later to get good results in the final mix.

[lembeaux]

hey guys (and gals) thanks for the responses. Well, that is one of the issues. I can't decide whether to point the mics towards the band or toward the audience. The last show I ended up suspending two SM81's from some rafters about 10 feet from the ceiling, roughly 5 to 6 feet apart, and about 30 feet from the front of the stage, pointed at the band. I had each mic pointed at each PA stack. It sounded kinda hollow and thin. Truthfully, I don't really know what i'm going for, which could be a problem in itself. I usually combine the house mics with the 16 direct signal outputs from FOH.

[Graham Tobias]

There's definitely a distinction between a room mic and an audience mic. In my opionion I'd say it's a room mic if it's facing the band and if you want to record the audience, the mic needs to point at the audience. I usually put audience mics on the stage, spaced wide pointing in at the audience.