[AG-TECH] Some mic questions

[Jeff Ramacher]

Jonathan,

> 
> I just spoke to someone at Crown Audio who told me the Gentner does not
> have enough power to run the Crown PCC mics and that I needed to by a
> seperate phantom power supply from Crown.  Does anyone know about this?  I
> am waiting on our Gentner now.

Sounds like Crown is trying to make a little extra ca$h :-).

> 
> Also, does anyone have experience using the Crown CM31 (which is a choir
> mic) or equivalent for miking a large area/audience?
> 

I don't have experience with that particular mic, but I do have some
experience with different mic situations.  The audience type mics are so
darn tempting.  It'd be great to just "talk" normally anywhere in a room
without regard to where the mic is, but unfortunately it usually just
doesn't work for conferencing applications.  A handy rule of thumb is
that sound quality (signal-to-noise) degrades with distance between mic
and audio source (person).  Part of the issue with conferencing (AG or
VTC) is people not speaking loudly or clearly enough.  With a choir, the
audio source is "a group of people," which is a pretty substantial audio
source.  While the mics in these cases are usually far from individual
people, they tend to be as close as possible to the group as a whole. 
I'm using the Crown PCC mics (1 per 2-3 people) and they do a pretty
good job until someone standing in the doorway of the room starts
talking.  To combat that problem I'll usually shove a handheld wireless
into their face.  Watch any of the talk shows on TV and that's exactly
what they do too.

Hope that helps...
--
Jeff Ramacher (jeffr at mhpcc.edu)                | (808) 879-5077, x264
Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) | fax (808) 879-5018
                                               | http://www.mhpcc.edu