The Sound Blog - Audio Insights

Hi Friends, This is my second blog! Got a few comments for my first one! Many thanks to all those who commented. Before I continue, I just thought I should clarify that in my blog, I am posting my personal views and comments. I could be completely wrong about some technical aspect I may write about... please do correct me if you think so. My blog is aimed more towards students who have just passed out from an Institute and are trying to make a career in the Film or Television Industry in the field of Sound Recording and Sound Engineering. I just want to share my experiences of the past 33 years with my readers. Based on the feedback that I received for my first blog, I have decided to write a little bit more about wireless lapel mics. It is not uncommon to have 10 to 15 Sennheiser G3 wireless lapel mics on a television multicam show. So how do I go about setting them up for the actual shoot? No two television shows are the same. Each show is different, but whether it a tel...

Hi friends, In most television shoots in Mumbai, India, we use Sennheiser G3 or G2 transmitters. I have come across many engineers, who set the input gain settings incorrectly on a transmitter.The tendency is to set it pretty high, with the result that when the talent shouts or screams, the transmitter input stage gets overloaded with a very hot signal, which it cannot avoid but DISTORT. It is this DISTORTED signal which is transmitted and received by the receiver. Once heavily distorted, it cannot be repaired and made UNDISTORTED. On so many television shows, specially the daily soap type of shows in India, we hear badly distorted sound on telecast. This reflects poorly about our quality standards. If enough headroom is kept at the transmitter input stage, we can very easily avoid distortion. The best way to set levels on a transmitter is by speaking loudly (or even shouting loudly) at the mic and then watching if the input is clipping or peaking on the transmitter. If clipping...