omni-directional problems!

by Josh
(Detroit,MI)

Question
Hi I work for a satellite TV station that broadcasts live talk shows almost every night.

In each live show there can be up to 10 people in each show. Now I cant use uni directional mics because they turn their heads left and right to speak to each other so I use omni directional.

The problem that I am facing is that when one person speaks his voice is being picked up on the other peoples mic's next to him. I tried using the gate minimize the sound coming from the other mics but the people talk too loud for it.

Is there any way or is there any device that will mute the audio on the channels of the people who aren't speaking? I am trying to see if our audio mixer can do this but if it can't is there any other option?

Also we are using the Tascam DM 3200 and I noticed that you had some pictures of it on your site, so if you are familiar with it would this mixer be able to do the job? and if so how?

Answer

Well, I have a few ideas that might work.

First, have you tried using lavalier microphones that you put on a person's collar? If you have one pinned on every person they would probably work pretty well. They would follow the person when he's turning his head because it's attached to him and with everyone having a separate mic it's just a question of mixing the levels of all the people.

Other thing I'm thinking is using ducking with a side-chain and a compressor or gate. You patch it in such a way that when one is speaking the other mics lower their volume, but I wouldn't know if that's possible with so many different mics. It's a technique used by radio broadcasters so that when they speak into the mic the music automatically turns down a little bit to help with the intelligibility of the broadcaster. It might be possible to patch the Tascam like this but I still think we are using too many random signals at one time for it to be effective.

I think the best option is using lavaliers. But you could also combine it with directional mics so that when they turn their head away from the mic they are still audible.

Let me know if this helps. Good luck and thanks for the question. Very good question Josh.

Regards,
Bjorgvin