Thats a great idea, if he can get them to play along. This reduces spontaneity perhaps, but has the side benefit of forcing people to think before they speak. The time tested and proven method is an audience podium that a recognized speaker from the audience approaches and is allowed to speak. I think even a boom/fishpole option or shotgun mic would be distracting and lead to 'hamming' in the audience. Since you obviously can't afford to mic everyone individually and have a bunch of sound people riding faders as the speaker changes, you will need to come up with a different system. The downside is that someone has to keep the mic pointing the right way as the focus source changes or else it only helps one person, like giving them a mic and nobody else. The beauty of something like a shotgun mic is that it focuses on a narrow slice of the pie and makes that louder everything else gets no help. That is the same problem you have now, only not as loud. I have some Beyer models that are very good at this type thing.ĭon't know how good the other cheap ones are, but that's probably used price to begin with, and you are not going for a studio vocalist on a U67 tone anyway right?īear in mind that if you mic everything evenly, everything will be louder but still the same relative loudness. Thankfully, there are some singles as cheap as $29.00. This will tell you how many mics you need to cover the whole room. You will have to experiment to see how far you can be in your room before the sound starts to suck, and lose intelligibility. I once saw some crazy auction with like 30 of these AT mics. None of the huge ones I had seen before though. If doing the recording by yourself for example, and you don't have the capability of making it to debate speaker #2 in time to catch his rebuttal, so something like this might be the only way to go?Ī couple of lots here (see link at bottom), and some cheap deals. That said, if I had no other choice, and I wanted to be covered, I'd maybe try this. It's still never going to be as good as somebody pointing a mic at the speaker though. Later, on mixdown, you mute ALL other mics save the one that the speaking audience member was nearest at the time, and this could probably give you clean enough pickup to use. Arrange them so that none of the mics is too far from where anybody in the audience is sitting. The ones I have used and own however, are EXTREMELY sensitive, almost to a fault, and have a ton of reach, meaning they will pickup whatever from quite a distance.Īnyway, you could potentially grab one of these lots with like 8-10 pzm mics in them or whatever, and arrange them in 'zones' around the room, record them to their own track, and mix them later. These do NOT have a wide freq response typically, are tailored for speech only and are a couple notches up from conference table telephone communications type omnis etc. Probably mixed in multi track later, or maybe just used for pa, although feedback would be a nightmare scenario live. These were typically used in conference and board rooms, or placed on tables and such at large conventions etc., to pickup every speaker at said table. On ebay sometimes you see people selling auction 'lots' of many Shure, Audio Technica, Beyer, Sennheiser, Crown, etc. I suppose you could try one crazy thing if you are not going to pursue mic placement, but positioning the mic will always get the better results.

Well, keep in mind, if not using a shotgun on a fishpole, or a close cardioid or lavalier, the 'debate' you speak of will be a little distant and unfocused no matter what else you use.

Best microphone to record lectures