Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Non-shotgun boom mics for interiors (and exteriors)


I get a lot of repeat questions about which mic other than a shotgun to put on a boom, especially when working inside. The answer is a hypercardioid or supercardioid. You can also easily use these mics outside and they work very well in outside situations with hard surfaces, e.g. streets, buildings, walls, windows.

Here's a little video that explains why. Listen with really good headphones or on good monitors.



BTW, cardioid is pronounced like cardiac, but with an oid at the end. Car-Dee-Oyed. The name comes from the root cardio and in this case refers to the heart-shaped pattern the mic makes if you're looking down over it and it is positioned parallel to the ground.

I have listened to the others including the Sennheiser 8050 and, while it is a very nice mic, I didn't care for the EQ curve on it for boom work. My choice of these mics from the best down are:

Schoeps cmc641








And get the more expensive B5D pop filter shown here.




Sennheiser MKH50










Audio Techica 4053b








Audix SCX-1 HC














Oktava MK012 HC

3 comments:

  1. Hi Ty, great article and I love this video as it explains by example what can never be done with mere words or pictures. I first saw it 4 or 5 years ago on your mobileme site and immediately bought your field guide.

    One question for you, for various reasons I ended up with a pair of Nuemann KM 184 cardioids, not hyper-cardioids. Everyone (you included) seems to recommend hypers for indoor booming. Intuitively I would think the full rear field rejection of a cardioid would actually be better than a hyper since it would reject crew noise or ceiling reflections. Are these still useable for booming?

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  2. Thanks gman,

    It's a tradeoff between full field rejection and width of front pattern. Most folks, me among them, will take the rear bounce to keep the pattern tight, but I do know a few people who have used a cardioid on a two shot so they won't have to be as accurate with the boom.

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  3. Hi Ty! Thanks for the great video! So hard to explain to people that if you bought the longest gun, Mother of All-guns, it does not mean that you will have a good sound in the interior. I often used Shoeps MK 41, and is a great choice. Now I have a Neumann KM 185, it sounds very much like Shoeps - Shoeps for the poor)

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