Sound Reinforcement For Theater; The Realities Of Theater Sound - Shure MUSIC EDUCATORS Manual

Sound Reinforcement for Theater

The Realities of Theater Sound

Microphones for everybody!
Most theaters that operate on a limited budget try to use as few microphones as
possible. Common techniques include hanging a few microphones overhead, and
maybe a few boundary (or surface mount) microphones at the front of the stage.
Many inherent problems exist with these techniques, including, but not limited to:
• Reduced gain before feedback due to too many open microphones too far
away from the actors.
• Comb filtering (that thin, hollow sound) resulting from multiple microphones
picking up the same actor.
• Increased pickup of stage vibration noise, reverberation, and other unwanted
sounds.
• Varying sound levels as actors move in and out of the pick-up areas of
different microphones.
How do professional theaters deal with these issues? Easy - they don't. Every
performer on stage gets a wireless microphone. Most Broadway productions use
over a hundred thousand dollars worth of wireless microphones for a single show. A
basic rule of microphone technique for any application is to get the microphone as
close as possible to the desired sound source. Therefore, even though you can't
always see it, each actor has a small lavalier microphone clipped, taped, glued, or
sewn to some part of the face, hair, or costume. Having every actor "close-miked"
eliminates all of the above problems encountered with distant miking. The distance
between the microphone and the actor's mouth remains constant, thus providing a
constant output level. High sound level shows go a step further, using headworn
microphones to get the microphone even closer to the sound source.
The Overhead Dilemma
Okay, so your budget doesn't quite get up to Broadway standards. Using a few
overhead microphones for smaller speaking parts can be an acceptable alternative,
but be realistic about what to expect. Consider the following example:
Two actors on stage, one is wearing a lavalier microphone six inches from his mouth,
the other is standing six feet from the nearest overhead microphone. The actor
wearing the lavalier will be four times louder than the other actor will! Turning the
microphones up louder is not always an option, either. For any given sound system,
the farther the microphones are from the sound source, and the closer they are to the
22