Compressor/Gate on Sermon???

[bchacon]

I'm just wondering for those of you who are digitally recording your Pastor's sermon, are you using a Gate on it to eliminate any background?

[[Director] drew ryan]

Nope, we are adding room mics to get the background. Typically for sermons you want the background noise to get a feel for being in the room and also to get the congregation's reactions. A gate would tend to make the recording sound unnatural.

[waynehoskins]

For me, yes and no. I have a channel of ACP88 inserted in that channel strip, and I do have the gate set, but it's at a very low level. For the recording feed, in fact, I have a dbx 266XL in line, set as a leveling amp to add about 10 dB to the non-music part of the service, where there's a huge level difference.

With the MKE2 on our guys who preach, there's enough background ambience to not need a room mic, though I've thought about adding one a few times (more so for IEMs than recording).

[bchacon]

Originally Posted by Drew Ryan

Nope, we are adding room mics to get the background. Typically for sermons you want the background noise to get a feel for being in the room and also to get the congregation's reactions. A gate would tend to make the recording sound unnatural.

Hey Drew,
Thanks for the reply. I'm trying to figure out why I'm getting some low background noise from a direct feed from the pastor's wireless receiver into my Mbox2 and then straight into a Mac running Pro Tools. I'm not against running a Wave plug-in to get rid of it but my experience tells me that I shouldn't be getting that noise... or should I??

-Brian

[bchacon]

Originally Posted by waynehoskins

For me, yes and no. I have a channel of ACP88 inserted in that channel strip, and I do have the gate set, but it's at a very low level. For the recording feed, in fact, I have a dbx 266XL in line, set as a leveling amp to add about 10 dB to the non-music part of the service, where there's a huge level difference.

With the MKE2 on our guys who preach, there's enough background ambience to not need a room mic, though I've thought about adding one a few times (more so for IEMs than recording).

Yes, I also have one of our ACP88 channels in-lined as well. But I'm not running the gate. I'm curious what your settings on the Gate are? Unfortunately, because we've been having certain 'noise' issues with our Mackie, I'm running directly from a Line Balance Splitter straight into my Mbox2/Pro Tools setup. I'm getting this very low level noise. It's not hum or electrically generated. It may simply be the lapel mic picking up the ambiance of the room.

Thanks for your reply,
Brian

[[Director] drew ryan]

You may be hearing the noise floor of the wireless system. What are you using?

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by bchacon

Yes, I also have one of our ACP88 channels in-lined as well. But I'm not running the gate. I'm curious what your settings on the Gate are?

It closes pretty much right at the noise floor of the radio, maybe just a hair before. I may as well just open it right up: it doesn't end up doing much of anything.

[bchacon]

Originally Posted by Drew Ryan

You may be hearing the noise floor of the wireless system. What are you using?

I don't remember the model numbers but I know that they are the low to mid line models from Shure.

I actually was wondering about that and whether we should be looking at something like a high end Sennheiser now that we want the best quality we can get for the recording.

[[Director] drew ryan]

If the gain on the high end Sennheisers are not set right you can really hear the noise floor. But they do sound very nice. I would also look at Lectrosonic with a DPA 4066 mic.