Choir Mic Placement

[cw4u]

We have hanging mics on the two outer wings of our choir section but the middle section is all on stands due to the ceiling in that area being lifted an additional 30'.

In the center section we have 4 Audix M1250 with an average spacing of about 69". They are placed on the bottom row. (not used by choir) The distance from the mics to the first choir row is 33".

The first row used by choir is raised 1'. The distance between rows is 3'. Average spacing between chairs is 9.5" The same figures apply for the second and third rows used by the choir.

Should an additional set of mics be positioned for the 2nd and 3rd rows?

It seems that the hanging mics are positioned so that there are 2 mics for about 10-12 chairs. One of those mics is pointing towards the 1st and 2nd row while the other is hanging straight down on the 2nd and 3rd rows.

[Gracetech]

With 1250's you should have the front of the mic just over the top and just in front of the first row of the choir. Like 8" in front of and 2' above. With some studio booms you can swing some mics over the back of the choir and position them in much the same way as the front section. Honestly unless your choir is singing with a full band you won't need that many mics but to each their own. If you just want to use the front mics all you need to do is raise the frint mics about another 18".

crt

[cw4u]

Well I experimented with placing a 3 hyper-cardioids in between the three 1250s sitting on the first row with chairs and it seemed to work well. But with such a tight pickup pattern and how close they are, I'm sure it's not working too well.

I honestly couldn't tell if my GBF was down or not...probably just a hair down. But I did phase invert every other mic as well as try to eq all of them for feedback.

Maybe just having a 75 person choir tonight really helped but it sounded way better tonight than on most Sundays. The choir was actually able to be intelligible enough with a full orchestra at moderately high levels.

I'm going to experiment with another set up next week and see how it works.

[Gracetech]

flipping the phase is going to create all sorts of weird phase issues not that you weren't going to have weird phase issues with mics that close to one another anyway. Remember that the phase switch is only when you need to 180 a mic in relation to another mic.

Usually 70 voices will increase the volume level well over a 30 voice choir.

crt