Place these mics forward looking at the
stage and 6 feet or so from the rear wall and/or
corner of the venue so they don’t pick up any
unwanted reflections, as shown in Figure 6.
AT THE CONSOLE
Sometimes the easiest place to put audience
mics is at the front of house console, especially
in a large venue. Assuming that you’re set up
in the middle of the audience and not under a
balcony or some other obstruction, locate four
mics (preferably shotguns) at the corners of
the mix position, as shown in Figure 7.
The front two mics should aim toward
the front of the house. just in front of the
PA stacks, while the rear mics should point
at deep house left and right – in other words,
towards the corners of the venue.
This approach works great by itself, and
even better with the addition of front hall or
backline mics.
Further, any combination of any of these
methods that cover the front, rear and middle
of the audience present not only a lot of options
for great audience coverage, but for capturing
some really nice ambience as well (Figure 8).
Keep in mind that when using multiple
pairs of mics, it’s best to record them on
multiple stereo tracks to keep your variations
open during mixing.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Mic’ing a crowd outdoors poses a different
set of circumstances in comparison to the
indoor experience. For one thing, placement
is usually a lot more difficult, with fewer
options for hanging mics.
In addition, the ambience of the venue
is lessened, so you usually need to resort to
using more mics as a result. And don’t forget
the windscreens, because nothing makes a
track unusable like wind blasting across the
mic capsules.
Next time I’ll discuss the pros and cons of
using a DAW for live recording. n
Bobby Owsinski is a veteran audio professional and the author of several books about
live and recorded sound.
