Topic: Permanently mounting mics in a venue

[goodcooker]

Thinking about doing this. The venue is great and has a ton of killer music so I attend at least two shows a month. It has two big negatives for me - the security company takes the no tripods/selfie sticks/etc rules very seriously so I've had to resort to handing my gear off to the FOH guy before show time but I don't want to be a pain while he's working and it's kind of a chomper stronghold - the room isn't very big so the balance of direct vs reflected sound is not bad from the FOH cage but people gather there going to and from the bar to BS and I get lots of chatter.

This could be solved by ceiling mounting a pair of mics and dropping them down from the the very high ceiling.

Anyone done this and can give some tips on how? The ceiling in this place is VERY high like 30ft or more. They have a scissor lift I could probably use and the cable bundle from FOH goes to the ceiling so there's likely some stuff to zip tie to for the cable run.

I know Chris Davis did this at a venue in Charleston SC but I think the ceiling was kinda low so they put one mic in front of each stack - I'm thinking a DIN pair of cards in the middle but I'm open to ideas.

[Gutbucket]

SBD available too or not?  Only sometimes, depending?

I like omnis hung directly in front of each PA speaker.  Spaced A-B, same width as the PA, each directly on-axis with the PA speaker.  The primary variable is how far out into the room you hang them, which will determine the balance between the direct-PA-sound against the stage/audience/room sound.  Likely to be good somewhere between 8' and 15' out in front.

The sonic advantages are that it produces a nice AUD/SBD matrix-like sounding recording with good direct PA clarity, but also good stage-lip like direct stage-sound pickup, open and wide ambient room sound, and good diffuse audience reaction that is less likely to highlight any particular audience members.  Practical advantages are that other than needing access to the ceiling and long cables, its easier than most other hanging arrangements to rig.  Just dangle each mic from its own cable, it doesn't matter which way the microphone points.  Miniature omnis work fine, tend to be tough and resilient, and are likely to go entirely unnoticed by patrons.  If you will have regular SBD access you might want to hang them farther from the PA.  Far enough so that you'll generally want to add a touch of SBD to get the direct-clarity just right, when you can dial that balance in afterwards by ear.

A directional pair in a near-spaced config from a central position will work too of course, and will be more familiar as a typical taper arrangement.  But rigging it will be more involved.  In addition to needing a mounting bar of some sort, the pair will need to be accurately pointed vertically and horizontally and secured in such a way that it won't rotate or change orientation over time.  Not uncommon to use a couple monofilament fishing lines out to the sides to do that.  Like with the spaced omnis, if you'll have regular SBD access you might want to hang it a bit farther out into the room than you otherwise would, with the intention of adding a touch of SBD afterward. 

Because the second approach involves additional variables in addition to how far out into the room the mics are placed, it may take more re-arrangements with the scissor lift to dial it in just right. 

Which sound you prefer will be a personal thing off course.  I tend to like the first option as it provides a good balance that's otherwise challenging to achieve.

[rocksuitcase]

Thinking about doing this. The venue is great and has a ton of killer music so I attend at least two shows a month. It has two big negatives for me - the security company takes the no tripods/selfie sticks/etc rules very seriously so I've had to resort to handing my gear off to the FOH guy before show time but I don't want to be a pain while he's working and it's kind of a chomper stronghold - the room isn't very big so the balance of direct vs reflected sound is not bad from the FOH cage but people gather there going to and from the bar to BS and I get lots of chatter.

This could be solved by ceiling mounting a pair of mics and dropping them down from the the very high ceiling.

Anyone done this and can give some tips on how? The ceiling in this place is VERY high like 30ft or more. They have a scissor lift I could probably use and the cable bundle from FOH goes to the ceiling so there's likely some stuff to zip tie to for the cable run.

I know Chris Davis did this at a venue in Charleston SC but I thing the ceiling was kinda low so they put one mic in front of each stack - I'm thinking a DIN pair of cardsint he middle but I'm open to ideas.

As far as mic configs, I'd say Cards in the middle pointed DINa would work. Too bad most variable pattern mics are LD's or too expensive to keep in a club's ceiling!
As far as mounting- I work in mechanical contracting doing the IT, but I see a lot of poles which are hollow tubes mounteded at the ceiling with extensions and of course air craft cabling as safety. A typical fan pole for instance will have 3 safety points as well as it's typically 4 points of attachment on a ceiling. Think of it as a reverse mic stand hanging down about 15 feet. 
take photos!   lol

[goodcooker]

Found a pic of what the room looks like. It's pretty wide and tall and not as deep as it looks. The FOH cage in the pic is pretty much where it is now but maybe back a few feet. You can see the bundle of cables hanging from the ceiling to the FOH. The floor is concrete so they couldn't send it under had to go above.

The room is weird to be a purpose built music venue. It has glass garage doors on each side of the room that are never opened. Maybe once in 4 years of going here have I seen the garage doors opened during a show. It's really tall which is nice and they have added a lot of new sound system reinforcements like a six per side line array and some new subs (in lieu of sound dampening that was needed) in an effort to make it loud enough that you can hear the music over the chompers. In the pic you can only see half the room. The other half is a mirror of the half you can see same tables and garage doors arrangement.

There's an outdoor stage too and a huge area out back. If you take a look at the portfolio of the architecture firm who did the design it shows the whole facility. We are really lucky to have something like this local to us.

https://sheldenarchitecture.com/portfolio_item/wave/

[Gutbucket]

Clamp a DINa setup to the vertical conduit pipe on which the mirror ball is hanging, just above the ball?  Looks to be a pipe in the photo, which would be good as that should be rigid and less likely to rotate or droop over time than hanging from a cable.  Shouldn't be difficult to rig. Microphone cables run up to the lighting truss immediately above, over and down the vertical cable bundle running down to the board, not excessively long.

Similar would be attaching the same mic-setup using velcro straps or whatever to the vertical soundboard cable bundle itself.  Shortest cable length directly down.  More likely to get rotated somewhat off-axis or possibly be messed with by venue or support staff rearranging things though.

[rocksuitcase]

Wow! OK, now the club designer in me has something to say. If you can afford it, how about three mounting points, with four mics? Don't have to be spendy mics, as I am sure you were planning.
So then drop three mounting positions, two about where gut is saying. the other two mics about 30 feet from stage lip DFC (about 20 feet above stage?? ish) with a NORTF or DIN A, or even a Healy AB (omni mics 180 degrees opposite each other- https://www.oade.com/Tapers_Section/streicher-healy.html for better explanation). This is for all music, but especially beneficial for the acoustic and more quiet stuff

[Gutbucket]

While Rock was posting I was editing my post above to split off the portion below as separate post, as it concerns the A-B hanging omnis approach. The intent is to clarify, make the more specifically relevant post above shorter, and talk about the details of an approach you may not care to pursue at this venue separately in this post. Feel free to ignore everything below if going the other route.  I'm including this post for others who may be searching for info on installed recording setups since the wide omni A-B PA pseudo stack-tape approach works really well in some places.

In the photo you posted the PA split does look quite wide, making the hanging omni approach more challenging than in a smaller club. If going that route I'd want them closer than mirror ball distance to the stage, and not as wide spaced as the PA.  More like halfway between stage and mirror ball, with each mic positioned at about the midway point of an imaginary line running between the mirror ball and the PA speaker.  Maybe somewhat less spread than that, but want to make certain each microphone remains inside the coverage angle of the PA on it's side (Left mic inside the coverage pattern of the Left PA). Its okay to have each mic outside the coverage area of the PA speaker on the opposing side (positioned to the inside of the effective coverage cutoff angle of the PA on the opposite side), as that's essentially what happens in smaller clubs with omnis hanging in relative close proximity in front of either PA speaker anyway, which is known to work well from experience.

[full on speculation past this point, feel free to ignore] ..and such an arrangement may conceivably help with binaural-stereo translation of the direct-arriving PA sound by producing a stereo frequency response similar to that of a Jecklin disk. Geometry-wise it's totally different of course due to the wide vs narrow spacing.  But a big part of the baffled stereo "thing" is the frequency dependent response the baffle imparts to sound arriving from the opposite side, which is emulated somewhat by being just outside of the effective coverage angle of the PA on the opposite side.  Only in this case with some stereo hass delay to it in addition to the frequency shading.   I think of 3 general scenarios with A-B omnis: 1) Typical A-B from the audience. Both microphones pickup both PA speakers, both direct-signal and direct-cross-signal has similar response, similar level, and a arrival time differences of no more than a few milliseconds.  Diffuse reverberant pickup with similar arrival time differences; 2) Wide stack tape A-B with mics close in and directly in front of each widely separated PA speaker - each microphone dedicated to its own PA speaker.  Direct signal has similar response, level and arrival time.  Direct-cross-signal is negligible, no audibly significant direct sound cross signal between channels, any cross stereo delay is only from reverberant pickup, with maximally different arrival time difference; 3) Somewhere in between the previous two, as would be the case when setup as described above- Wide A-B, far enough out from the PA that there is perceivable cross-signal direct-sound, which is to say, direct sound from the PA on the opposite side is also picked up by the  nearside microphone at perceivable level. Potentially different response of the direct-sound cross-signal (the baffled stereo response like thing, dependent on PA coverage angle) with largely different level and arrival time (the stereo hass delay thing).

Fun to think about. As I've posted about numerous times, concert taping of PA amplified concerts is an anomaly in the recording world, partly because the PA is a widely distributed yet highly correlated source, something that does not exist elsewhere in nature nor in the world of musical instruments. That is the case for a typical recording position out in the audience.  The close stack-tape stereo A-B (#2) and not so close stack-tape stereo A-B (#3) scenarios are even more unique and unusual.  Interesting to think about what is going on and how to use that to our advantage.

[/speculation]

[Gutbucket]

Whichever method you end up using, keep the coverage pattern of the PA in mind first and foremost - both vertical and horizontal coverage angles.

You mentioned a new line-array PA has been installed, which I presume is different than the small PA pictured above.  Just make sure that any hanging mics are not mounted so high that they are no longer within the vertical coverage pattern of the PA.  Many line arrays have a quite sharp vertical cut-off of high frequencies, which might be an issue if mounting a stereo pair above mirror ball height. One way to check is to look at the PA array while up on the scissor lift with your head at the same height as the mics.  Unless they are covered with screening or something, you should be able to look into some of the high frequency horns of the two line arrays and see into their throats.  If you can't see the throats of the uppermost hf horns from where the microphones will be, you are likely outside of the PA's hf coverage area.

Also, unless relying on a SBD feed, avoid positions so close they fall outside the PA's horizontal coverage zone. Horizontal PA coverage is easier to judge as you can do that from the floor while house music is playing by walking forward along the center-line toward the stage and listening for the forward limit of the sweet spot where clarity and high frequency content from the PA starts to drop off.  Keep a centered near-spaced stereo pair farther than that distance to the stage if you want good PA pickup in it.  One reason the hanging split omnis approach works so well is that the mics can be positioned much closer to the stage and PA while remaining within the coverage zone of the PA on either side.  That's in contrast to a centered recording position where there is a limit to how close it can be and still get clear, proximate pickup of the PA.

[Gutbucket]

The photos at the architecture firm link remind of the Salvage Station in Asheville. May be the same design folks.

[Chanher]

I know it seems like overkill, but I’ve heard samples of omni mic stack tapes (1 omni in front of each stack) and they sound surprisingly amazing. Like Gutbucket said, you get the best both worlds: huge room and spaciousness from the split omni’s but the closeness to the stack gives this soundboard like feel. If you have the Ok from the venue and you’re willing to do the work, it might be worth it if you’re seeing a lot of bands there that you like. Something like a pair of used Studio Project C4’s on ebay can be really cheap and I think their omni caps are their best cap.

If you wanna keep it simpler (I completely understand), then I actually think just cheap at853Rx cards DINa (or maybe Ortf after seeing how wide the stage is) in the sweet spot would be more than satisfactory. I still prefer cheap mics in the sweet spot over high end mics in the back of the room. The at853Rx are low-pro, super slim cable, terminate in XLR and take 48v and can still be found cheap on ebay or reverb. Any cards in the sweet spot will be great IMO.

Maybe start with ORTF cards somewhere in the center and you can always add stack mics in the future. My imagination always wants to hang mics from the ceiling so you get that perfect spot, I think this is brilliant 👍

[kindms]

if you can get a drop around above foh and run the cables down the snake drop. if you wanted to be able to get the gear back you could probably use a superclamp and extension pole hanging down or similar less expensive solution

I guess a less expensive solution would be to see if they would let you add a mounted perm bar to that wooden table for clamping behind foh

[goodcooker]

if you can get a drop around above foh and run the cables down the snake drop. if you wanted to be able to get the gear back you could probably use a superclamp and extension pole hanging down or similar less expensive solution

I guess a less expensive solution would be to see if they would let you add a mounted perm bar to that wooden table for clamping behind foh

This is kind of the direction I'm going - a superclamp, extension pole and stereo bar upside down clamped in the ceiling somewhere and hanging down about 6-8 feet. That would put the mics in line with the top of the hanging line arrays. I'd probably buy rather than build two 5 pin to XLR stereo adapter cables and a 50 foot 5 pin to 5 pin XLR cable so only one cable to run instead of two. With a clamp setup I could move (or remove) it easily.

That table in the pic has since disappeared and behind the FOH cage is where the people waiting to get served at the bar hang out and BS. Another reason I want to get the mics in this place as high as I can without shooting over the top of the stacks and in a spot where on stage and stack sound balance.

I've been thinking about whether or not to use one of my existing pairs of mics and I may just get another pair of Line Audio CM3s or CM4s for this. I've been consistently happy with my recordings using those mics. They have very little off axis coloration and make very natural sounding recordings. I got my last pair used for <$200. New ones are on a waiting list at No Hype.

I opened a cart at Adorama and put all the stuff in there I thought I would need - superclamp, extension pole, stereo bar, safety lanyards and a 50 foot 5pin XLR cable. It came out to just over $200.

[rocksuitcase]

+T on the Line Audios. I've not owned them, but the reviews they get here say a lot about them.

[Chanher]

Sometimes simpler is better. The Line Audio's will sound better than any of the crap I suggested haha. I love my CM4's but I've noticed the wide cardioid pattern definitely picks up more chattiness, especially indoors. But just like you said, getting the mics higher and away from the gathering area should eliminate that. Based on the pictures, I still think ORTF or PAS (if you go with CM4's) but physically being in the venue and knowing exactly where the mics will be should determine arrangement. I'm curious how you would set up CM3's, I think a couple feet apart would be cool if at all possible. I personally would go with CM4's PAS but look forward to hearing your results with whatever you choose. Props for putting your own money into this!

EDIT: I mistakenly thought the CM3’s were the omni model, not the predecessor to CM4. Please disregard the recommendation I gave to mount them a couple feet apart.

[grawk]

I'd maybe experiment with something like a midside or ambisonic single point microphone that you can then tune in post depending on how the room sounds at any given show...