Hi all,

has anybody used either, a boundary mic placed on the front of a music stand (ie next to the music - and yes I'm aware page noise would be an issue), or put their spot mics next to the front edge of a performer's music stand?

The idea, I suppose , would be to cut out any reflections from the mic stand - that would be the reason for doing this.

A secondary reason would be one of convenience in that performers tend to want to sit/stand at a very consistent distance and angle from their music stand and one issue I *sometimes* have is performers who might move their music stands around.

Downsides would be that some may like to have the stand high and have a relatively vertical angle, where as other might have a relatively, to their eyes, lower position and have a more horizontal angle (or the other way round).

Has anybody tried this and have anything interesting to offer?


TIA

For the past 4 years I’ve been using the Rode Wireless Pro and Rode Wireless Go radio mics (often all 4 simultaneously) for just this purpose….they work great !

https://brandstore.rode.com/en-au/co...s/wireless-pro

https://brandstore.rode.com/en-au/co...eless-go-gen-3

I find that taping them underneath the lower lip edge of the music stand keeps them from catching the edges of pages as they are turned…and being flush with the exposed lip-edge there seems to be no diffraction effect.

If you wanted to locate a boundary or PZM type mic on the flat face of the stand, you’d be surprised how often the score folds out to fill the entire surface of the stand plate…so your mic would be hidden underneath the pages (unless they’re exclusively using a tablet/iPad in place of a paper score)

The Rode mic’s capsule screen is flush with the underside front edge of the lip, facing the instrument. Of course you can attach it to anywhere along the wide underside edge of the lip, for optimal instrument focus….and will even suffice for 2 instruments sharing a stand (desk)

The Wireless Pro also has a powerful neodymium magnet sleeve, so you can attach the mic directly to the lip underside without tape ….to steel stands only, not aluminium !

The mics have an inbuilt omni capsule which is suitable for the purpose, and being both wireless and attached, the mics will follow the player’s stand around, if they need to change locations during the performance (eg stage resets between first and second half of a show)

Being omni, you automatically get a decent (but sufficiently lower) amount of surrounding instrument spill/leakage…so you’ll apply much less reverb to sink the spot mic into the overall ensemble texture.

The mic’s response (see pic) is usefully tailored for a steep low-end ‘mud’ rolloff, and a fractional presence boost with HF taper-down …probably similar to how you’d eq your typical SD cardioid spot anyway…..for my purposes it’s a perfect versatility/fidelity sweet spot.

The transmit signal strength is fine for any typical church or large hall, as long as you have line of sight between music stand and recorder….there’s no hiss, no dropouts, no RF interference

These devices also record onboard to the mic sender unit itself, for 10+ hours of uncompressed wav audio, in addition to transmitting… so you’ve got an inbuilt 48k (and 32bit floating!) safety recording, in case of any rare signal dropout !

Works great for cello, double bass, lute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, percussion, harp….most acoustic instruments in fact. Probably won’t work in a rock or jazz band context…and drumkit will probably overload the mic input section. The original design spec was as a voice/speech mic for small scale video production….

They also have a socket for a lavalier mic (the Wireless Pro comes with a pair of these), which means you can locate the lav mic higher or lower than the stand lip if you find that location to be compromised or sub-optimal.

You can also clip the transmitter (with or without lav mic) to the shirt/jacket of the performer, for a closer pickup of a singer, solo violin, flautist, recorder player….and both of these products have 2 transmitters and one receiver as standard. You CAN overload the mics with a loud input (soprano or percussion mainly), but careful placement can mitigate this.

The stand under-lip location makes them TOTALLY invisible to video cameras….just remember to retrieve them at the end before the musicians take their stands home with them !

Yes….most page turns are therefore audible, but by necessity a musician isn’t playing if they are turning a page, so you can easily mute the mic for those 1-2 seconds when you mix the recording !

Lots of upsides, not many downsides, when you go the wireless spot mics route…and DRASTICALLY cuts the setup/pack-away time at both ends of your concert

If the underside lip placement doesn’t suit for a particular instrument, you can easily fix the mic to the top of a low kick-mic stand (or regular medium height round-base stand) for added height/distance choice….or just tape it to the head of their mini-gooseneck clip-on LED light !

Have you considered clipping the mic directly to the vertical bar of the stand? This would solve several of your issues. https://www.k-m.de/en/products/micro...r-black?c=3607

not sure whether this is 'interesting' but i've been positioning sdc's as spots for recording (and/or amplifying) on music stands for decades; occasionally i've also been using blm's (or sdc's mis-used as blm's) - i'm mainly using directional mics and depending on requirements, i either try to optimize s/n, directs/reflected sound, coverage, spill from nearby sources or simply the looks.

oh, and i process close mics in any case: for me, they are never just about recording...

I periodically use directional boundaries to capture contrabass, cello, and harp, as well as downstage soloist spots, typically voice in difficult staged and semi-staged situations, and as mains as a last resort in situations where no mic stands were permitted. While they are useful for reducing visual clutter, stand footprint, and floor reflections, they only capture the sound which is radiated down to them, which can be pretty hit or miss. Though even in bad situations, they do tend for me to be fairly malleable with a bit of EQ, usually low-mid cuts and top end boosts. I often say the best mics ive ever bought from a cost-benefit analysis are my trusty discontinued AT cardioid boundary mics, because i got them for pennies on the dollar and they are always finding some useful way into my setups because of their diminutive footprint and virtually indestructible build quality.

I was briefly obsessed with PZMs when they were new and they seemed like a great solution for a lot of sectional and spot mikes in orchestra. Either placed on the floor, or placed on a stand with a plexiglas backplate. I don't use them anymore but I think the method still has merit for some things.
--scott

When recording string quartets, it's pretty common to use an under stand spot mic on the cello. You can clamp it to the stand upright if you want to, but many quartets supply their own stands and your clamp may or may not fit what they bring. I've also used spots right next to the music desk or a few inches over it, adjusting the front-back position to avoid reflections. Small gooseneck mics, like DPA 4099's, are quite convenient for this: as I recall, that's the standard spot technique used by the Kronos Quartet when on tour. If you've (a lot) more money the DPA 2012, 2015, 4011c, and 4015c all work great as close spot mics. A 4015c is my standard cello spot when I play in folk and pop ensembles.

David

"...stand with a plexiglas backplate..."

Could you (briefly) expand on this, please? I have seen plexiglass plates used for sound reduction (say in front of trumpets), or behind horns (to enhance reflections). Are you referring to music stands made from plexiglass?

The low frequency corner of the PZM is set by the surface that it's on... so if you just hang a PZM in free space on the top of a microphone stand the low end drops off. So you put a big piece of plexiglas behind it to provide a larger boundary.

Compilation of PZM propaganda: https://coutant.org/pcc160/127089.pdf

People would even take two four-foot squares of plexiglas, put a PZM in the middle of each, and fly them over the orchestra.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
--scott

Thank you.

DG

More accurately, the bottom shelves down 6dB at a frequency related to the boundary size, then flat as an omni from there on down.

Yes, precisely. Because it IS an omni after all, and when the boundary is less than a quarter wave wide, it ceases to provide that reinforcement and directionality.

So you need that big boundary behind it.... like the front of the balcony or like the floor.... or like a big piece of plexiglas hanging in free space.
--scott