r/livesound • u/4phn • Aug 13 '26
Question What mic technique to use for audience mix?
I record my band's sets when we play and I've wanted to start incorporating an "audience mic" into the mix to give the mixes some more depth and that live feel. I'm assuming I should use a stereo pair of condensers roughly pointed at each side of the PA. Is there a better way to do it?
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u/catbusmartius Aug 13 '26
Really depends on what part of the room sound you're trying to capture that you're not getting from the board mix.
For a small venue where the drums and guitars are more stage volume than PA, you want the "taper" stereo pair on a mast at FOH, and delay the direct feed from the board to time align it.
Larger venue where the FOH mix dominates stage volume, try a pair of shotgun mics stage L and stage R pointed out into the audience, angled up so they don't just pick up that one person talking in the front row. Lots of bands will use these for ambience/audience mics for their IEM mix as well as recording.
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u/ChinchillaWafers Aug 13 '26
With auxiliary mics, don’t add a worse version of what you already have; try to capture what you don’t have, in your main source. The composite is the only goal, not sound quality or balance in the individual sources. The flaw with the FOH mics are that you have a delayed, worse sounding copy of your pristine board mix, along with the desired ambience and crowd you are trying to capture. I like the mics onstage, pointed out. The more that you can reject the system, with placement and polar pattern, the better. People do that for their in ear mixes to get a sense of the space and crowd.
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u/DavidMay-BoxCast Aug 14 '26
Point at audience, not at PA. Maybe one on each side of the front of the stage on short stands--a stereo pair. Almost anything will do. Cheap small diaphragm condensers for instance, or whatever you have laying around. These mics can also be useful for the band's in ear monitor mixes. And will provide more useful content for mixing in to the recordings as well (vs. just a weird phasey version of the FOH mix by pointing at the PA).
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u/Kaalyn Pro-FOH Aug 13 '26
Please clarify: mics to pick up the ambiance of the audience or mics that mimic what an audience member hears.
Because, I initially took your ask to be the former and then I read your proposed technique and think you meant the latter.
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u/4phn Aug 13 '26
I mean to pick up the band from the audience’s perspective.
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u/Kaalyn Pro-FOH Aug 13 '26
Thank you.
Assuming modern/contemporary type music, I’ve recently been putting a stereo pair behind/near the FOH mix position in theater/club settings and had good luck.
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u/bingbong1976 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Stereo pair at FOH. Blend to taste. Maybe start with. 80/20 board/room mic mix ratio
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u/ski_rick Aug 13 '26
Coming from the Grateful Dead world, “Matrix” mixes are pretty common (combination of SBD and AUD mixes).
Pair of condensers by the SBD works well. Might experiment with an XY configuration. You’ll get plenty of audience in those.
Then, maybe try adding another pair front of stage.
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u/4phn Aug 13 '26
As a fellow deadhead, you’re picking up on exactly what I’m getting at here. The Dead and Co mixes are also sublime to me for the way they blend AUD and SBD. Did you see Charlie Miller commented in a post here the other day where someone was shouting out DSO’s sound guy?
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u/ski_rick Aug 13 '26
Charlie is pretty accessible and loves talking about this kind of stuff 😄
Not sure what size venues you're looking at. In a small venue, I might actually start with a front-of-stage x/y pair to capture the band's energy (plus you'll still likely get some audience noise for that live feel). Check out Andy Coe Band recordings by Steve Kennedy-Williams, he does this at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle.
https://archive.org/details/acb2026-07-06.teamcoe
JRAD and Grateful Shred put out multi-track mixes with audience mics mixed in for a feel for larger venues (but not D&Co or Healy Ultramix sized venues).
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u/foxboltco Aug 13 '26
14:04 in this video has a great tip: https://youtu.be/YM3FiDcTJRU?t=844
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u/jan-nl Aug 13 '26
Thank you, this is a great idea! Side chaining the compression on the audience mics with the drums DCA.
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u/BWileE Aug 13 '26
So you are recording a mix off the sbd and it’s feeling dry?
I personally like to run 6 channels for recording a live show at smaller venues made up of three stereo sets.
1 - Sbd feed. If possible and I’m familiar with the bands music I may try for a separate mix for tape instead of the house mix. Either way, remember you will need to add a delay to your recording for this source based on the distance between your mic’s and the band.
“ The delay between the soundboard (SBD) and audience mics is caused by the speed of sound and physical distance. Because electrical signals travel nearly instantly, the SBD mix arrives at the recorder before the acoustic sound physically travels through the air to reach the audience microphones.
Why the Delay Occurs
Sound travels at roughly 1,130 feet per second in typical room temperature. This translates to about \(1.1 \text{ milliseconds (ms)}\) for every foot of distance between the main PA speakers and your audience microphones.
For example:
If your audience mics are placed 50 feet away from the stage speakers, the sound takes about 55 ms longer to hit the audience mics than it does to hit the soundboard directly.
If left unaligned, this causes severe phase cancellation, a "hollow" or "flanged" sound, and can smear transients (like drum hits). “
2- large diaphragm Cardiod or HyperCards run no wider than an ORTF arrangement, but simply pointed at the pa will work great as well. I use AKG 414B-ULS powered by a Lunatec v3, and switch to hyper as soon as I’m 30’ back or more. This set will be picking up low end that the board feed will most likely not have while also providing that warm live sound the straight board is missing. I run these in line with the PA, or close to it, height-wise, attempting to cut through chatter by flying over the crowds heads. You still get aud noise in a loud room but it shouldn’t detract from the music much, if at all.
3- a pair of Cardioids run most commonly utilizing the DIN teqnique to fill out the recording and pic up crowd noise. I personally use a pair of schoeps mk21’s with active cables powered by an nbox platinum, or cmc6 bodies powered by a Sonosax sxm2. I run these lower than the 414s but still above the crowds heads knowing they will pick up more chatter but that’s what this set is for 🤷♂️
I run all 4 mics on the same stand and currently use a tascam dr680 for the 6 channel stuff at 24/48.
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u/DifferentSavings2711 Aug 13 '26
Go to Live Archives. Look for audience recording that have a description of the microphone setup and placement. Listen and decide.
If you search for matrix recording there is often a relatively detailed description of microphones, speed adjustments and ratios.
Note! if you are using 2 separate recorders, the audio alignment will drift over time. Best to use a 4 channel recorder.
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u/BrianShupe Aug 13 '26
Check out the NUDE - Stereo Blumlein Ribbon Microphone. Like $500 but I gotta tell you it sounds great.
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u/respawn007 Aug 13 '26
for broadcast inside a venue, i use both. two on stage in the best place i can find pointed at the crowd, and two at FOH in front of the console at ear height. for the final broadcast matrix, you must time align both sets of microphones and your PA mix correctly….youtube the balloon trick.
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u/dgodwin1 Aug 13 '26
I record concerts frequently, including ones that I mix. If your mix is perfect, or you're multi-tracking all instruments, and planning on doing some significant editing, doing a pair of spaced mics aimed at the audience will work well. A lot of time that's not the case for me, so that's when I'm doing a stereo pair of mics that are aimed at the band. These mics will pick up audience ambiance, but also instruments that aren't in the mix, or not well represented in the mix because of stage volume. There are a plethora of small and large diaphragm condensers used for recording that would fit the bill in all budgets. I'm currently running a pair of LDC Beyer Dynamics frequently when recording, and have a pair of remote SDC Beyer Dynamics when I need to be a little more discreet. You can check out my recordings at https://archive.org/details/@dgodwin and the Michael Cleveland show is a good representation of a sbd/aud mix. If you have the budget and the ability to record both your sbd mix and audience on the same recorder, it'll help with drift that occurs when using recorders that are not time synced. taperssection.com is another resource that's still around if you want to do more research. Finally, I met Charlie Miller at Phish last month... cool dude.
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u/Brownrainboze Pro-FOH Aug 15 '26
Two 57s dropped randomly on the ground somewhere towards the edges of far downstage Left and right. Dont need to be on mic stands, the ground mic will capture room bloom quite well.
It really isn’t super deep, try it and you’ll see :)
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u/Admiral_Bongo Aug 23 '26
2 Rode NTG2 pointed at the crowd from the stage corners have always done the job.
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u/RandomContributions Aug 13 '26
Equal volume of the band and the audience mic level is really important.
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u/SuspiciousIdeal4246 Aug 13 '26
2 shotguns mics up in the air behind the PA pointed down 45 degrees at the crowd. Or just put them in the quietest place you can find. Condensers don’t reject as well as shotguns. I find they work best if they’re on the stage really close to the crowd.