Lav Mic EQ & Processing For Corporate Shows 

If you have a presenter with a PowerPoint presentation they are going to look at the screen so put the microphone on the side that they will be turning in their head to see the screen. I managed to get myself all turned around and occasionally get it on the wrong side. I've been waiting for a couple videos like this.

I need to start low-cutting my Front Fills a little more. Wonderful explanation.

As always, very useful stuff. Thanks, Mike.

Great tips for the subgroup. Thanks!

Yep, front fills need to be top of mind for me when adjusting EQ on a Lav during a corporate event. I start changing the channel when I might need to just correct the fill matrix. Sometimes I remember to start there, sometimes I change everything by mistake.

Making corporate audio better one video at a time. Great video, excellent advice.

Thank you for this great video. Really helped me a lot.

Great video. This is basically my exact workflow too but took lots of trial and error to get there; wish I saw this video 10 years ago. Would be cool to see one on how you prefer to organize your Dante I/O patching for Rios/RF/avios too.

Thanks Michael, super useful. Got a couple corporate gigs coming over the next few days so I'll be better equipped to approach the shows.

Thank you for this video. Very helpful!

Excellent video!

Learned a lot! Thanks!!

thank you for sharing 🙂

Thank you for this!

this is very helpful, i do sound engineering for corporative events, thanks.

Mac tip, zoom! System preferences, accessibility, zoom, use scroll gesture with modifier. I personally like command+option hold those two keys down and with any mouse with a scroll wheel even the trackpad it will zoom in the screen. There's also in an advanced options box that lets you tweak how things behave when you hit the edge of the screen. You can also usually by default use command+option+plus or minus.

Thanks for this one. I see more corporate gigs in my future. I've used a wireless lav for an event before and it did not go well and had to switch to a handheld mic halfway through because of feedback. I was dealing with a very limited set up and speaker placement options. This lav was omni and the speakers were too close so it was feedback city.

outstanding!

i agree with every thing you say, man. bang on, solid advice. i will add that depending on the console, some parametrics aren't as precise as the yamaha on a group output or in general. the soundcraft is super soft butterknofe in the Q department to my ear. the yamaha is like a scalpel by comparison

Great video, thanks for the advice! One important addition: Yamaha automatically adds a channel to the Automix Pre-Fader. So if somebody is going backstage and you muted this persons channel and the person is talking into the mic this could mess with the level of the other speakers in the automix. That's why I'm always inserting the automix Post-Fader. I'm actually not that sure whether this only happens when you mute the channel by turning down the fader and not if you use the mute button... Maybe if you mute by pushing the mute button this will also affect the Pre-Fader insert point..

Nice video Michael and a good topic; corporate work is where the money is at! Something you might want to add is how to configure X/M 32 consoles to use groups rather than the default mix bus behavior because it's not that straight forward. Also, maybe a comment on how old-school groups allow you to do group processing whereas DCAs do not. And for anyone who hasn't tried using the automix feature on their digital consoles, you should definitely give it a go. I was really impressed by how seamlessly it works on the X/M 32. After watching this video I will have to see if there is a dynamic Eq available in the X/M 32 rack.

Great super useful inte.

heyho, im working in theaters since 14 years. I can say that we work with lavs 99% of the productions we do. The Trick is to make very wide and deep cuts on the problematic frequency areas . The surgical the EQ gets the more issues you will have with moving Actors on stage. I can get Lavs with this technique REALY feedbacksafe befor having an issue. there is alwys a balance of having them realy thin sounding and enoug body, but thats the only line i have to work with. Also i realy can recommend dynamic eqs on top of it , just to smooth it out .

Heads up. You are my new best friend.

Nice approach, when you have a streaming you do another group for the mic's do have a more clean send to the streaming?

I'm curious with the gain ducking - what happens if two people are talking and you want both to be heard? Does it let through anything that's hitting that gate, or just the highest one? Cheers!

I run sound at a decently large church. We have a very dynamic band and i run music anywhere between 90-95 dba and our pastor loves using a lav. Its very awkward to mix when he comes up to exhort during the transitions between music and speaking. I have to pull music back by about 5+ bd when he walks on stage. My eq is WILD to try and keep some of the room bleed out. If i give .5 db of gain i get feedback.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the primary source enhancer on the channel inserts rather than on the lav subgroup? A quiet speaker vs a loud speaker on a panel would need different settings. What are your thoughts?

i'm an a1 in training and was wondering, after setting up your matrixes, which eq should i start with when ringing out the room? and should i go through this process using geq or peq? also if i have a podium mic in the same setup, how should i incorporate that in the process of ringing out?

I worked an event where there were 2 lectern mics on a podium and the 2 MC's had lav mics. I put all 4 mics on the automixer. Would you recommend this? Is there a way to set priority to the lavs over the lectern or will the automixer automatically prioritize the lav because it is closer to the source?

I don’t know if it would be a bad idea . To use a Dugan auto mixers on a single headset mic for a pastor. What is your opinion?

How do you handle comb filtering between two lavs on side by side speakers? I get this on pastor and groom in weddings. Currently I’m riding the faders as needed. Yamaha MG12 mixer. Thanks!

How do u get lav to hit -18db peak or average? how much do u usually increase from the bodypack or receiver or mixer gain?

Why don't you use additional pink noise input to the auto mixer. If is set up properly, you will get dead silence when no one is talking. And also it can clean a lot of mess with scratching and other noises that people can generate during the event.

Corporate are pretty easy in opinion.

1. Send the lav Mic to a Sub Group 2. Ring out Your mic on the Sub Group not on the pa system did i forget anything ?

another good tip is keeping your lav group selected so you have a pan knob for it at your fingertips. this is super under-utilised and will save you when a presenter goes rogue into the audience and decides to stand right in front of a speaker you can pan them to the opposite side of the room and compensate with more level on their fader and you don't get feedback and the talking remains intelligible without interrupting the speaker.. obviously your A2 should brief them not to do that when they are getting wired up but they still do it!

What’s a lawv?