Sound

Poor sound is one of the main factors that people are put off by watching/using amateur videos. The on-board microphones are often adequate, but produce very localised sound, (i.e. booming voice of the camera-person, whilst quiet voice from the subject).

We take sound very seriously when we produce music videos. Firstly we contact the Venue to see what equipment they hvae in terms of mixing desk and so fourth. Ideally the Venue or band provide the Sound Engineer and mixing desk. Depending upon the mixing desk we take a variety of feeds from the desk. Again ideally we like to take seperate feeds for each of the instruments, or groups in the case of the drums. We also take the mixed output from the desk to use for dubbing purposes. By taking the seperate feeds from the desks allows us to provide an unmixed live recording of the band should they wish to have one.

We use S.E. Electronics Condenser microphones for the cameras, which are Professional quality microphones used by the BBC and other broadcast studios. This means the sound is clear and sharp even with relatively high levels of background noise. We have a whole range of other professional microphones such as Shure SM57, SM58, and various other SE Electronics condenser microphones. We can use these to capture surround sound from say a drum kit, with the Shure Microphones being used to mike the instruments. (Metalica and other bands use Shure microphones for their sound pick-up)

For Vocals we have a large diaphragm highly sensitive S.E. Electronics Orpheus microphone which is excellent for picking up female vocals or the subtlest of instruments. We capture all of the audio in 32 bits of precision and sampled at 192khz for superior sound quality.