lapel eq

Most churches today are or are beginning to use headsets for the VIP's. I think this is great for many reasons. But the interesting side effect of this is that less and less engineers are having to use lapel mics regularly. They haven't honed those skills in dealing with the omni lapel that limits your gain before feedback into a slim margin smaller than the width of a human hair.

I recently read an article where the writer was noting that all live engineers must serve the mistress of feedback. I laughed out loud. A good engineer will always be asking the question of "will this cause feedback" in the forefront of their minds before doing anything, especially during the event.

This last year, I hired to work a weekend at a church because I think that they wanted their lapel rung out. Nothing against the engineers there, its just that I have so many years of experience ringing out lapels that it sorta comes second nature. I believe that was why they hired me that weekend. Not that I like doing it. It is one of those skills that you gain but wish that you never had to gain, not unlike unloading a trailer attached to a burning suburban. Or knowing that you have the right to check out your child from an emergency room no matter what the nurse tells you because you want both children that went through an auto accident in the same hospital, not two that are 45 miles apart. (another story there)

So for those that haven't had the luxury of doing much of this (ringing out a lapel, that is), I will pass on some of my tricks.

If you can have the control over the micing of the individuals you might try a unidirectional mic. I have recently run into the new DPA uni mic and it was amazing as far as not needing an excessive amount of processing. The big downside to uni mics is that if anyone ever does the stupid thing of putting it on facing the wrong way, you look extremely stupid because it is extremely hard to get any gain before feedback in those situations. Even with that amazing DPA, I was right there all night. In the past, I actually preferred omni's simply because it takes the stupidity factor out. Get the mic in the vicinity of the mouth pointed any way you wish and I can get them. Although proper placement always works the best. So placement? I prefer center about armpit level. The less barrel chested the male, the higher you can go. Females are actually harder with lapels. I read an article once that showed the eq curve that placing a mic against the chest does. It puts this amazing cut right in the middle of the female vocal range. But they can be done. The hardest thing is getting them to wear the appropriate attire.

You will need a lot of processing for the lapel. I like to start with a 1/3 octave and a 5 band parametric inserted leaving me the board eq for minor changes that happen over time. I had a 1/3 octave and a 12 band parametric at the last church I worked at. Now I can work with less but if you get all of this eq, you can pretty much make any room work. I will get the primary rings with the parametric and start using the 1/3 octave.

The biggest trick is something that is hard to teach. At some point in the eq'ing process, you will end up in a corner running out of eq. Then you must start thinking in reverse. What frequencies are you not ringing on and give some of those back. You should be able to get at least 3 or 4 dB of more gain by doing the reverse process at the end. If when you get through you end up with all of the eq point down equally, you are not done. Your final curve should be just that a curve of sorts with some spots close to zero.

I have been assuming that you already know the basics of ringing out mics, so if you need more then have a conversation with an engineer or get your hands on a book (of which there are many). Who knows, maybe I will cover that later on.